Page 21 of Paws & Order

"Spare me the romance angle," I say, because I really don't need to hear how the mayor's psychiatrist brother thinks the stalker is acting out some cheap monster novel. "We're treating it as an escalation. We're building a list of possible suspects."

Enoch leans over my desk, fingers steepled.

"You're not listening, wolf. It's not escalation unless you believe the person is capable of resisting their own nature. This is hunger, pure and simple."

His eyes glimmer, razor-bright.

"An obsession this potent isn't about harming Liza. It's about possessing her."

Zadok interjects.

"I said the same. Cassian thinks it's a grudge. I say it's love, unrequited and seriously pathological."

"Fantastic. Glad to know you two have my workflow all mapped out."

A pause settles over the room, awkward as hell.

I consider the fine print of demon etiquette and decide not to punch anyone.

Yet.

CHAPTER 7

LIZA

It starts with the smallest flicker of wrongness, the kind you almost convince yourself is in your head.

Sunlight filters through the blinds, striping my living room with gold as always. The ficus is still rocking its tragic, half-dead leaves. The battered copy of Anne Carson that's been my reading companion for weeks is on the coffee table, not the sofa where I'd left it last night.

I blink at the displacement.

Not a big deal, but it burrows in.

Same for the yellow tulips, absurdly cheerful in their glass vase, center stage on the dining table exactly where I'd put them. But something is off in the curve of their arrangement, the way they face the window as if someone hid behind the curtains and gently turned them.

My first instinct is self-incrimination.

Maybe I did this, sleepwalking through the aftermath of yesterday's drama.

I make coffee and try to shake the feeling, but all morning it's like the apartment keeps shifting around me. A poster hangs slightly straighter than my own neurotic standards would allow. The TV remote has subtly migrated across the sideboard.

It isn't until I go to fill Gomez's food dish that I notice the kicker.

His battered felt mouse with the missing ear, which is always under the radiator, is now placed with surgical precision beside his water bowl.

A tiny, terrifying display of tidiness that Gomez is genetically incapable of.

He's too busy doing his best impression of a throw rug in a sunbeam, but when I crouch beside him, he flicks his head toward the hallway in one of those slow, deliberate movements cats make when they're not really looking at you.

My phone buzzes on the counter, and I lurch for it, half hoping it's Cassian, half hoping it isn't.

It's work.

A funny GIF from Marlena about city council's "storm of hot air," followed by a request from Zadok to send him the upcoming festival schedule "before claws get involved."

I shoot off a reply, then tell myself again that I'm being ridiculous.

The apartment is locked.