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Morley stepped in front of him, between Nick and his enthralled.

“Take my card,” the old man said, gruff. He held out one of the metallic, rectangular squares with two fingers. “You can call us, if you think of anything you want to share.”

The woman blinked slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep.

The longer Morley stood there, between her and Nick, the more her face hardened.

She glanced at Nick, then back at Morley, her eyes growing gradually harder, too, as her mind presumably fell back into place. The drug was still there. Nick could see and smell it on her. But she must be past the strongest wave of it.

Her cheeks flushed scarlet as she seemed to realize she’d been about to open her door to the two of them, maybe even invite them inside. She kept her eyes on Morley now, a faint confusion mixed with anger growing in her eyes.

“I don’t remember anything,” she spat at the aging detective, her hard, New York accent like a dagger in the air. “I didn’t see shit. I didn’t hear nothing.”

Before Morley could respond, she slammed the door right in his face.

Morley seemed unfazed.

Nick definitely felt fazed.

He clenched his jaw when his friend turned around, and gave Nick a faintly questioning look, one eyebrow raised. Seeing the scrutiny in those dark eyes, Nick found it was him who broke eye contact first.

“One of these, we’ll have to force the issue,” he muttered.

“Like hell,” Morley warned.

“Then we won’t learn a damned thing,” Nick retorted. “Why bring me, if you’re not going to use me? Don’t you want to find these pricks?”

Morley continued to stare at him levelly, his eyes holding that flat, decidedly cop-like appraisal. He looked at Nick the way cops looked at other cops when they weren’t sure they could trust them, when they thought they might’ve lost the plot. Morley was looking at Nick the way Nick looked at other cops, trying to decide if they needed time on a desk.

Morley must have seen Nick noticing him look.

If so, that didn’t faze him, either.

He continued to look Nick over, a tightness in his mouth.

“You alright, Midnight?” His mouth pursed in a faint frown, his hands fisted in his coat pockets. “You don’t seem… right.”

Nick felt his own hands ball into fists.

He’d been mere feet, merefingersaway from going home––to hisrealhome––a world that might actually allow him to live without a chip in his arm, without constant surveillance, without being forced into unequal contracts and unequal interactions with every human he encountered. He’d thought he’d be back in that imperfect but farbetterworld with all the people he most cared about, including Wynter, including Tai and Malek, including Jordan and Kit, including Zoe, maybe, and maybe even Forrest Keanu Walker and his vampire girlfriend.

He’d thought he’d be there with Morley himself.

But that dream had been snatched away from him.

He’d lost it, before it even felt real.

He’d lost it before he had time to even behappyabout it.

Since then, he’d watched two vampires get decapitated in front of him––vampires who hadn’t done a single, fucking thing wrong, as far as Nick could tell, and who’d actually helped save Wynter’s life, and Nick’s life, and all of their lives.

He’d seen a man he grudgingly liked and admired hauled off by the racial authorities for his political convictions. That was after Nick called that same man, who happened to be Wynter’s ex-husband, for help, and the man unhesitatingly came.

Walker hadn’t fucking hesitated.

He’d come riding in like a damned hero, which should have made Nick hate him more, but he’d been too damned grateful to feel anything else.

Now Forrest Walker was likely in a blackout prison camp somewhere, where no one could get to him. He likely was on an island somewhere, being interrogated by pricks who were as likely to murder him extra-judicially as they were to return him to the U.K., where he was from.