The black thing moved.
Rosalie Ashford jerked backward so sharply that the oil lamp nearly slipped from her hand.
Across the table, Gideon Rook watched her face instead of the porcelain bowl.
He could not hear the faint scratching beneath the lamplight, but he understood terror well enough.
His right ear was bleeding.
A thin crimson line ran down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his sweat-soaked shirt.
Rosalie forced herself to look again.
The object she had pulled from his swollen ear was nearly an inch long,
