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I didn’t argue, but crouched down to a half-fighting stance and followed closely behind him. I wondered if I should startcarrying a gun myself again, at least while we were out in the field, doing stuff like this.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea, doc.

Next time,I murmured back, and that seemed to satisfy him.

Like Nick said, the master suite took up the entire floor.

There were no real walls or doors, only partitions that broke up the high-ceilinged space, and made it feel even larger than it was. I followed Black, checking the corners as he followed Nick’s directions on how to find him. We walked straight from the top of the stairs up to the first partition, which was further down than it first looked.

At the opening, Black paused.

He turned his head right, then left, and frowned.

I couldn’t yet see, being level with the partition itself, so I could only watch.

Without a word to me, he began stalking in the lefthand direction, presumably towards Nick. I saw him lower and re-holster his gun as he began to walk.

I understood Black’s frown once I stepped past the partition myself.

Nick was down on his hands and knees, peering down at something,

Whatever it was, it looked embedded in the floor.

Nick didn’t look alarmed. He certainly didn’t look to be in any physical danger.

I jogged faster to reach Black’s side, and by then we’d nearly reached where Nick knelt on the floor. When he looked up, there was an expression on Nick’s face I’d never seen before. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, but it scared me a little.

That expression didn’t change as he met my gaze, then Black’s.

His eyes looked dead.

They also appeared darker behind the contact lenses, which told me they’d likely flushed red, but nothing in his expression reflected any of the emotion that usually went along with that change. He looked beyond anger, beyond hunger, beyond even grief.

It looked like someone had turned off the light behind his eyes.

“I smelled something,” he said, by way of explanation. Nick’s voice sounded as empty and dead as his eyes. “I smelled something, and tracked it here. I lifted the rug.”

I looked down at the space on the floor near where his hands supported him.

That darker hue in his eyes seemed to seethe in the shadows where he knelt. He’d found the one spot of carpet in that area where the sun didn’t reach. I followed his stare to the metal below him, and for the first time, I noticed a hatch had been lifted up.

A hole had been cut into the floor.

Something must be down there, near his hands.

Whatever it was, that’s what Nick stared at.

The uneasiness in my chest and gut worsened.

In the end, it was Black who broke the impasse.

He walked over to Nick, moving with gliding, predatory strides.

In three steps, he loomed over the vampire, and gazed down and through the same opening in the floor. I walked carefully around to Nick’s other side, around the open metal hatch and nearer to the balcony.

“You’re blocking the sunlight, Miri,” Nick said.

His deadened, empty voice made me flinch.