She awakes to the sounds of tight, hushed syllables floating to her in random shapes and colors. There are two masculine voices, one of which she’s fairly certain is Adam, though he’s shrouded in a dark, navy blue that’s so heavy with anxiety, it might as well be black.

  The other figure remains a mystery. Just a tall dark shape.

  She blinks a bit, but her second-sight is activated and she can’t make the image sharper—except she can see it now: there’s no aura around the second figure. Vampire. It must be the vampire from earlier. The memory comes back to her with a rush of pain in her neck, and she holds her breath as she reaches up hesitantly, afraid yet knowing she needs to assess her physical state before she can even think about how to get herself out of this. Her skin is crusted with blood and tender, though it seems a marginally small injury compared to the last time she was bitten by a vampire. That took weeks to heal properly and she swears there’s still two tiny white scars from the puncture wound. With any luck, this bite will heal easier. She hasn’t lost too much blood either, she thinks, noting her lack of dizziness and the fact that her shirt isn’t stained at all.

  She blinks out of her second-sight to see that she’s in Professor Jones’s office, sitting at the desk as if it belongs to her. As if it’s her own office and the vampire and Adam are just students who can’t get along.

  Except they aren’t just students and their argument isn’t about getting along. It’s about the trouble Adam is in.

  “If you’d just listen to me,” the vampire is saying, his British accent oddly soothing despite his words, “we can both get out this—”

  “The Bureau is still sniffing around, though. You said it would be okay. You said—”

  “We are not—”

  “But—”

  “No, just—listen—”

  “He’s right,” she says, bringing their attention to her, “you should listen to him. But I promise I can help you out of whatever trouble you’re in better than he can.”

  “Oh, lovely, she’s awake.” The vampire kneels in front of her and, again, there’s something so familiar about him that it puts her on edge. She has had very few vampires in her life, with Quinn and Dominic being the closest to her. The only other vampire who she is marginally connected to is—

  “Hello, Ozias. It’s nice to officially meet you.” She’s annoyed that she didn’t clock who he was immediately, but why would she? She’s never seen him in person and what few photographs the Bureau could procure are blurry or only show him from extreme angles. The only time she’s really seen him was a brief glimpse of him in Death as she walked through one of his victim’s memories.

  “How’s the neck?” he asks, a thin veneer of concern that’s almost convincing.

  “As if you care,” she mumbles, glancing around. The sun has set and the office is lit by one small lamp in the corner. She’s not restrained but Ozias stands between her and the door; she can’t tell if it’s a sign of his strength or overconfidence that he assumes she wouldn’t be able to run away. Then again, whatever the assumption stems from, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s probably right.

  Ozias tsks. “No need to get testy.” He smirks, eyes darting down to her neck. “Though anger does taste delicious.”

  Behind Ozias, Adam paces back and forth. “Fuck,” he says. “She knows. She knows everything.”

  Ozias clenches his jaw and looks at Adam over his shoulder. “She doesn’t know anything unless you tell her. And we’re not going to tell her, right?”

  Adam curses again.

  “Are you feeling okay, Adam?” she asks. “You’re not looking so good.”

  “He’s fine,” says Ozias, standing up. She’s not sure how she could think he was a student in the first place. He’s far too well-dressed to be a slouchy twenty-something scurrying across campus. His dark pants are tailored, his shirt artfully unbuttoned at the neck, showing off a slim line of smooth skin. A gold chain snakes its way around his neck, a small round pendant resting in the hollow of his collarbone.

  “Why didn’t you kill her when you had the chance?” asks Adam. “Even if she doesn’t know, someone will come looking for her.”

  Ozias shrugs. “You’re right. And when Quinn finds her, I’ll be long gone.”

  “Why are you here? Did you kill Professor Jones?” When he doesn’t answer. “Did Adam kill Professor Jones?”

  Ozias grins again but doesn’t answer. He doesn’t deny anything either. Doesn’t need to when Adam curses again, hands clenching his hair as he repeats, “She knows. She knows.”

  Ozias rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Adam.” He turns back to Harvest. “It’s hard to find good help these days. These young kids think they’re smarter, but if immortality has given me anything so far, it’s perspective. I told Adam exactly what to do to get the good Professor off his back and he went fucked it up anyway.”

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  She nods as if she understands, as if she sympathizes.“So Adam kills Professor Jones and then…what? Calls you to cover it up?” She glances between them, but lands on Adam. “You work for Ozias? What do you do for him, Adam?”

  Adam opens his mouth but Ozias holds up his hand. “Don’t answer her.” He points at Harvest. “Stop talking to him.”

  She doesn’t heed his warning. “Professor Evans thought the drugs were coming from Professor Jones, but they weren’t, were they? They were coming from you, Adam.”

  Adam’s face is white as he shakes his head. “No.”

  “I can help you,” she tells him.

  “No, she can’t,” Ozias says, clapping a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “I promised I would take care of you. Let me do that.”Adam swallows thickly before nodding. Ozias turns back to Harvest, kneeling until he’s eye level again. He’s so close she can smell him, whiskey with a hint of smoke and bergamot. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  He almost laughs. “You’re getting better at lying.” He tilts his head to the side, his green eyes glittering with amusement. “A little bit, at least.”

  “We have to kill her,” says Adam, suddenly. The stillness with which he’s staring at her doesn’t bode well.

  Ozias straightens and she can just see a muscle in his jaw clench as he turns away and levels his gaze at Adam. “You’re not touching her.”

  “But—”

  “You put one finger on her and I will kill you.” Harvest blinks up at Ozias. Does he actually care about her in some twisted way? “I’ve already disposed of one body for you and I won’t do it again,” he adds.

  Oh.

  Adam dissolves in a flurry of nerves again. Ozias steps away from her, talking to him in harsh, quiet words. She shifts in the chair, mentally calculating how far from the door she is.

  If she slips away while he’s not looking, she has a chance at a head start. She risks another small movement, and she freezes when her foot hits against something hard. She looks down at her purse as Adam’s panic increases. Whatever grip Ozias had on him is gone, and as Adam lunges forward toward Harvest, Ozias puts a hand on his chest—just one hand, but his vampiric strength means there is a loud crack. Adam gasps for breath, falling to his knees with his hands clenched to his chest.

  She should be panicking but her focus is on the lipstick tube she manages to grab while Ozias turns away from her, staring down at Adam with a clear expression of disdain.

  She doesn’t hesitate. She flips open the lid and lunges toward Ozias, pressing the end of the taser to his neck, in much the same place his bite now mars her skin.

  Ozias crumples to the floor with a satisfying thump. She takes a deep breath, hands shaking as she fumbles for the handcuffs in her purse. She doesn’t know how long she has before Ozias will recover from the shock, and she needs to restrain him quickly.

  She’s just clicked them into place, a thin gold line of mischief sealing them with a spell to dampen strength, when the door suddenly opens and Quinn steps inside, armed agents filing into the tiny office behind him.

  Hands still shaking, she casually crosses her arms, even as she feels a flood of relief wash through her at the sight of him, hair disheveled as if he’s run here all the way from the Bureau. “Took you long enough.”

  His eyes skate across her body, snagging on the bite mark on her neck. She feels, more than sees, his anger, barely-contained. “Are you okay?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  He tilts his head toward the prone figure of Ozias, eyes still burning into hers. “What about him?”

  “Will probably have a nasty headache for a while. He should wake up in a few hours. I think.”

  “Good,” he says, opening his arms.

  It’s the cue her body needs. Whatever adrenaline and training she’s been relying on, is spent, replaced with a bone-deep exhaustion and the annoying urge to cry. She leans into the hug, her forehead against his chest as he holds her, giving her just the right amount of time to pull herself together. She breathes in the scent of him, notes the odd warmth of his body, the tautness of his arms around her, the lack of a heartbeat. Then, he’s gently ushering her out of the office and into the capable hands of a medic.

  She sits in a chair in the hallway as the medic asks her a series of questions. She answers on autopilot. No, she didn’t hit her head. Yes, her neck hurts. No, she doesn’t want anything for the pain. Once her neck is cleaned and covered with a piece of crisp, white gauze, she makes her way back to Quinn who is watching Angel and Wild escort a half-unconscious Ozias, hands cuffed behind him. Hazel watches with an unreadable expression, arms folded across her chest as she tracks the top of Ozias’s head through the crowd. Then, she turns swiftly on her heel and makes her way into the office to begin processing the scene. Ozias is soon followed by Adam, who has recovered enough to at least walk out on his own, though his hands are also cuffed together.

  “How did you find me?” asks Harvest.

  “The car has a tracker. Why did you come back?”

  She sighs, rubbing her forehead. “We left a box and the door unlocked. Ozias was here when I arrived.”

  “We think he killed Emily Iverson.”

  “The security guard?” she asks, startled. “So she was in on it?”

  “In on what exactly, though?”

  “Adam was selling drugs to the students. I think Ozias was supplying them.”

  “Ah,” he says, with a knowing nod. “Ozias was supplying them, but Emily was stealing them from the Gardens.”

  Harvest lets this sit for a moment, thinking it over, turning it around. It fits with everything else they have. “I think Professor Jones found out about Adam. He killed her to keep her quiet and then called Ozias to help him dispose of the body.”

  “Adam confessed?”

  “Not exactly.” She goes through everything Adam said, the exact words already growing fuzzy as her body yearns to rest. But this is important—this means putting a killer behind bars. “Ozias did confirm that he disposed of at least one body for Adam, and that Adam was working for him. He said something like, ‘I told him how to get the professor off his back, but he screwed it up.’”

  “Is it enough to put him away for good?” Quinn muses. She knows it’s a rhetorical question, putting voice to a fear they both have churning around in their thoughts: what if Ozias is let go? What other crimes will he commit? How many other people will die if he slips through the cracks in the system again?

  “How soon can we question him?”

  “As soon as they get him into the system.”

  “Right,” she says. “Then we’d better be ready.”