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“Yes,” Brick said, his voice a touch colder.

There was a silence where we all exchanged looks.

Then Brick broke out with another of his smiles.

“But tut-tut, my friends. We will manage this. Unless you come across something that might allow us to close it… this is no longer your concern. We may continue to need a few of your people for clean up in the other matter, but we’ve mostly finished with the parts we can’t do ourselves at this point––”

“Mostly finished?” I stared at Brick incredulously. “How can you possibly eraseseven billionpeople? How would that be even remotely feasible?”

Brick smiled at me indulgently.

He looked at me like I was a rather soft-minded child.

“Oh, dear heart.” He clucked at me, still smiling in that infuriating way. “We don’t need to eraseallof them. We don’t need to erasehalfof them… or even a quarter of them. We only need to erase the ones who could do something about it. We have already begun to flood the airwaves with reports on how the whole thing was a giant hoax. How it was orchestrated by a group of criminals and fanatics attempting to destabilize the world… led by your Uncle Charles and various other shady types in the government. People will view it as a kind of mass psychosis in six months’ time. Believing such creatures ever existed will mark you as a fool. A conspiracy theorist. A mark. An idiot.”

Brick gave me another of those condescending and deeply irritating smiles.

“My dear… vampires have been managing such things with the humans since before your species evolved, I suspect. Do not worry your beautiful little head, my darling. We’ve got this part. I was only hoping to put a final stamp on things, so to speak. Tie up loose ends. Create a little bubble around our paradise. It is disappointing that we cannot, but entirely manageable.”

A mechanical sound rose inside the cement basement.

It crossed my mind that they must have been shutting off a separate organic field before they could open the doors.

That, or the locking system was a lot more complex than I’d thought.

Both,Black murmured in my mind.You should have seen how they had that closed down in the kitchen. Six different dead-metal keypads. All of them essentially seer-proof. They must have buried a lot of damned bodies down here.

Like mother, like son,I murmured back.

When I looked at Jax, I saw him grimace.

I glanced over to the door as light flooded the room. Something that sounded like an electronic garage door was sliding open on the kitchen side, and I saw the thicker, stone-like wall Black had referenced open behind that.

I was still staring up when a ramp began to descend to where we were.

Up above, I could now see a small part of the house’s kitchen.

In that rectangle of light, I saw Jem and Nick.

They stared back at us.

Both of them looked positively furious.

Nick looked full-blown murderous.

None of it was aimed at us, but I flinched a little anyway.

Of course they’re pissed, doc,Black sent.

Anger infused his thoughts as well.

Maybe more than anger. That rage was back, causing his thoughts to heat my skin.

Those have to be the “friends” Brick contacted earlier to confirm you were telling the truth. Brick’s people must have fed off Jem. It’s the only way he ever would have trusted we weren’t lying about the portal.

My own jaw hardened once I understood.

Jesus.