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“Right.” I turned to Becka. “What about the nun, or doña, or whatever she’s called? The one who’s supposed to be standing behind Mia?”

“I believe she’s Marcela de Ulloa,” Lucian said. “The Infanta’s chaperone. She’s talking to some anonymous guardadamas, or bodyguard.”

“Whatever. Let’s see what she sees.”

“I’m loading her perspective now,” Becka said. “Go stand in her position.”

I walked over to where the woman’s shadow was. “I can see farther down the hallway. A little bit of the bedroom, but that’s it. Let’s try the menina on the left. That’s you, Derrick.”

He sighed. “Always the menina, never the Infanta.”

“How long have you been waiting to make that joke?”

“Possibly my whole life.”

“What do you see?”

“The door to Ordeño’s room. And a bit of the carpet.”

I shook my head. “It has to be something obvious, but still hidden.” I turned to Selena. “Okay, Mari-Bárbola. What about you?”

“I’m activating her perspective now,” Becka said.

Another patch of the hallway appeared, this time leading in the opposite direction, toward the bathroom.

“I don’t think it’s in the shower,” Selena said.

“Shit. There’s nothing else in the hallway?”

“Just the A/C.”

My eyes widened. “Wait.”

I walked down the phantom hallway. Set into the wall, just as Selena had described, was a state-of-the-art A/C

unit. I stared at the panel.

“Four pounds of snow for Mari-Bárbola,” I said softly.

Lucian stared at me. “You’re not serious.”

“I don’t get it,” Selena said.

“It’s something that Duessa said to me. Supposedly, Mari-Bárbola was promised four pounds of snow every year, and nobody knows why. Maybe an A/C unit is the modern equivalent of her four pounds of snow. We need to go to Ordeño’s apartment.”

“And you’re convinced that the secret to his murder is hidden within the air-conditioning unit?”

“I think it’s probably not the most insane thing I’ve ever come up with.”

Selena blinked. “That’s actually true. All right. We’ll take separate cars.”

“And no,” I said, before Patrick could even ask, “you’re not driving. You and Mia are staying here with Becka.”

“That sucks!” Mia glared at me. “We always miss everything!”

“You can play Nintendo Wii in the simulation chamber,” Becka told her.

Mia and Patrick exchanged a look.

“Have fun, Tess,” she said. “We’ll see you later.”

We met Selena in the underground parking of Ordeño’s building. It was cold, and the ceiling had that fluffy white insulation that seemed to be standard-issue in every subterranean lot. I could hear air ducts hissing.

“Did Ordeño drive?” I asked Lucian as we both got out of the car.

“No. He liked transit.”

“You don’t have a car either. Is it a necromancer thing?”

“I think it’s more of an environmentally conscious thing. And I used to have a car, but I sold it when I moved here.”

“From where?”

“That’s a conversation for another time.”

“You always say that when you’re about to get to the good stuff.”

“Maybe that’s a necromancer thing.”

“Hah.”

Selena emerged from a black sedan, which she’d borrowed from the lab. She clicked on the alarm, then turned to me, shivering beneath her coat. “I really didn’t think I’d end up here tonight.”

“I don’t think any of us did. Especially me.”

“But you’re the one we’re all following this time.”

“Right. But when’s the last time one of my hunches was actually correct? I thought this was just going to be another flash in the pan.”

“I seem to remember you having some premonitory dreams.”

“Yeah, but that’s pretty erratic.”

“I never remember my dreams,” Derrick said, following Miles out of the backseat. “Except for the nightmares.”

I thought it best not to mention my dream about Las Meninas. A dream was less convincing than a scholarly article, at least to this crowd.

Selena had brought Ordeño’s keys, and she used them to unlock the parking garage door. Stale apartment air washed over us. We filed into the elevator, and Selena pressed the button for Ordeño’s floor. It was one of those new elevators that was so quiet and still that you could barely tell if you were moving or not. Sometimes my life felt like that. I was never quite sure if I’d forgotten to press the button.

We emerged on Ordeño’s floor. The yellow caution tape was still drawn across his front door. Anyone walking past, including local authorities and the building superintendent, would see an incomplete unit still under construction. The veil would last until the cleaners arrived to erase any linger-ing traces of materia in the air. Then the scene would be released. Most likely, the unit would rent again in record time. Everyone wanted to live in the fancy building with the tree on its roof. It had a beautiful view of English Bay, and nobody had to know that a necromancer had died here.

Selena drew aside the yellow tape, and we entered the apartment, making our way down the silent hallway. Everything was as we’d left it. There were still dishes in the sink, and none of the furniture had been moved. I looked one more time at Ordeño’s degrees hanging on the wall. Like most paranormal folk, he’d managed to get through post-secondary education without arousing any suspicion.

He must have been lonely, though. Could you use necromancy to cheat on a test? It didn’t seem likely, unless you planned on de-fleshing your TA.

“It’s weird,” I said, apropos of my own thoughts.

“What’s weird?” Lucian asked.

“This case. We’ve all devoted so much energy to solving the murder of a person we know virtually nothing about. No pictures on the walls. No family. Did he even leave behind a will?”

“It’s being contested by the Dark Parliament. I haven’t seen it yet.”

“I thought you were Fifth Solium, or whatever.”

“Seventh Solium. And that doesn’t mean I get to see every document. I’m not in Lord Nightingale’s inner circle.”

“But Ordeño was.”

“Sure. He could have ruled the Dark Parliament someday.”

“How did the two of you meet?”

“I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”

“Right.” I turned around. “Can I see a show of hands? Who’d like to know how Lucian and Luiz Ordeño met?”

Everyone slowly raised their hand, including Selena.

Lucian sighed. “He was one of my teachers.”

“What subject?”

“History. He was very passionate about the origins of the hidden city, and the ancient customs of necromancy. A little obsessed, in fact.”

“I didn’t notice a school when we were there.”

“You only saw ten percent of the city. Half of it is underground.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“He was a great teacher. We became friends.”

“What was his favorite color?”

“Tess.”

“Come on. I’ve got nothing on this guy. Give me a point of interest. What was his favorite color?

Did he like animals? Was he straight, gay, asexual? He seemed to live the life of a perpetually single academic.”

Lucian seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. Luiz was a very private person. Even I didn’t know much about him. Like most people who’ve lived for more than a few hundred years, I think that he was bisexual, or at the very least open-minded. But I never saw him with a partner of either gender. He didn’t have pets. He wore a lot of blue. And he collected vinyl.”

I brightened at this. “What kind?”

“Weird bands, mostly. Folk music. Zappa. The Incredible String Band.”

“Wow.”

“He read a lot of Maria Zambráno. She’s a philosopher.”

“Oh. I’ve read her in translation,” Derrick said.

We were all silent for a minute. There wasn’t much else to say. No matter how many anecdotes we traded, we’d never know anything more about Luiz Ordeño. He’d left an empty vessel behind, and it was locked in a morgue freezer. He seemed to have poured most of his personal energy into creating a puzzle that we were on the verge of solving. Or maybe we weren’t even close. Funny how the positions of absolute certainty and folly are so similar when you’re standing on the border between them.

I followed Lucian down the hallway that led to Ordeño’s bedroom. The A/C unit was compact, about the size of a small kitchen cupboard. It was made of buffed metal, so smooth that it virtually disappeared into the wall. I held my hand in front of the vent. There was no air coming from it, cold or otherwise.

“Miles?” I asked. “Are you picking up anything?”

He approached the wall and held out his hand. “I’m not sure,” he said softly. His eyes narrowed.

“Wait. There’s

. . . something. It’s really faint, though. It might just be some defrayed materia left over from when the necromancer died. Or it could be microwave static. I can’t tell.”

I turned to Lucian. “What about you? Any necroid materia?”

He frowned. “I agree with Miles. There could be something behind there, but it’s like a dim echo.

The barest suggestion of power. It could be anything.”

“Step aside,” Selena said. “I’ve got power tools.”

She used an electric drill to unfasten the bolts that held the A/C unit to the wall. When she was done, she dropped the screws into a labeled evidence bag.

“Lucian? You want to do the honors?”

“You’re just afraid that there’s a booby trap.”

“You’re the necromancer. You’ve got the highest chance of survival.”

He chuckled. “You OSIs really know how to charm a guy.”

“It’s called pragmatic romanticism,” I said. “Or romantic pragmatism. One of those, I can’t remember which.”

Lucian gently removed the A/C panel from the wall. A dark alcove full of wires lay behind it. He reached in and felt around the hole for a few seconds.

“Anything there?” I asked.

“Nothing that I can feel. But . . .” He frowned. “I don’t know how to explain it. Like when you’ve got a sneeze caught in your nose. There’s something in here, something not quite there, and it’s rubbing on the edges of my awareness.”

“That’s how I felt,” Miles said. “Can I take a look?”

“Go ahead.” He stepped back.

“Wait.” Selena handed him a pair of plastic gloves. “Put these on first. We may need to dust whatever you find for prints.”

Miles put on the gloves. Then he reached his hand into the gap.

“Please be careful,” Derrick said. “I love all of your appendages. I don’t want you to lose anything.”

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Selena said.

Miles kept digging around in the dark space. “Yeah. There’s something here, but it’s under the spatial dermis. Almost like a splinter. Just give me a second.”

He closed his eyes. A pale blue light began to emanate from the hole in the wall. I felt a slight stirring of my own power as Miles reached into the fabric of space, as if throwing a baited hook into a vast ocean.

His eyes opened. “Got it.”

Something clicked in the back of my head. I looked at Derrick, and he simply nodded. It was the curious feeling of two types of space merging, one terrestrial, the other paradimensional. Neither of us understood how the process worked, but we could both still feel it.

Miles pulled a small, carved wooden box out of the wall. It was made of polished black oak, and had an image of a tree on its lid.

“Is that one of the trees from the Grove of Souls?” I asked Lucian.

“I believe so. Miles, can I see it?”

“Gloves!” Selena snapped. She withdrew a digital camera from her purse, taking three pictures of the box from different angles. “We really should have a ruler for scale, but there’s no time.”

Lucian put on the gloves. “Can I open it now?”

She examined the pictures on the digital readout. “Sure. Slowly.”

I leaned in close. Lucian opened the box.

The inside was lined in black velvet. A small glass vial lay within. It was filled with a red liquid.

“Is that blood?” Derrick asked.

“I don’t think so. But we’ll need to do presumptive tests first.” I drew out a large evidence bag.

“Let’s just put the whole thing in here, and we can spray it with luminol and phenolphthalein once we get back to the lab.”

Lucian stared at the vial curiously.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“I really have no idea.”

I didn’t believe him. But that was nothing new. He closed the box and handed it to me. I placed it gently in the evidence bag.

“I’ll take that,” Selena said. “Let’s go before this thing explodes.”

“Nice find, by the way,” Derrick said to Miles. “You solved the mystery.”

“Tess solved it. I just dug around in a crawlspace.”

“Babe. You reached into invisible space. That deserves some credit.”

“It was pretty sweet,” Lucian confirmed.

Miles shrugged. “Thanks.”

I dialed the extension for the trace lab. I wanted to make sure that Mia and Patrick hadn’t destroyed the Nerve.

The line picked up.

“Cindée? We’re on our way back. We’ve got it.”

“That’s wonderful news, Tess. Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

It wasn’t Cindeé’s voice on the line.

My blood turned to ice. I hadn’t heard that voice in more than two years. I’d hoped that I wouldn’t ever hear it again.

“Sabine?”

“That’s right, sweetheart. I’ve got both of your kids here. And if you want everyone to get out of this alive, you’re going to do exactly as I say.”

My heart fell.

I looked at Lucian. He’d heard me say her name, and I could see the fear in his eyes. Real fear.

Sabine Delacroix had nearly killed me once before. Now she had both Mia and Patrick, and their lives meant absolutely nothing to her.

I swallowed. “What do you want?”

20

The plan was simple.

First: Make sure that Patrick and Mia didn’t get killed.

Second: Make sure that I didn’t get killed.

Third: Make sure that Sabine Delacroix did get killed. No do-overs.

“I hate her,” I said, guiding my car into the lab’s parking lot. “I really hate her. I mean, what’s she even doing here? Where has she been hiding for so long, and what does she want from us this time?”