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“I’m not his mother,” I said finally. “I understand that. I’m not stupid. He has a million questions about his heritage, and I can’t answer them. I can’t even help him with his geometry homework, since I was such a spaz at math in high school.”

I shook my head. “But I also know that he cares about us. He wants to live with us, but the monitors are pressuring him, trying to make him more vampire than human. Eventually, they’re going to win.

He has to become fully vampire, or else he’ll never be able to rule the city. And who’s to say that he won’t make an incredible magnate? I don’t want to stand in the way of his destiny.”

“What if someone had stood in the way of your destiny, years ago?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Hinzelmann rested his chin on his folded hands. It was a strangely intimate posture, as if he was about to tell me a secret. “The CORE found you when you were just twelve years old. They trained you, indoctrinated you, convinced you that the only way to control your powers was to join them.

But what if someone had told you the opposite? What if someone had urged you to stay away instead? There are wild talents, after all. Latents. People who can still channel materia, but who do it without sanctioned training or guidance by CORE practitioners.”

“What are you getting at?” My face was starting to ache again. The coffee had given me an unpleasantly esoteric feeling, as if I was floating outside of my body, a wired and dry-mouthed psychic projection. “Do you want me to admit that the CORE was wrong in training me? I’m sure my supervisor would love to hear that.”

“Everything you say in these sessions is confidential.”

“Bullshit.”

“You don’t have to believe me. But I swear to you, anything you say in this room will remain in confidence. We aren’t taping. My notes are sealed.”

He had a point. I still hadn’t been able to discover a hidden camera anywhere. And Selena didn’t seem to have any knowledge of our conversations so far. Not that they were especially probative to begin with.

“So I can say whatever I want.”

“Absolutely.”

We stared at each other silently for a few seconds. I swallowed. Thoughts warred inside my brain.

I’m terrified.

I’m angry all the time.

I’m surprisingly horny.

I miss my parents.

I have no idea if I’m doing anything right.

I don’t know how to raise two kids.

I still feel like a kid. I’m only twenty-six.

I can’t figure out how to record anything with my DVD player. It has something to do with the fucking tuner, but every time I hit TV/VIDEO on the remote control, like Derrick told me to, I just get the same black screen.

I never feel smart.

I suck at badminton.

Sometimes I’m so tired of my job, all I can think about is quitting, moving to Mexico, and making beaded jewelry.

Even though I’m not fat anymore, I still feel like I am, especially when I’m standing in an elevator for some reason.

I may be in love with a necromancer.

The alarm on Hinzelmann’s desk went off. He pressed the button to make it stop, then closed the green folder.

“Looks like our time’s up for this morning.”

I rose, straightening my pants even though they weren’t wrinkled. “Right. Thanks for the chat.”

“It was my pleasure.”

I’ll bet it was. Asshole.

I smiled and walked out of his office. I couldn’t figure out what pissed me off more. Was it the fact that he’d so obviously manipulated me?

Or was it that he’d been right about nearly everything?

10

I met Becka in the AV lab, and was a bit surprised to find her staring at Las Meninas, the painting from Ordeño’s living room. It was laid across a glass table, and the frame had been carefully removed to expose the borders. A specialized ELMO document camera had been set up around the painting, and it projected a magnified image onto an adjacent monitor. Velázquez looked larger than life on the LCD screen, the Cross of Santiago burning like a brand against his surcoat.

Becka looked up. “Hey. As you can see, we finally managed to acquire most of Ordeño’s art collection. The necromancers are being kind of twitchy about it, so we can’t keep them for too long.”

“They’re twitchy about everything.” I held out a large coffee. “Are you allowed to drink this near the painting?”

She took the steaming cup from me. “Probably not. But this is a copy, so if I spill on it . . . meh. The original’s still safe in the Prado.”

“You’re sure it’s a copy? Ordeño was pretty long-lived after all.”

“Cindée used a Fourier-Transform Microscope to analyze the paint, and it’s definitely not four hundred years old.” She sighed. “We haven’t finished looking at everything, though. He may have some originals mixed in with the copies.”

I stared at the painting, my gaze divided between the object itself and the projection on the wall. It was a strange tableau. Velázquez the painter was standing next to a canvas, which seemed to be blocking the actual subject of the painting. What the observer ended up looking at was a little girl, blond, wearing a beautiful dress and surrounded by two young female attendants. All three girls had pale, almost blanched skin, and their eyes held the suggestion of melancholy.

Next to them stood two small figures, one of whom was definitely a dwarf, and the other who may have been either a dwarf or a young boy. A sleeping dog lay under the small person’s foot, and I couldn’t tell if he was stroking it or shaking it awake.

A man and a woman stood behind the girls, seeming to be in the midst of a conversation. The woman looked vaguely like a nun or a lady-in-waiting, and reminded me—although I didn’t want to admit it—of one of the female Grail-keepers from the Monty Python film. Zoot, I think her name was.

The man was shadowed, resembling an indistinct pillar of darkness and ochre.

The door to the chamber where everyone had been positioned was open, and a male figure stood poised in the doorway. It was impossible to tell whether he was coming or going, but something about him seemed to be in motion. To the right of the glowing doorway was a mirror, hanging from the wall like a silver frame suspended in space. In the mirror, one could barely make out two reflected figures, which may or may not have been the figures that Velázquez himself was painting on the canvas.

“It seems sad,” I said. “And pretty. And dark.”

Becka nodded. “I think it’s all of those things. And what makes it so interesting is that you can’t really determine who the ‘real’ subject of the painting is. Because the observer’s perspective and the subject’s perspective are the same.”

“Right. Like standing in a blind spot.” I peered closer.

“Are there two dwarves, or is that a child with his foot on the dog?”

She squinted. “Another dwarf, I think. But he does look like a little boy.”

“He has such pretty shoes.”

I heard footsteps in the hallway. A set of high heels click-clicking against the polished concrete floor. They sounded vaguely familiar. Then I felt the presence attached to the heels, a genetic signature that I would have recognized anywhere. Powerful and stylish at the same time.

Duessa stepped through the doorway. She wore periwinkle Jimmy Choo heels and a black pencil skirt with a fierce blue top. Her hair was pinned up, and I doubted that anything short of a hailstorm would be able to move it.

She was on her cell. “Right. If he wants it, he’ll have to sign it out. No, just—” She smiled indul-gently, holding the phone away from her mouth, and whispered: “I’m so sorry. This’ll just take a moment.”

I nodded. “Of course. Take your time.”

You just didn’t rush someone like Duessa. She lived in several different worlds, and communicating with mortals seemed difficult for her sometimes. Getting a solid answer from her—about anything

—was like winning the metaphysical lottery.

“No.” Duessa sighed. “No, it’s in the other cupboard. The one with the label that says CONDOMS

AND

LUBE. Remember, we bought the label maker, and you—right, right. From Staples. Right.”

Becka just stared at me. I shrugged.

“Yes, that’s the one. In there. It’s way in the back. Behind the dental dams. How many of those do we have, by the way? Do we need more?” She blinked. “We have that many? Jesus, did we get them in bulk?”

“I thought she was an antiquities expert,” Becka whispered.

“She is. She also runs a shelter for mage runaways and sex workers.”

“Ah.”

Duessa was shaking her head. “If it’s not there, it must be in one of the plastic totes. Look in the TV

room, behind the box of toys. I don’t—Well, ask Dukwan; he’s the one who had them last. If he’s

—” She sighed.

“Pobrecito. Let him sleep, then. Call me when he wakes up. Sí. Vale. Un besito. Ciao.”

She closed the phone. “Sorry. Business call.”

“No problem at all,” I replied. “We appreciate you coming down to the lab again. You must be busy.”

“I was born busy. Did you speak with the Seneschal?”

“Yeah. We chatted in his Hobbit-hole. It was very revealing.”

Duessa rolled her eyes. “Didn’t tell you shit, did he? ¡Hijo de pavo! That old bird pisses me off.

Likes to hoard his secrets like candy.”

I wasn’t sure if I should mention what he’d said about Lucian or not. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Becka. I just didn’t want to put him under the microscope. At least not yet.

“Actually, he did give me a name. El alquimista. Does that ring a bell?”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what he said? El alquimista?”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

For the first time since we’d met, Duessa actually looked surprised. “No—I mean, it’s possible, but

—”

“But what?”

She shrugged. “El alquimista is un riçon. A fairy tale. He’s like that character—how do you call him

—the doctor who drinks the potion?”

“You mean Jekyll and Hyde?”

“¡Claro! Dr. Jekyll. He was supposed to be an alchemist looking for la piedra de la filosofía. The philosopher’s stone, or cincero elementa. Some say he worked in the court of King Philip IV; others that he was the personal physician to Queen Mariana of Austria.” She chuckled. “Whatever the case, he never found what he was looking for. But he did stumble across something else instead: la manticora. A manticore.”

Becka’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that the thing with the lion’s head and the scorpion’s tail? I remember it from the cover of a Piers Anthony novel.”

“It’s a paradaemon,” I said. “Something like a cross between a pureblooded demon and an elemental spirit. They live on the prime elemental planes, where materia exists in its purest form.”

“You don’t usually see them and live to tell about it,” Duessa added.

“And did el alquimista survive his encounter?”

“Supposedly, he made a deal with la manticora. He did something for her, and she fulfilled one wish in return. But in the end, she turned on him, and el alquimista died a horrible death.” She smiled.

“That’s usually where the story gets creative, so that you can scare los niños. He gets cooked and eaten; he gets flayed alive; his bones get turned into jelly. Blah, blah, brush your teeth and don’t talk back, end of story.”

“So you’re sure he wasn’t a real person?”

“Anything’s possible. But I remember mi abuela telling me that story. It’s older than this painting.

And I never heard anything about a suit of armor being made for him. What would an alchemist need armor for? He was surrounded by potions all day long, and he never left his laboratory.”

I sighed. “Awesome. So the bird’s yanking my chain.”

“Even so,” Becka interjected, “it wouldn’t hurt to brush up on the legend, would it? Maybe your informant was speaking in some kind of code.”

“True. But it’s just as possible that he’s a crazy old demon living in a hedge.”

“Either way, I can pull up more information and e-mail it to you.” Becka grinned. “I really do love research.”

“Cool. Knock yourself out.”

“Now . . .” Duessa walked over to the table. “Speaking of legends, let’s take a boo at the Velázquez.

Ordeño had good taste.”

“Did you know him personally?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But we ran in some of the same circles. Six degrees of undead separation, that sort of thing.”

“I understand that he was sort of mentor to Lucian Agrado.”

“Oh, you understand, do you?” She smiled at me. “Preciosa , don’t be so sure that you understand anything about Lucian Agrado. He’s a lot like this painting—lovely, confusing, and just the right amount of fucked-up. Don’t go jumping to any conclusions about the boy until you’ve spent more time with him.”

Duessa gave me a sly look. She knew full well that I’d spent plenty of time with him, but she was covering for me. A nice favor, and one that I’d probably have to repay someday. Immortals always collected their fees.

I just nodded. “Right. He’s an enigma wrapped in a fitted tee. I get it.”

“He’s hot,” Becka said. “For a necromancer, I mean.”

“Fire’s hot, too, baby. Doesn’t mean you should play with it.” Duessa returned her attention to the painting.

“It’s a nice reproduction. Nineteenth century?”

Becka glanced at another computer screen. “According to the microscopy results, it’s somewhere between one hundred and one hundred fifty years old. It’s tricky to know for sure, since there aren’t really any forensic databases for paintings—the closest thing is the FBI database of automobile paint.”

“So if Velázquez had spray painted Las Meninas, we’d be set.” I stood next to Duessa, examining the picture.

“Okay, seriously—two dwarves or one?”

Her eyes hardened. “If you’re referring to los enanos de la Reina, then there are two: Mari-Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato. They were both domestic servants within the queen’s entourage.” Her expression softened, and then she smiled a strange, almost faraway smile, as if recalling something familiar. “They gave MariBárbola four pounds of snow every year. Nobody’s sure why. Maybe she used it to cool off in the summer, or slept in it, or ate handfuls of it. But Ponte wrote a poem about her. Que cada boca suya rumie del invierno.