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Once I was home, I settled down on the sofa. Jangles, my tortie, and Murdoch, my gray pile o’ floof, were curled up together, asleep. I ruffled their fur, then looked around my house. I was grateful that I had the wherewithal to buy my own place.

At one time, I’d been like Benny—on the streets and alone.

Only, I’d been scared out of my mind. At fourteen, I was too young for that life, but I’d learned how to manage until Dante had rescued me.

I’d just killed a man who was intent on either raping or killing me.

Dante had smuggled me out of the crime scene and he took me under his wing.

He got me back into school, made sure I had a comfortable home and plenty to eat, and he’d slowly brought me out of my shell-shocked state.

I pulled my legs up on the sofa, sitting cross-legged, as I watched TV and waited for Penn to get home.

Penn was my other best friend, besides Dante, and she had moved in not long ago after her brick-and-mortar store went belly-up.

Now, her online shop was booming, and she was doing her best to learn the best ways to make it a success.

She was taking a business course at the Windchime Magical Academy, so she was gone several evenings a week.

“Hey,” she said, as she entered the room. “How was your evening?”

“Eh, I spent it with Benny. So…smelly and odd, as usual,” I said, making room for her on the sofa. “How about you?”

At five-three, Penelope Fircrest was shorter than me.

She was curvy, plump, and pretty in a vintage rockabilly-goth way.

She’d caught her flowing hair into a chignon, and she was wearing a pair of green cats-eye glasses that matched her green plaid skater’s dress.

Chunky librarian heels finished the look, along with a cashmere sweater in pink.

She dropped her bookbag on the side table and shrugged out of her sweater.

“Well, I got another A tonight. I’m scoring 4.0 in the class so far,” she said. “So… Benny ?”

I rolled my eyes. “I had to chase him down. Little rodent was double-dealing info on me, warning our suspects and trying to blackmail them.”

“Great,” she said. “You leave him alive?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it took some serious control for me to keep my hands off his grimy little neck. Anyway, he’s sorry, he knows it better not happen again, and I found the most glorious pizza place in the process, so it wasn’t a complete bust.”

Penn laughed, her voice lilting through the room.

She was half-Fae, and—like me—had never met her father.

The moment Eileen, her mother, got pregnant, he vanished.

The Fae Courts refused to help—they loathed half-breeds—and so Penn had grown up among humans and Supes, never learning much about her Fae heritage.

Like her mother, she was a witch. She was also a priestess of Hecate’s.

And like Dante, Penn had saved me from myself one time, taking over for me during a crisis.

That one dark night had bonded us for life.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “I ate before class, but I didn’t have time for much.”

“I brought home an extra pizza,” I said. “It’s in the fridge and should taste fantastic, heated up.” I followed her into the kitchen.

“So, what’s on your agenda this week?” she asked.

“Well, we have a couple clients, so we should score at least one new case—” I paused as my phone rang. “Hold on,” I said, glancing at the Caller ID. It was Dante. “I wonder what he wants at this time of night?”

I answered. “Hey, dude, what’s up?”

“What’s up is that I’ve got a serious problem,” Dante said, sounding unusually grave. I could tell by his voice he wasn’t joking.

“What’s going on?”

“I came home tonight after a poker game at Carson’s, and I found my door ajar.

I asked the doorman if he had any security footage—you know my place is jacked to the max with security.

When we looked at the video, we saw a female figure entering my apartment.

He didn’t remember seeing it, but he did admit that he had to run to the bathroom at about that time. ”

Dante lived at the Tremont Arms Apartments, on the fourteenth floor.

He was right in that the security measures taken by the management were extensive, and they didn’t come cheap.

The place was gorgeous, and comfortable, and about as safe as you could get.

They didn’t stint on what they paid their security guard.

“How did she get into your place? Could you have forgotten to close your door when you left?” Dante’s memory wasn’t always the best and he could be careless at times.

“No, I distinctly remember locking it when I left.”

“Was anything missing or destroyed?”

“What’s happening?” Penn asked.

“Hold on,” I told Dante. “Dante found his door unlocked tonight when he got home and it looks like some woman entered his apartment.”

“Hell, that’s not good,” Penn said. “Put him on speaker.”

“I’m putting you on speaker, dude. Penn wants to know what’s happening.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

I put him on speaker and set my phone down on the counter. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. Well, as far as if anything was stolen, I don’t fully know.

If anything’s missing, it wasn’t expensive.

My TV, computer, all of that is still here.

But Kyann, I watched the security footage of everyone who came through the front door of the building during the time I was gone, and I saw someone I recognized. ”

I caught my breath. “Who?”

“Remember Rowan Leaf?”

I groaned. “Oh no, not her!”

Rowan Leaf had latched onto Dante, and she had become a bonafide low-level stalker. We hadn’t been too worried about her, because for the past couple of weeks she seemed to have vanished off the radar. But apparently, she wasn’t done.

“What did the security guard say?”

“He saw her enter, but she gave him a smile and passed on by. He thought she was here to visit someone. Here’s the weird thing. He doesn’t remember her leaving.”

“Hmm,” I said, thinking. “Could she have found some way to turn invisible?”

“Well, a powerful witch can do it, but I don’t think Rowan’s that high level.

” Dante sounded nervous, as well he should.

Stalkers could so easily go from annoying but innocuous, to dangerous.

It depended on the type of personality disorder the stalker had.

Sometimes, they ramped up to a deadly degree.

“Not only that,” Penn said. “If she can turn invisible, why didn’t she do that when she first came in the building so there wouldn’t be any record of her visit?”

“That’s a good point, but yeah, she is a witch.”

“You know this for a fact?” I asked.

“Yeah, I did a little research when she started sending me email,” he said.

Penn let out a squeak. “She’s sending you email now? What else has she done?”

“Why didn’t you tell us this?” I asked.

Dante cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to worry either of you.

I save her emails in case I need to go to the cops.

She went from one every now and then to a steady stream of them.

She’s been love bombing me for the past couple weeks.

It’s ramped up. And I’ve received several anonymous gifts.

I’m leery of opening them now, because it went from chocolates to frilly underwear, to…

a picture of you with your eyes scratched out. ”

“What the fuck, dude? And you were going to tell me this when ? It sounds like she’s involving me in her obsession now.” It worried me that Dante had kept all this quiet, but now that I was woven into the picture, his silence made me angry.

“I’m sorry—that happened this weekend. I was going to tell you tomorrow, I swear.”

I glanced over at Penn, who was staring at me with a worried look.

“We’ll talk this over tomorrow. Meanwhile, look through your apartment and make certain that nothing’s missing,” I said.

“Also, you should probably look for hidden cameras and microphones,” Penn said.

“Now I’m feeling squeamish about going to bed,” he said.

“Then go to a hotel. You can ask Carson to help you look for hidden recording devices tomorrow. He’ll know what you need, and I’m pretty sure we have some equipment around the office that will help with that.

” I let out a deep breath. “Go to a hotel. That way you’ll feel safer and we won’t have to worry. ”

“Headed out now,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Until then,” I said, signing off. I turned to Penn. “What do you think?”

“I think Rowan assumes you and Dante are lovers. That picture was a warning. We need to do something about her before her warnings turn into actions,” Penn said. “She’s crossed a line, and when stalkers cross lines, there’s usually no going back.”

As we heated up the pizza and then sat down to eat, I couldn’t get thoughts of the tall, gangly woman out of my mind. Rowan was pretty in a modelesque-lanky way, and she gave off the illusion of being a peacenik retro hippie, but she was obviously unhinged.

I tried to shake off the worries, but it wasn’t easy, and all through the rest of the evening, I kept thinking about Dante, and worrying until he texted me that he was in a hotel, safe for the night.