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"You got it"

"Thanks"

As she grabbed the films for her next patient, her cell phone went off in her lab-coat pocket, the vibration beating against her thigh like bird’s wings She dug the device out and checked the ID to see if it ht be Ben The number was blocked

Oh, God

She kneho it ho it had to be She’d been suspended in an awful state between anticipation and dread allto call He’d called her apart early that day, but she’d let the blocked call go straight to voice mail She hadn’t been ready to talk to him then; she wasn’t at all sure she was ready now

Tess walked down the hall to her office and closed the door, her spine sagging against the coolfor the fifth and probably final time She shut her eyes and touched the talk button "Hello?"

"Hey, angel"

The sound of Dante’s deep, delicious voice sent a slow current through her She didn’t want to feel the war her li, but it was there,okay?" he asked when she fell silent, an air of protective concern in his tone "You still with me, or did I lose you?"

She sighed, unsure how to answer that

"Tess? What’s wrong?"

For a long few seconds, all she could do was breathe in and out She hardly knehere to begin, and she was terrified of where it was all going to end now A thousand questions crowded her mind, a thousand doubts that had been raised in the hours since she’d listened to Ben’s bizarre eous claims--the rational part of her that knew better than to believe there could be monsters loose on the streets of Boston Yet there was another part of her that wasn’t as quick to dismiss the unexplainable, the stuff that existed with or without tidy logic or conventional science

"Tess," Dante said amid the quiet, "you know you can talk towords out of her ht now, Dante I’"

He swore, a snarled oath spoken in Italian "What happened? Are you hurt? Jesus, if he touched you in any way--"

Tess scoffed "I suppose that answers one thing forabout Ben, aren’t we? He was the drug dealer you were after last night?"

There was a slight hesitation "Have you seen him today, Tess? Have you seen hiht?"

"No," she said "I haven’t seen him, Dante"

"But you spoke with hie, evidently while ere " She shook her head, not wanting to remember hoonderful it had felt to lie in her bed in Dante’s arms, how protected and peaceful she’ d felt Now all she felt was a pervading chill "Is that why you’ve been screwing around with et close to him?"

"Christ, no It’s a lot more complicated than that--"

"How co ht you showed up here with your dog and we--Oh, my God, now even thatat all, is he? What did you do, take so ame?"

"Tess, please I wanted to explain--" "Go ahead I’oing to do this over the phone" She felt a dark tension growing in hi on the other end, alive with restless energy, his black bro over his eyes in a scowl, his strong hand raking over his scalp "Listen, you need to stay away froerous I don’t want you anywhere near him, do you understand?"

"That’s funny He said the sas, actually Crazy things, like how your partner brutally assaulted hiht"

"What?"

"He said he’d been bitten, Dante Can you explain that to me? He said the man you hen the two of you broke into Ben’s apartely attacked hi to Ben, he was bitten in the throat"

"Son of a bitch"

"Can that be true?" she asked, horrified that he hadn’t even attempted to deny it was possible "Do you knohere Ben is? I haven’t heard fro to him? I have to see him"

"No! I don’t knohere he is, Tess, but you have to promise me you’ll stay away from him"