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“Take us to Hell’s Kitchen, please, and don’t spare the horses.”

He looks a little confused, at either the instruction or the old phrase, but nods respectfully and does as he is told. It seems to take forever to make our way back over the bridge and into Manhattan, and with every second that passes, I feel worse. It’s like a sickness, a feeling of dread, rolling around in my stomach. I can’t concentrate, or think clearly, or even really formulate coherent sentences. Minnie asks me a few times what’s happening, but I only shake my head. I can’t tell her because I don’t know. I just know that it’s something bad.

She tells the driver to speed up, to go through any lights he needs to. That we’ll pay any tickets, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. He glances at me through the mirror, and whatever he sees seems to convince him. He tears off even faster, taking no prisoners and leaving a trail of chaos and beeping horns behind him.

We finally pull up outside the Firenze court, and the vehicle has barely stopped moving before I jump out. I leave my bags behind and I fly. Stefano is on front guard duty, and I don’t even say hello. I push past him, tearing through the building, back to the big double doors that lead to the courtyard garden. This is where I’ll find him. This is where I need to be.

Aidan Flynn is just emerging back into the hallway, pretty much carrying another man in his arms. Shit. Is it a man? He’s emaciated, practically dead. He raises his head, and the signs of torture are clear to see. He’s been mutilated as well as starved. On any other day I would care, but not right now.

“Get out of my way,” I yell. Aidan looks shocked, doesn’t move quickly enough. He’s blocking the door, and I need to go through it to be with Luca. I shove him in the chest, shunting him off to the side. Both him and the walking-almost-dead guy reel away from me. Again, I don’t care, because now, I can’t feel Luca at all. Before, he was there, and something was happening, and even though I didn’t understand it, I knew I needed to be here. Now? Now he’s gone, and it is terrifying.

I push open the doors, then pause for a fraction of a second and take in the scene. The whole garden has been dug up, and a makeshift canvas tent set up to block the sun. Plants, flowers, bricks, soil, pots, and troughs are all dumped in a huge mound on one side. Big drills and machinery are abandoned on the ground, and in the middle of all this chaos, there’s a hole in the ground. Fuck. That’s where he is? It’s got to be.

I don’t want to go into that hole. Everything about it feels dark, evil, frightening. But Luca needs me, so I have no choice. There’s a ladder set up, but that would take too long. I drop myself down into the cavern, landing with a crunch on a heap of mashed-up bones. Fuck. My amulet is still cold, still silver, and I have no clue what that means.

The smell down here is foul. It is a grim space where nothing but wickedness has ever occurred. If walls could talk, these ones would be screaming. I shut it all out, refuse to let it distract me. My eyes adjust, and I run through the small chambers, shouting his name. No answer, either out loud or in my mind.

It doesn’t take long to find him. He’s sprawled on his back, lying on the filthy floor, surrounded by discarded papers and smashed wood. I’m at his side in seconds, cradling his head on my lap. His eyes are wide open, staring. Completely silver. Exactly the same shade as my amulet.

“Luca!” I cry, shaking him slightly. “Luca, come back to me.”

Nothing. There is nothing. Vampire hearts beat slowly, but they do beat. I lay my head against his chest and wait. I count, and I hope, and I fight the mounting desperation that’s threatening to overwhelm me.

Still nothing. He has no heartbeat. He’s not moving. His mind is closed to me. This isn’t like when he sleeps—this is different. He seems completely … gone. He can’t be dead, can he? I ask myself. He would have disintegrated. He’s still here, but he’s also somehow not.

I don’t know what to do. I feel utterly useless. Bereft. He isn’t just my other half; we are each other’s whole. I cannot exist without him. I stroke his hair, kiss his cheeks, pray for a hint that he is still in there somewhere. “Luca, baby, please …”

I hear footsteps, the crunch of bone. Someone is here. Someone is here and he is vulnerable, weak. Exposed. I have a stake in my hand straightaway, putting myself between him and the doorway, guarding him. I snarl out loud. I will kill anyone or anything that tries to hurt him.

Minnie appears. “It’s only me,” she says gently, taking in my aggressive stance. “Let me take a look at him.”

I nod, letting some of the fear and rage fade away. It’s Minnie. She’ll know what to do.

“I can’t feel him,” I tell her, hearing the panic in my own voice. “I can’t sense him at all. He’s still here, but he’s not. And his eyes, Minnie, look at his goddamn eyes.”

She crouches down beside him and stares at those blank, shining discs of silver. She touches his skin, holds the back of her hand to his forehead, like a mother checking for a fever. Making a tutting sound, she gently closes his eyelids. Placing her palm on his chest, she starts to hum. A spell. I feel her power stirring, the air shimmering around her, a breeze where there was none. I take one of his hands in mine. “Please be okay, Luca. Please come back to me.”

After a few seconds, Minnie snatches her hand away from his chest, looks as worried as I have ever seen her. “What is it?” I ask urgently. “Is he dead?”

“No,” she answers quickly. “No, he’s not dead. But he is … elsewhere. At least for now. I sent my spell to look for him, to bring him back. It should be able to help, but this isn’t exactly normal. This is like a supernatural coma. Wherever Luca’s essence is—his soul, his spirit, whatever you want to call it—it’s not here. We should get him out of this place. This place is bad, isn’t it? You must be able to feel it as well.”

She looks pale, shaken. I help her to her feet. “I do feel it. It’s … choking. Cloying. Like even the air is tainted.”

“Yes. And something here has caused this reaction in Luca. We need to find out what it was.”

We look around at the wreckage of this evil place. The broken furniture, the drawers of a mangled file cabinet. Papers, books, documents scattered all around. I catch a glimpse of a porn mag and a stack of ancient newspapers. It’s a mess, and nothing jumps out at me. Nothing but my broken man, there but not there, breaking my heart with every second he’s parted from me. How can I think about anything else but him?

Minnie takes hold of my shoulders. “Don’t you worry about that part. I’ll do that. You go and find help, get him out.”

I consider protesting, but she’s right. Strong as I am, I’m going to struggle to carry a huge dead-weight vampire up a ladder. I run, climb out, go straight to the office he shares with Aidan Flynn. I don’t bother knocking, just burst right in.

I find him there, having some kind of glaring contest with Yvonne. She’s sipping coffee, feet up on the desk, calm as a cucumber. She’s still wearing my clothes, the pants not quite long enough, and her hair might have been massacred, but she looks like a warrior. Aidan is pointing a finger at her and seems to be mid-diatribe, the kind of rant that includes the words “and another thing.” The starving vamp he carried up earlier is slumped in the corner of the room, sucking gratefully on a blood bag. He glances up as I burst in and lets out a low moaning growl. He tries to stand but doesn’t have the strength and falls back down.

“Give it up, pal,” I tell him. “I’m not quite human, and I’m nobody’s victim. Stick to your takeout.”

“Sorry,” he murmurs, sounding genuine. “I don’t know where my manners have gone.”

“He did the same to me,” Yvonne chimes in. “Tried to attack me.”