She’s all soft features and heightened vulnerability at this hour, and I feel her all the way down to my fucking marrow.

Thrusting a to-go cup of coffee toward me, she says, “Get dressed and wake Dr. Verlice.” Her gaze tracks over my chest, searing my skin where her eyes touch the exposed ink of my neck and arms.

She averts her eyes as I accept the paper cup. The warmth against my palm induces a fierce hunger. “Why?”

“We’re going to the crime scene.”

I take a sip of black coffee, savoring the hit of caffeine as it rushes my system. “Why?” I ask again.

Impatience creases her sultry mouth into her pouty expression that drops right to my dick. It’s too damn late—or early—to guard my bodily, carnal reactions from her.

“Nietzsche,” she says, leaning against the doorpost. “You brought up a good point before. You’re a professor. So you’re going to teach me, Professor Locke.”

Goddamn. I don’t even try to curb the wicked smile that tugs at my lips.

“Don’t say anything,” she warns. “Just get your shit.”

It’s three a.m., the iconic witching hour, in the middle of the killing fields. The marsh is wet and stagnant, making my clothes cling to my skin like the air of a damp cellar. The sounds of restless insects vibrate against the reeds as the two tagalong agents set up a spotlight.

As the light flicks on to illuminate the eerie trees of the first crime scene, Halen turns off her flashlight. She’s staring at the ring of burnt reeds, lost in her thoughts.

“Take your podium, professor,” she says, turning her gaze on me expectantly.

A devious thrill surges my blood. The way she says professor does something dangerous to my ego. Makes me want to teach her all about the bad things that go bump in the night and make her scream.

Her hazel eyes reflect the spotlight like a deer caught in a headlight. The cliché analogy suits her well right now, as I imagine her poring over research into the late hours, adrift and consumed with panicked frustration, trying to puzzle together the association to Nietzsche.

The dark circles beneath her flashing silver eyes look like bruises, and the sight tugs at some foreign feeling inside, and my desire to help her grasp more than just this concept grips me fiercely.

I place my coffee on the supply table left behind by the techs. “Where do you want me to begin?” I don’t try to mask the exasperated edge in my tone.

“From the top,” she demands.

I gift her a strained smile. “Three thousand B.C. it is, then.”

Dr. Verlice groans into his cup, and I bask in his torment. I need to get rid of him soon.

I spin my thumb ring around three times before I dive in. “Good girls in my class take their seats.”

Halen doesn’t appear amused by my sarcasm as she clears off a space on a cooler to use as a bench. “Walk me through every thought you had when you first saw this scene.” She sets her phone to record, but also breaks out a pen and her notebook.

I lean back against the table, palms braced on the edge. I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to impress with my mind—but I’m far more tempted to lure Halen out into the marsh and sinfully feast on her until my bones ache from gluttony.

I rub the back of my neck and breathe out the tension from my muscles. “First, a history lesson,” I say, my gruff voice raking the air. “Everything connects. When you delve down one rabbit hole just to end up in another identical hole, and experience that unsettling sense of déjà vu , it’s simply the history of the world repeating itself. We humans like to think these correlations are mysterious insight, some divine wisdom. When really, everything connects, because it’s all been done before. Only one mind, one consciousness, is observing those histories for the first time.”

“In psychology,” Halen says, “we call that Beiner Meinhof Phenomenon.”

“In philosophy, we call it synchronicity,” I fire back.

She jots down a note, and I’m agonizingly aware that the only thing in nature separating her skin from mine is her flimsy shirt. I fist my hand and shift my attention to the barren marsh trees.

“The number three,” I state, “is a spiritual number, as we established. Nearly every society in history references a devotion to this number in order to ascend. Be it to heaven, or to an enlightened plane of the mind. And, Halen, you’ll appreciate that it’s even referenced in modern psychology. The law of three stages suggests that your sociology is the most advanced science humankind has left to discover before we are to become a fully enlightened species.”

She listens with rapt attention, revealing the side of herself made of raw, naked vulnerability. This is an area out of her comfort zone. I can mold and shape her with a selective delivery of information, and I’m so fucking tempted…

“There are two histories,” I say to her, leashing the terrible compulsion. “Public knowledge passed down through the generations, and secret knowledge passed down to the elite few.”

Her eyes alight on me as the connection dawns. “Secret societies.”

The way she says it, so cavalier, so accepted and logical, lets me know she’s done her research thus far and has no personal reservations. Not the way the feds will have when she tries to feed this theory to them.

“Yes, a hidden wisdom. Otherwise referred to as mystery schools. Let’s follow the evidence.” I walk toward her. “You’ve already established your link to Socrates.” I sweep my hand out to encompass the scene. “The removal of the eyes denotes searching for an enlightened wisdom unable to be seen by the physical realm, an unseen knowledge.”

After she writes a note, she promptly curls her fingers toward her palm in a gesture to urge me on. I can’t help but smile at my eager student.

“Socrates’ student, Plato, initiated”—and that word is crucial for later—"the Platonist school of thought, which was the very first academy. We’ll skip the boring topics of this institution and jump right into the celestial. Theory of Forms, metaphysics, body of light—”

“Which is…what?”

“Astral projection.” I nod toward her cooler bench, and she only hesitates a moment before she clears her satchel to allow me to sit.

Progress. I seat myself next to her, and even though I keep a good six inches between us, our bodies hum at a high frequency, a charged current snapping like a magnetic force to draw us together.

“Plato and his student…” I trail off, waiting for her to fill the blank.

Her weary sigh fans my cheek, eliciting a violent craving. “Aristotle,” she answers.

“They taught us that the stars are composed of an unearthly matter. According to the masters, the spiritual element of the mind, the psyche, was made of this mystical material. Hence, the reason why the stars govern our lives.”

“Astrology,” she surmises with an air of logic, but it’s the dewy glow of her eyes that conveys I’m touching on something divine within her own soul.

I smile. “Which is why they believed the psyche could be projected out into the universe.”

“Okay, Kallum. I understand the basis of the theology.” She angles her body toward mine. “But how does any of this parallel to Nietzsche?”

“I offered you the cliff notes. You’re the one who wanted to take the scenic route through philosophy.”

She presses the end of the pen to her lips, and I’ve never been more envious of an inanimate object. “Proceed,” she allows.

“All of the above is to preface what is not recorded in history,” I say. “We only know of the unwritten doctrines because Aristotle cited them once in a dialogue. These doctrines were highly secretive, passed down orally to only the most trusted philosophers. Such teachings centered around the primeval wisdom of ancient sages, such as Hermes Trismegistus.”

Halen regards me seriously. “An example of such teachings?”