Page 83 of Veil of Night & Flames

I meet Tia’s eyes, grinning. “We’ll give him a pop quiz one day. See how well he knows himself.”

“Good plan. Men are totally lacking in self-awareness. It’ll be a hoot.”

I glance at Chase, who just rolls his eyes. I blow him a kiss, then put the book aside for later. “You’re a hard taskmaster, Mr. Chasen.”

“Eons of practice. Now work or accept the consequences.”

“Consequences?”

He says nothing.

“I think he means withholding sex,” Riley says, and my cheeks go pink.

“Right,” I say, picking my book back up and diving back in.

We manage to stay focused on the research until it’s time for Riley and Tia to head out to meet Vance and get the gloss, which isn’t exactly a mission fraught with danger. At least, I hope it isn’t.

Still, when they’re at the door, I hug Tia hard.

“If anything feels off⁠—”

“We turn around. I know. Track us on your phone if you get nervous,” she adds, because she and I set that up ages ago. But this isn’t exactly 007 work. And we’ll text updates.

About thirty minutes later, my phone pings. We’re here—which I already know because, hello, tracking them.

Another twenty minutes pass, then, Got it. Heading back.

Which, honestly, is utterly anticlimactic. But in a good way.

Now we just have to wait and see what the freaky Latin book will tell us now that we have the code to read it.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

The phone rings at six in the morning when I’m curled up with Chase’s pillow instead of the man himself. I frown, then glance around to find Chase standing naked in the kitchen area and speaking into his phone. I try not to stare, but that’s obviously not happening. So, instead, I try not to eavesdrop, but that’s harder than it sounds in a studio, and I hear clear as a bell when he says, “I’ll check it out,” then ends the call.

“What’s going on?”

He turns to me. “You’re up,” he says, then pours two cups of coffee. He brings them over and hands one to me, and I take it with a happy sigh, because a gorgeous, god-like, naked man is foisting caffeine upon me.

The sigh’s got a frustrated edge, though, because I’m quite certain that the coffee will need to be dumped into a to-go cup, and that despite his current au natural state, he’s off to check something out, and my morning sex fantasy is about to get kicked to the curb.

I push myself up off the bed. “Do I have time for a shower, at least?”

“Not if you want to come along.”

“Right,” I say, then pull on yesterday’s clothes as he rummages jeans and a T-shirt from a laundry basket. “So what’s going on?”

He picks up his phone, taps the screen, then passes it to me. I glance down at what I realize is footage from one of the cameras Tia and Riley set up near the Widow Maker. It’s black and white, grainy, and timestamped 5:38 a.m.

The angle catches the lower part of the trunk, the dead grass, and a slice of the walkway beyond.

And right there—as creepy as fuck—is a figure dragging itself out from between the twined and exposed roots at the base of the Widow Maker’s trunk.

The creature is low to the ground. Not crawling, exactly—more like dragging itself across the dead grass toward the bushes on the far side of the paved walkway.

I watch as the shadowy figure drags itself a little further, then it looks up, and its mouth moves, possibly drawing a breath, possibly trying to speak.