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I exhale heavily, open up my palm, and stare at the filigree details on the key before sliding it into the lock. It fits perfectly. I twist it, and the door opens without me ever touching the lever again.

I go to pull it out of the door, though, and it disappears, a heaviness appearing in my pants pocket.

"It'll be with you when you need it," Lachlan says quietly, clearly noting the look of terror and surprise I must have on my face. "You did well. I don't think I've seen anyone conjure the key that fast before."

"How many owners of Midnight House have you seen?"

"Too many," he tells me, and there's no humor in that. No, there's a bitterness that I can't quite parse.

I'm about to ask him more when the sight before me renders me completely speechless.

We're in a library. A gorgeous library. The kind of library I dreamed about as a little girl, complete with a domed ceiling and high, floor-to-ceiling, two-story stained-glass windows. Gothic and arched, and timeless and medieval and Renaissance and every kind of art you could imagine on the walls.

"Was that a Rembrandt?" I ask, staring at a painting strangely free of dust on a far wall.

Lachlan just chuckles. The room lights up as we walk through it, and I follow him like a baby duckling, looking around at this incredible room like it's my first time seeing the world.

Maybe it is. Maybe this is my first time seeing this world as it really is.

Or I'm having a mental break. Who can say? Not me. I think maybe I should call my doctor tomorrow. Oh wait, I can't, because my university fired me because my ex stole all my research, so I no longer have health insurance. Not that the health insurance I had was any good, because I certainly can't afford COBRA.

The sound of liquid pouring into a glass interrupts my monologue, and I take it from Lachlan's outstretched hand, immediately downing it as fast as I can.

"Easy does it," Lachlan says, his eyebrows rocketing into his hairline.

"Oh, hush, old man," I tell him. "I'm having an identity crisis and, what's more worrisome, perhaps a complete mental break. I'm allowed to chug the Scotch if I want to."

"Being your bodyguard means that I have to look out for more than just your physical safety," he says. "I'll call the House Midnight doctor to come take a look at you if you're worried about anything that ails you."

"Oh, what I'm worried about is that I'm losing my mind.” Drinking Scotch in a library out of my wet dreams with a man who speaks in a delicious Scottish accent and is ridiculously handsome—and probably thus the product of my very overworked imagination. "And another clue that I'm losing my mind is the fact that I seem to very distinctly remember you turning into a bear."

"Would it make you feel better if I did it again?" he says easily.

"Absolutely not," I tell him. "I don't think that would make it better at all. I think that would make it much, much worse."

He holds his hands up in the universal sign of surrender and lets out a low laugh. "All right. Don't fash yourself, lassie. I'm not a collie dog."

I sputter.

"And as you said yourself—" he says, taking two giant strides toward me.

I step back because I don't need what looks to be over two hundred pounds of pure muscle slamming into me, until my back hits the bookcase behind me.

"Who puts a bar in a library?" I say, trying to defuse some of the tension.

He doesn't bite, though, just stares down at me from between his long, dark lashes. A wavy tendril of hair falls in front of his eyebrow, and I get the strangest urge to put it behind his ear for him—probably thanks to the Scotch and the fact that he's a very hot figment of my imagination.

"You're not losing your mind," he tells me quietly. "You accepted Midnight House, or it wouldn't have given you the key. We can waste time by pretending that you're having this mental breakdown, or you can recognize that you're now part of something much bigger than yourself. For the first time in your life, you're where you're supposed to be, doing what you're supposed to be doing." His face turns murderous, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say his eyes were starting to glow. "And I'll fucking kill this so-called ex of yours who made you feel crazy, do you hear me?"

I almost tell him "Aye" in a mirrored Scottish accent but decide that if he really can change into a bear, I certainly don't want to poke him. So I just nod and hold out my empty glass for more Scotch.

"I think you've had enough," Lachlan says, his entire demeanor changing—grumpy, angry, even—as he takes the glass from my outstretched hand and sets it back on the marble countertop.

There are dozens of bottles of what look to be expensive liquors—some I recognize, some I've never heard of—along with dusty crystal decanters and tarnished silver pitchers. Crystal goblets lie on the shelf behind the bar, which, paired with the gorgeousness of the library, seems even more surreal.

"Your predecessor had the bar installed," Lachlan says. "One of the only things he did that I approve of, I might add."

"Right," I say slowly.