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He scrunched his lips together and screwed up his face.

The music jingled.

The lift hummed.

Zee’s face contorted.

Just a few more seconds.

“Fuck, can’t!”

His wings poofed into the elevator, filling every inch of available space. His right wing slapped against the grumpy man, who fell against me. I squished up against the side of the elevator, with the stranger plastered intimately against my chest.

“Er, hello? I’m Adam.”

The man’s eyes blew wide. “Wha⁠—”

“Oh, Kitten, yes,” Zee moaned his delight. “This feels so good!” He stretched, and his wings expanded, plastering the elevator walls. His tail came up, massaging the grumpy man’s alarmed face. “Smoosh over?”

“There’s no room Zee!” The grumpy man was no longer grumpy, and was instead traumatized. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “If it’s any consolation, your day probably won’t get any worse.”

The doors opened and Zee spilled out, flinging his wings and tail wide. “I have arrived!”

I stumbled out after him, and turned to see the elevator doors sliding closed on the grumpy man, who looked as though he’d been assaulted in Demontown. There was zero chance he wouldn’t mention that he’d met a demon in the elevator. But that was fine. Victor would fix everything.

The basement corridor was as grim and forgettable as the first time I’d seen it. Lights blinked on above us as we moved toward Victor’s office.

“This is just fucking sad.” Zee stopped outside the door with Victor’s name on the plaque. “I almost feel sorry for Fancy Fangs, which is fucked-up.” He knocked, but nobody answered. In fact, the entire basement was quiet. The corridor stretched on, plunging into darkness where motion-sensing lights hadn’t been triggered.

I tried the handle, but the door didn’t budge.

“I can poof inside, if you tell me what’s in there . . . so I don’t get too personal with his furniture.”

“There’s a small couch on the left . . . His desk is on the right, with a chair behind it . . . And not much else.”

“Fuck, would it kill him to live a little?” Zee poofed away. A second later the door lock snicked over.

“You forgot to mention a few fucking things,” Zee said, as the door opened. “Like how Daddy Vampire’s office is a BDSM sex den.”

My mouth fell open.

The plain desk and boring couch were gone. Metal shackles hung from the back wall and hooks had been fixed to the floor, clearly for chaining people down. This was nothing like how I’d last seen it. He’d said he’d made changes, like buying a cat picture, but there wasn’t one on the wall now. I checked the name on the door, just to make sure we were in the right room: Victor Reynard.

My insides sank. “I don’t think this is his office anymore.”

Zee picked up one of the shackles. “He’s into torture. Maybe he redecorated.”

It was possible. But with the name change from Reynard to Cain, and the traces of fear Zee had picked up in the foyer, a lot of things weren’t adding up. Then there was how Victor had checked out—it’s for the best—leaving only a paper flower outside my room.

“Zee, I have a bad feeling about all of this.”

When we’d last talked, before my big reveal, I’d told him to turn off the tracking software. What if he’d tried, and it had triggered his family to get involved, to protect their assets? Sebastien had revealed Daisy and Cain were working with him. And now Gideon Cain’s name was over the front doors of Reynard Technologies.

Dread sat heavy in my gut. “This is bad, Zee.”

“Kinky, bad. I like it. Chain me up and spank me, daddy.”

“No, bad bad.”