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reason he couldn’t fully see inside. Like the inner walls had been painted with a substance that constantly shifted between shades of sick, menacing dark gray. The garage door had been opened a few inches on the bottom and a big fan ran on high in the corner. The smoke smell burned strong.
    “It’s
caged
?” Michael buzzed with frantic excitement. He jumped down the two steps into the garage. “How the hell did she get it in here?”
    “Big truck.”
    “Yeah, but how’d she get it in
here
?” He stabbed a finger at the garage floor.
    Sean shrugged. “She’s got Jase with her. He moved it.”
    Yeah, Jase could move just about anything. What a find, that guy. And apparently Lea had been planning for this capture without telling Michael, given that she’d already had the cage and truck and all.
    Another rumble exploded inside. The box rocked, one corner lifting a few inches off the concrete. The box was fucking huge. The power it must have taken just to nudge a thing like that…
    Michael couldn’t breathe for the anticipation. “What is it?”
    “Lea said it was a surprise. Said you’d love it.” Sean hovered in the doorway to the house, refusing to step into the garage.
    Love didn’t even begin to describe what Michael was feeling. He was already imagining how he’d throw this one in Raymond’s face. How the old man would react. Michael inched closer. Something
thump thump thump
ed inside the blackened box. Like a toddler first facing flame, he stretched out a hand. And, like a parent, Sean said, “Don’t touch it. It’s hot.”
    Michael scoffed.
    “No, really. It is.”
    Michael raised one hand, touching his index finger to the corner of the cage. He jumped back, hissing at the searing pain.
    “Told you,” Sean muttered.
    Michael just stood there, staring. Holy shit, that was
smoke
inside that box. Thick, black, kill-you-with-a-single-inhale smoke. Goddamn it. What the hell was in there?
    “Where’s Lea now?” he barked.
    “She and Jase and Robert dropped this off and then took off again. Said she’d caught the trail of a water she wanted.”
    Michael absently waved a hand. “That can’t be right. We already have a water. We have Robert.”
    “It’s what she said.”
    Well, hell. Two were always better than one. His Lea, a fountain of twisted information. The best magic bloodhound in existence.
    Michael stared into the box, shifting his position every few seconds, trying to see through the thick murk.
    “Lea said she probably wouldn’t be back until the day of the opening at Drift,” Sean said. “Maybe later.”
    Shit
. “She didn’t say anything else about what’s inside? Anything at all?”
    “No.”
    There was no seeing inside. He was
this close
to grabbing the ladder hanging from the garage wall, climbing up to the box top, and unlocking the latch, when Sean said, “I saw it, you know. Before it did…that.”
    Michael held his breath. “Did what?”
    “Made it go all black and smoky inside. It did that when it woke up. Got pissed off.” Sean slowly backed farther inside.
    “What is it?”
    Sean said nothing. Just pointed.
    Michael followed the line of Sean’s finger.
    The black smoke swirled in a slow, deliberate circle. Thin streams leaked out from the box’s tight seams. The fan picked up the wispy tendrils and sent them flying under the garage door.
    Something moved inside the box. No,
against
the box. An arm, rubbing away the char. He crept forward, nothing making a sound in the whole garage. In the whole world.
    A face peered out of the small, smudged hole. A woman’s face. A face as beautiful as heaven and twisted as all hell.
    The smoke cloaked her, twined around her like it was asentient being. He didn’t know where the smoke ended and the black of her hair began. She didn’t cough, didn’t wipe at her dark, slanted eyes that eerily didn’t water.
    He bent closer to the box, the tip of his nose feeling the heat blazing from inside.
    She came closer, too.