I shrugged, doing my best to hide my gloating. “Nope, I’m not offended.”

Mr. Smarty-pants smirked, then stepped over the asylum’s threshold. “Since you insisted that I go first . . .”

I followed him and then added, “But since we’re being candid, care to tell me why Miranda called you Kaillen?”

His footsteps stopped, and he peered back at me. “She didn’t call me that.”

“Oh yes, she did.”

His shoulders lifted. “In that case, I have no idea.”

“That’s all you’re going to say? No idea?”

He didn’t reply and resumed walking.

I followed behind him, intent on asking more, but the morning sunlight vanished as we both stepped into the asylum’s foyer. A prickling sense of foreboding shot along my nerves, and my interest in the name Kaillen vanished. “This place is . . .” I shuddered.

“Yeah, I can say the same.”

The asylum was creepy with a capital C. Long, echoing halls stretched out around us, and a double staircase curved upward from the foyer. It wasn’t so much the building or how it looked that gave me the creeps, it was more the feeling of the place. It felt haunted, and not in a good way, and the temperature . . . it’d just plummeted, and it felt as if icy spiders walked up my spine.

An image abruptly filled my mind of my sister bound, gagged, and held inside this eerie place. It was enough of a reminder of why we were here for me to snap out of the web the hunter was weaving around me. I shouldn’t be interested in learning more about him, or whether or not his name was Kaillen. All that mattered was finding Tessa.

“Let’s get this search over with, then get some rest so you can scry again. We need to find my sister.”

I felt him follow behind me. I no longer cared who went first.

“Can you still sense her?” he asked as we crept down one hall. It got darker the farther we went. It was as if the asylum swallowed any remaining daylight.

I searched inside myself again for the bond. A mere tingle of it remained, but I latched on to it and closed my eyes, focusing on its subtle power. My body tilted right, propelling me in that direction. My breath caught as I opened my eyes.

“I think they had her that way.” I pointed down a long hall to our right. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and I was pretty sure unnaturally sized rodents had claimed most of the seemingly endless hallway as their den.

“How far can you see?” the Fire Wolf asked.

I shook my head. “Not very far. It’s too dark.”

“I’ll lead. Stay behind me.”

“Oh, now you’re the gentleman?”

His lips brushed very closely to my ear, by mistake or not I couldn’t be sure, as he whispered, “I can be a perfect gentleman when I want to be.” He inched past me, and a river of goosebumps raced up my arms. Desire shot straight to my core but so did a jolt of irritation. The dude was messing with me. He knew I was attracted to him, and he was getting a thrill out of seeing my reactions.

He prowled ahead on silent footsteps, and I cursed my stupid hormones for letting him affect me so much. Tessa. We were here to find clues about Tessa. Why the hell did I have to keep reminding myself of that?

We traipsed carefully around what looked like piles of animal poop and questionable-smelling carcasses. A thick coating of grime covered the floor, no footprints marring it. Despite the dark interior, I could see that much.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here for years.” I gestured toward the floor. “No human footprints anywhere, although there are animal.”

“I noticed that too.”

“How do you think they got Tessa in here if it wasn’t through the front door?”

He shrugged and continued walking. “I imagine there are dozens of ways to enter this place, and we just happened to use the most obvious.”

We continued on, and I was glad that the floor felt solid. I figured there wasn’t an underground level below us, so some of my worry eased that we wouldn’t crash through the floorboards.

A keen wail abruptly cut through the quiet. I ground to a halt. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

It came again, that sharp, high-pitched wail that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Every hair on my body stood on end. “You didn’t hear that?”

“No.”

Something brushed past my body, like an icy hand trailing its fingers across my skin. I jumped just as a voice whispered in my ear, “Girl of power and might, secrets and darkness. I see you. I see inside you. I feel your bones.”

“What the fuck!” I screeched and leaped right into the Fire Wolf’s back.

He swirled around just as I planted myself against his chest. A cackling laugh disappeared into the darkness behind us as though being swallowed by the asylum itself.

Trembles broke out across my entire body.

“What’s wrong?” the hunter asked sharply.

I shivered again and wrapped my arms around myself. He still stood close, but I’d stepped back enough so that I was no longer touching his chest. “Didn’t you hear that? That voice?”

For a moment, he didn’t reply, and the only sound I heard was my quickened breaths.

“No,” he replied evenly. “What did it say?”

“Something about power and might, secrets, bones. Heebie jeebies, I don’t know, but it touched my skin. I felt cold fingers on me.” I shuddered.

His warm hand splayed across my back. “Ghosts. You must be sensitive if you’re sensing them. Places like this are always crawling with them.”

Ghosts? For real? That was a first. I could honestly say I’d never seen or heard a ghost before. Another round of shivers overtook me. “Creepy with a capital C.”

He replied with a low chuckle, before he warned in a more serious tone, “Stay close.”

I didn’t need the encouragement. The deeper we ventured inside the asylum, the more I inched toward the Fire Wolf. It was strangely silent in here, and an energy clung to the place, as if its past inhabitants still haunted the stairways and vast echoing halls. Thankfully, I didn’t register any more icy fingers caressing me and I didn’t hear any more ghostly gibberish, but my psychic powers were humming full throttle.

Remnants of energy clung to the walls and fixtures. Every few steps, a mental image would come to me: a patient tied to a bed, glazed eyes staring skyward; a woman with long dark hair screaming, throwing herself against a wall; orderlies in pale-green clothing hauling a man down the stairs, his legs thumping into the steps behind him; a child holding a piece of broken glass and slashing into their forearms over and over.

Each time a new image came, I shivered because I knew I wasn’t imagining things. I was registering events from the past. Horrible, atrocious acts had happened within these walls, and their fragments brushed my mind, clawing my senses as they pulled at my psychic magic.

It didn’t help that what little light entered the building near the front doors and broken windows was long gone. Everything was boarded up the deeper we went, so I had to rely more and more on the hunter to guide me as the unbidden images snaked into my thoughts.

Several times I bumped into his back when a particularly strong remnant ensnared me, and his citrusy cedar scent flooded my nose. I inhaled frantically, letting that scent ground me and guide me back to the present. Thankfully, the hunter didn’t seem to mind. Each time I brushed against him, his hand steadied me, almost as if to reassure me that he was still there.

Still, it was somewhat surprising that he didn’t mind my bumping movements and stumbling steps, especially given his threat at the Underbelly to dismember me if I ever touched him again. So maybe he did have some gentlemanly qualities.

I jolted at that thought. Yeah, and the sky is purple. I had no idea what was real and what was an act with this hunter. One thing I was coming to learn, though? He was as disarming as he was lethal, and he was a master at hiding behind a mask and only revealing what he chose to. Those traits made him very dangerous.