Sybil begins to shriek anew, and the sorceress stands there, listening to her cries, while the elevator dings in the distance. They continue until the doors hiss closed, and my friend is whisked away.

My cheeks are wet when Sophia turns her attention to Memnon’s sleeping form. She tilts her head, studying him briefly.

“Funny to think that the man who killed my”—Sophia’s voice catches—“so many of our men,” she corrects, “could look so vulnerable. What a waste,” she muses, seemingly to herself. To the guards who flank her, Sophia says, “Take the sorcerer to my brother immediately. Even though our captive is under spelled sleep, use extreme caution—he could wake at any point. I don’t need to remind you that he killed dozens of people the last time he wasn’t happy.”

Memnon! I call out to him. Memnon, wake up! I push as much command as I can into those words, hoping that the bond might force him awake. But the sorcerer doesn’t stir as the guards break the chalk circle and grab him. One of them must be a mage because I see his red-orange magic pool around Memnon as the two heft my mate up by the arms.

Please, Memnon, I beg, wake up.

He still doesn’t stir.

The two guards cart the sorcerer away, the tips of my mate’s shoes squeaking as they drag across the marble.

“What is your brother going to do to him?” My voice comes out as a whisper.

“The same thing my father plans to do to you,” Sophia says. She tilts her head. “I hear you’ve been trying to solve the murders.” She gives me another cruel smile. “Congratulations. You’re about to.” She lifts a hand. “Sleep.”

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CHAPTER 49

When I wake, I’m slumped between two guards who each have me by the arms. My feet drag uselessly behind me.

I lift my head and blink away the spelled sleep as we approach two ominous maroon doors with fancy golden handles. At the sight of them, a bolt of fear runs down my spine. I know intuitively that beyond them is the secret behind the murders, the mystery that not even Memnon has been able to figure out. I can feel the wrongness of whatever lies beyond.

I struggle against the guards’ hold, my magic surging up. I gather it in my hands⁠—

“Sleep.” Royal purple magic billows into my face, and the world goes dark again.

The sharp bite of pain right over my heart wakes me. I can feel warm blood welling from the wound when suddenly I’m tossed forward onto cold concrete, my body skidding across it.

I groan, blinking my eyes and trying to focus.

Another sleep spell.

I roll onto my back, and the movement causes the skin over my heart to sting. Absently I touch it, and my fingers come away bloody.

A hoarse, masculine voice begins speaking in Latin, their tone low. “By water and flame, earth and sky, I invoke the elements.”

Behind me, I can hear the sound of sand being poured from a bag.

What in the seven hells is going on?

I press my hands to the concrete floor and sit up. The room is dimly lit by several sets of wrought iron chandeliers, the warm glow of their lights illuminating the black walls of the cavernous room. Besides the light itself, there are precious few things in the room, save for the two men in front of me and the one coming around from my back.

The older of the two wears a brown tweed suit, his wiry white hair sticking up here and there around his head. He looks like an academic, with the exception of his eyes, which seem to dance darkly here in the dim light.

Next to him⁠—

I freeze at the sight of the man whose face I’ve repeatedly stared at over the last week. His hair is a little whiter at the temples than in his picture, and his skin is perhaps not quite as enviable, but Luca Fortuna is still an arresting sight.

In his hands, he cradles a leather-bound grimoire, a fairly wicked one if the oily black smoke wafting off it is any indication.

He pauses his incantation, his eyes fixed on the individual pouring the sand along a clockwise arc. I glance at the man in question. He wears a suit, a thick bag in his hands.

It’s not sand he’s pouring, I realize as the man completes the arc and empties out the last of the bag’s contents, but salt.

Horror dawns. It’s another fucking spell circle. One he just finished drawing while I sat here getting my bearings.

I lunge for the curving line of salt.

“Bind this circle so that nothing may escape.” Luca rushes out the last of the incantation.

The blood on my fingers sizzles as it touches the salt, and the lights above me flicker as the physical walls of the spell circle rise, trapping me inside.

Fuck.

My pulse is beginning to pound in my ears.

I back up, my eyes moving from the men to the space within the circle. I realize the concrete I’m standing on is stained, and it smells like antiseptic and, and…

Blood.

My insides wither when I realize this is where all the other witches died. This is where I will die, unless I can escape this cursed circle.

I feel three sets of eyes on me. The suited guard gives me a flat look, like he’s seen too much and cannot summon the energy to care. The elderly scholar—or whoever he is—stares at me intently, his head cocked.

But it’s Luca, Luca Fortuna, whose attention seizes me. There’s a bitter glee to his expression.

“Selene Bowers,” he says, eyeing me up and down. “I know your name, and I know you were one of the last to see my Li—” He cuts himself off, though I’m positive he was about to say his daughter’s name.

The scholar watches the two of us quizzically, looking back and forth, while the suit-clad guard quietly exits the room.

“I don’t make it a habit to learn the names of the witches I need,” Luca continues, drawing my attention back to him, “but you mean something to that fucking dead man, Memnon. If any part of him still lives once Leonard is finished with him, then I will make sure he knows about your last moments, and I will savor his pain.”

My heart nearly stops at his words. Memnon. I haven’t heard a thing from him since we were parted.

Frantically, I reach out across our bond, but other than the warmth of his life force, there’s no spark of awareness. He must still be asleep.

Wake up, Memnon, I command him, unsure if consciousness is better, given our circumstances.

But whatever spell my mate is under, it’s too powerful for even my words to penetrate.

The scholar glances between me and Luca, looking a little uneasy at the topic of my impending death and how Luca might savor it. But he doesn’t appear surprised. The man clearly knows that whatever is about to happen, I’m not supposed to survive it. He knows it, and he’s not trying to stop it at all.

As though he can’t help himself, Luca steps in close to the circle’s edge, his gaze fixed to mine.

“I don’t have to hope your death will be slow and painful,” Luca says so softly only I can hear it. “Because I know it will be. That is the only comfort I get, knowing I gave my Lia some measure of justice.”

My eyes drop to the grimoire in Luca’s hands. As I watch, more oily, dark magic curls and smokes off it.

I suck in a sharp breath as I remember the bloody bodies, the dark magic that coated the victims’ butchered remains.

It suddenly strikes me. The book is not a grimoire.

Though the cover in Luca’s arms bears no title, this book has one. There’s only one tome that comes steeped in that much unholy magic.

The Book of the Damned.

I look at Luca with dawning horror. “You’re summoning demons.”

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