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No one said a word, though.

Dalejem moved first.

Still glaring at Black, he paused in his glaring long enough to look around at the others, as if gauging their reactions to Black’s words. Dalejem looked at Nick last, then motioned with his head towards the hallway.

That same hallway led to the foyer and the main staircase.

The tall seer began walking in that direction as soon as he’d made the motion.

He grabbed hold of Nick’s hand as he passed.

With no other prompting, Nick followed him, moving with those disarmingly graceful steps that still managed to appear overly controlled, like Nick had to make an effort to move that slowly. The vampire cop had already left the room when Dexter rose to his feet, grumbling under his breath. Still grumbling, Dexter followed them out.

Jax and Kiko, also holding hands, weren’t far behind.

I looked at Black, and he looked at me.

Then he motioned with his head towards the library’s other door.

“C’mon,” he said, gruff.

* * *

It occurred to me I’d never asked Black where we were going, or what he wanted.

Mostly because I didn’t have to.

I figured, realistically, the cakes had to be wearing off by now… at least somewhat.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t still feeling weird enough that neither Black’s insistence nor his timing struck me as all that strange.

On the other side of the door on the other side of the library… which Black shut deliberately behind us… we found an enclosed patio.

Over half of the room’s main walls consisted of a curved row of glass windows. Up above us, I noted a glass ceiling. Both things were boarded up with metal sheets, but I found myself trying to imagine what it must have looked like without them. A sofa which had possibly been white, or perhaps some other light color, had faded to a dingy beige.

It stood roughly in the center of the room.

The cushions even looked relatively intact, but I knew it was probably in the same shape as the leather chair in the library, and the couch in the sitting room.

Dried out. Musty. Full of bugs.

Black didn’t take me to the sofa, thank God.

He walked me to the other side of the room.

A mirror-backed counter stood there. It looked like it had possibly been a bar, or perhaps a built-in display case of some kind, with a low slab of wood, that tarnished, silver-backed mirror, and what looked like a smattering of pewter, glass, and ceramic drinkware on some of the higher shelves.

A number of large plant pots sat on the floor, big enough to hold small trees. A few were half-filled with old dirt and what might have been dried out tree roots. The remains of straw mats covered faded, hand-painted tile on the other side of the sun-damaged couch. Not a lot else was visible in here. I suspected the room had been pretty once, with all those windows and plants, the matching white furniture and wicker chairs, but I couldn’t get a solid image in my head.

I could only conjure glimpses of how it must have appeared before the however-many years of neglect.

I looked at Black, and he was watching my face.

His pupils remained more dilated than usual. They also seemed to reflect or shine more light. They looked larger than usual, too, but that might have been me. Hell, all of it might have been me. He looked intense to me, focused, strangely alive.

His irises didn’t glow like before, though.

They didn’t glow like they did when Black turned into a dragon.