MIKAH

A cell phone ringtone had never sounded more incredibly, deafeningly, mind-blowingly loud than Gabe’s did in that dark, quiet hallway.

“You don’t keep your phone on vibrate like the rest of civilization?!” I hissed, glancing around. “Honestly, and you accuse me of not being ‘hip to the times.’” I didn’t know why I was bothering to keep my voice low, since his ringtone had taken a huge shit on whatever element of surprise we’d been trying to achieve.

Gabe patted his pockets, his eyes wide, his fingers fumbling as they pulled his cell phone out of his jacket. And then he dropped the cell phone on the stone floor, where it continued to blare, echoing down the hallway.

“Shit!” he whispered. “I’m not eligible for a replacement for another year!”

“JUST. TURN. IT. OFF!” I whisper-yelled.

Gabe scooped up the phone, and with all the finesse of a pissed-off caveman, he finally silenced the phone.

My ears were ringing, and I held my breath, expecting some new threat to pounce on us.

We waited, stiff-limbed and wide-eyed in the silence, for a long string of seconds. Nothing. No one else seemed to be around, and the walls of the corridor had to have been soundproofed—otherwise, I was pretty sure Gabe’s ringtone would have overpowered the music on the dance floor.

I blew out a slow breath, and Gabe smiled, his shoulders relaxing. This werewolf and his dumb luck. I would have taken him to Vegas if I wasn’t convinced he’d break an entire casino just for the fun of it.

“Who’s calling you right now, anyway?” I demanded.

He glanced down at his phone and grimaced. “Dammit. My screen’s all cracked.”

“Did I ask about your fucking screen?”

“Are you feeling hangry or something, Mike? Need a Snickers bar?”

Fun fact: I hated it when he called me Mike. Like I was some polo-shirt-wearing suburban dad with a thinning hairline and a fantasy football team. “I wouldn’t mind drawing some blood right about now.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait. My donor card’s all used up at the moment.” He looked up from his phone, where a text message was written across the display. “It was Xavier. He’s on the plane and wanted to let us know his ETA.”

“When are they getting here?”

He looked back down at the text message. “It looks like the flight is only a couple of hours out, and—oh crap.”

“What?”

“He’s bringing Maya, Colton, and Lola.”

I groaned. So our job wasn’t to get just Xavier through the portal, maybe with Colton in tow since those two were still practically sharing an umbilical cord, but also two others? “Great. Why doesn’t he just bring the entire pack? Ten’s a nice round number, don’t you think?”

Gabe considered this, then shook his head. “No, I think that would be overkill.” He blinked. “Oh. Was that a joke? Did the high and mighty vampire detective tell a joke?”

“I never joke.” I gritted my teeth. How was it that this werewolf was so stunningly good at driving me completely up the wall?

Gabe’s focus was back on the phone. “He’s asking questions about the portal. What should I say?”

I rubbed my face. “Nothing, for now. We need to know what we’re dealing with first, and to do that, we have to get in there.” I pointed at the door at the far end of the hallway and then paused. Was the hallway really, really long, or was it just some kind of Fae glamour or optical illusion?

I tilted my head to the side, focusing hard with my vampire vision to look beyond any glamour. It wasn’t a very long hallway, but it wasn’t going to be an easy journey to the door, either.

Gabe pocketed his phone and took a step forward—before he smacked into a wall. “What the hell?” He rubbed his cheek, his eyes wide. He was obviously being affected by the illusion.

I held out my hand toward him. “Take my hand. I’ll lead you.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t object or wisecrack. His hand was warm in mine as we made our way down the hallway.

“So. Question for you,” Gabe said suddenly.

“What is it?” I squinted harder to parse out the layer of the magic and the actual, physical door beyond the glamour. It was a task that would be difficult on a good day, but after all the power I’d already used, I was feeling the drain. It didn’t help that my current partner in dysfunction and chaos smelled fucking to die for. With my grip on his hand as I led the way, he kept bumping into me.

“Are your vampy senses tingling?”

If I didn’t think I might need him down the line, I would have left him there. I ignored his comment, and we proceeded forward. As we got closer to the end of the hallway, I was able to make out a locked door.

“Great,” I groaned. “I don’t suppose you stole two keycards when you took your drunken tumble with that guard?”

“I think you mean when we took our drunken tumble,” Gabe reminded him. “I seem to remember someone’s firm ass landing right on my—”

“Do you have another key or not?” I snarled.

The effect of the magic must have worn off as we got closer to the door, because Gabe realized we had nearly reached our destination. He took out a regular credit card and approached the door. “No keycard needed. I can open this one the old-fashioned way.” His gaze dropped down to our still-linked hands. “But first you’re going to need to let go of my hand.”

I dropped his hand like it was on fire and sprang back, flexing my fingers to ward off the warmth from Gabe’s touch. It lingered on my skin, making it feel like we’d never broken contact at all. It was…

Annoying.

Yes, that was a good word for it.

Gabe jimmied the lock until we both heard a satisfying click. We pushed through the now-unlocked door without any hesitation and found ourselves in a waiting room full of humans dressed in club outfits. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the room, and I watched one of the humans closest to us whisper to her friend, “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this pleasure adventure? It’ll be worth every penny.”

Gabe and I exchanged a look. What the fuck had we stumbled into?

I couldn’t help recall the human couple we’d seen being pushed through the mirrored door. Would these humans all end up in the same situation—hurled viciously into the Fae world?

There was a loud, piercing scream behind us, and Gabe sprang into action. He immediately shut the door through which we’d just come in, trapping us inside with the rest of the humans. What the hell was going on out there? Had we been caught? Was someone hurt?

Luckily the humans in the room with us seemed too excited about their “pleasure adventure” to be upset by the scream, or to notice our presence. Or maybe they just thought the scream was part of the package.

“There’s a window,” Gabe murmured. He pointed up to a narrow window near the top of the door, and we strained to peek through it to see what was happening on the other side.

Through the window, we watched as yet another set of demons escorted a scantily clad young woman through the hallway. The woman was completely losing her shit, screaming at the top of her lungs and thrashing in the demons’ grips.

How were none of the other humans hearing this? The woman wailed louder than Gabe’s ringtone. I scanned the crowd, who still hadn’t noticed us.

“They’re enchanted,” I said softly.

“What?” Gabe asked.

“Enchanted. Completely entranced.” I shook my head with a growl. I’d known that a night club run by Fae, demons, and goblins wasn’t going to be the most wholesome of destinations, but the picture that was coming together was somehow worse than I’d even imagined.

In the hallway, the woman continued to scream. “My sister came here three days ago, and she hasn’t been home since! Where is she? I just want to see my sister! What the fuck did you do with her?”

“Shut up, and get in,” a demon snarled. “You’ll see your sister soon enough!”

They were headed straight for the door now, probably to dump that woman with the rest of the humans. I glanced around the room and then back at Gabe, who nodded, already getting into a fighting stance. His hands extended as if they were moments away from shifting into claws.

There wasn’t an alternate escape route from this room. We were boxed in with a bunch of enchanted humans, and a group of demons was moments away from finding us tucked away there. Even if we were the drunken dumbasses they believed us to be, we never could have gotten into this room by accident.

I nodded back at Gabe. I didn’t want to fight. I never liked to maim or kill if I could avoid it, but right now there didn’t seem to be an option. It looked like we’d have to fight our way out of this one…