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Next to him?—

I freeze at the sight of the man whose face I’ve repeatedly stared at over the last week. His hair is a little whiter at the temples than in his picture, and his skin is perhaps not quite as enviable, but Luca Fortuna is still an arresting sight.

In his hands, he cradles a leather-bound grimoire, a fairly wicked one if the oily black smoke wafting off it is any indication.

He pauses his incantation, his eyes fixed on the individual pouring the sand along a clockwise arc. I glance at the man in question. He wears a suit, a thick bag in his hands.

It’s not sand he’s pouring, I realize as the man completes the arc and empties out the last of the bag’s contents, butsalt.

Horror dawns. It’s another fucking spell circle. One he just finished drawing while I sat here getting my bearings.

I lunge for the curving line of salt.

“Bind this circle so that nothing may escape.” Luca rushes out the last of the incantation.

The blood on my fingers sizzles as it touches the salt, and the lights above me flicker as the physical walls of the spell circle rise, trapping me inside.

Fuck.

My pulse is beginning to pound in my ears.

I back up, my eyes moving from the men to the space within the circle. I realize the concrete I’m standing on isstained, and it smells like antiseptic and, and…

Blood.

My insides wither when I realize this is where all the other witches died. This is whereIwill die, unless I can escape this cursed circle.

I feel three sets of eyes on me. The suited guard gives me a flat look, like he’s seen too much and cannot summon the energy to care. The elderly scholar—or whoever he is—stares at me intently, his head cocked.

But it’s Luca, Luca Fortuna, whose attention seizes me. There’s a bitter glee to his expression.

“Selene Bowers,” he says, eyeing me up and down. “I know your name, and I know you were one of the last to see my Li—” He cuts himself off, though I’m positive he was about to say his daughter’s name.

The scholar watches the two of us quizzically, looking back and forth, while the suit-clad guard quietly exits the room.

“I don’t make it a habit to learn the names of the witches I need,” Luca continues, drawing my attention back to him, “but you mean something to that fuckingdeadman, Memnon. If any part of him still lives once Leonard is finished with him, then I will make sure he knows about your last moments, and I will savor his pain.”

My heart nearly stops at his words.Memnon. I haven’t heard a thing from him since we were parted.

Frantically, I reach out across our bond, but other than the warmth of his life force, there’s no spark of awareness. He must still be asleep.

Wake up, Memnon, I command him, unsure if consciousness is better, given our circumstances.

But whatever spell my mate is under, it’s too powerful for even my words to penetrate.

The scholar glances between me and Luca, looking a little uneasy at the topic of my impending death and how Luca might savor it. But he doesn’t appear surprised. The man clearly knows that whatever is about to happen, I’m not supposed to survive it. He knows it, and he’s not trying to stop it at all.

As though he can’t help himself, Luca steps in close to the circle’s edge, his gaze fixed to mine.

“I don’t have to hope your death will be slow and painful,” Luca says so softly only I can hear it. “Because Iknowit will be. That is the only comfort I get, knowing I gave my Lia some measure of justice.”

My eyes drop to the grimoire in Luca’s hands. As I watch, more oily, dark magic curls and smokes off it.

I suck in a sharp breath as I remember the bloody bodies, the dark magic that coated the victims’ butchered remains.

It suddenly strikes me.The book is not a grimoire.

Though the cover in Luca’s arms bears no title, this book has one. There’s only one tome that comes steeped in that much unholy magic.