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walked. A hard kick of lust stole her breath.
    Swallowing, she peeled off her gloves, tried to steady her nerves. She thought about the bone he had showed her, focusing on that. It was a calcaneus, a heel bone. She'd noted the sustentaculum tali and the sulcus calcanei, and three distinctly shaped facets for articulation with the talus. Human characteristics, but the bone was far too large, and the articular surface for the cuboid was wrong, with dual facets where there should have been only one.
    Apprehension slithered through her, leaving her cold.
    She'd examined thousands upon thousands of bones in her lifetime, and she'd never felt anything like this before. Evil. Darkness. A terrible brooding power seated in what amounted to little more than a charred network of minerals and matrix and dead cells.
    "Well, you are a surprise."
    Vivien's head jerked up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. She froze, let out a startled huff of air, and a cold horror chilled her.
    There was a creature addressing her, a frightening phantasm at least eight feet tall, not human, but a terrible monster conjured from the depths of her mind. Gray cracked hide covered a thick and meaty frame, and its blackened lips peeled back to reveal row after row of jagged teeth. Behind it stood a small woman with dull eyes and a slack expression.
    Not real. This was not real.
    Okay. Okay. This was it. Everything she had feared.
    She was having a psychotic break. Of course. There was no monster, no woman; maybe there wasn't even a gorgeous guy. How much was real? How much had she fabricated from some deep, swirling pit in her mind?
    "If you would be so kind as to accompany me," the creature said calmly, extending one limb, palm up, pointed yellow talons curving over the ends of its fingers. "And bring the bags, if you please. How lovely of you to collect six in one place for me."
    The smell of it. She knew that smell, had worked with it floating thick about her time and again over the years. The smell of death, old death, rotting death.
    Vivien jerked to her feet, knocking over the stool in her haste. Choking terror. Her breath locked in her throat. Real or not, this thing petrified her.
    Fury sparked, a deep resentment. She would not go lightly to her fate. Closing her fingers around the metal legs of the second stool, she swung it up and brandished it before her, a weapon of sorts.
    Her heart slammed against her ribs, frantic.
    The thing watched her with what might have been amusement.
    Footsteps on the stairs, pounding, fast.
    In a blur of movement, Dain Hawkins vaulted over the handrail, his features drawn stark and savage.
    Vivien gasped, stared. He was haloed in light, bright, almost blinding. Beautiful. Frightening. And she thought, He is a warrior.
    The gray creature turned to him, its expression one of surprise. Dain's gaze slid to hers for an instant, then dropped to the stool she brandished as a weapon, and he smiled a little.
    Turning away, he swung a thick stick—where had that come from?— At the same moment the thing lunged for him, raking its talons across his chest. Blood surged from the gashes.
    "Fuck, not again," Dain snarled. "Those just healed."
    He spun and struck, and as the stick cast out a shower of light, Vivien had her answer. All of it was part of the psychotic break. She'd imagined Dain's arrival, imagined this monster in her workshop along with the woman who huddled in the corner.
    She needed an ambulance, now , and a psychiatrist, and meds. Lots and lots of meds.
    Rising, she scooped up her velvet bags, a habit. She began to inch forward, toward the stairs, past the bizarre duo that battled with vicious concentration.
    But they weren't real. Not real.
    She told herself that as she slid along the cool, smooth wall. She told herself again as her foot hit the bottom of the staircase. She told herself a final time as, with a vicious snarl, Dain Hawkins slashed at the creature, hard, his staff of wood aglow, as though it were on