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“Sorry, Tash. I didn’t mean to push you.”

She smiled ruefully. “It’s fine. I’m just feeling a bit harried. Selena’s been calling me every hour, asking for updates. I told her that I’d be working on Ordeño for at least seven hours, but she seems to think that I’m not telling her something.”

“She’s just under the gun. It’s a high-profile case.”

“Aren’t they all?” Tasha made two swift, sharp movements, making the last stitch in Ordeño’s Y-incision. Then she cut off the excess thread, placing the scissors back on the steel-instrument tray. “In this case, the body pretty much speaks for itself. There isn’t much I can add to the report.”

“You’re talking about the wound on his neck?”

She nodded, placing a gloved finger lightly over the mess of sheared tissue and bone that was Or-deño’s neck.

“There are eight separate, incised wounds to the neck and face. This one”—she pointed to a bloody seam running just below the chin—“transected the internal jugular vein. He would have bled out in three minutes, tops.”

“Very Basic Instinct.”

She shook her head. “No way. Ice picks make distinctive puncture wounds. This was more like a dagger, or a glass shard. Something long and slender, but with uneven edges. That’s why the tissue is so abraded.” She frowned. “It’s strange, though. See this wound on the left cheek?”

I looked closer. It was shaped like a bloody leaf, as if someone had pierced the flesh with an arrow-head. Pink muscle tissue was visible, and, beneath that, small white notches of bone.

“Someone really went to town,” I said.

“This wound is different from the others. They aren’t exactly clean cuts, but the sharp-force trauma seems more evenly distributed. This looks more like the result of a wild animal attack. Something with talons.”

I remembered seeing the body of Mia’s aunt, Cassandra, lying on the autopsy table with a similar wound. The vampire Sabine Delacroix had reached into her thoracic cavity and torn it apart with her bare hands, through brute strength alone. I shivered slightly and looked away.

“A vampire could have done it. A powerful one.”

“True. But I’m not entirely convinced that it wasn’t done with a secondary weapon. Something larger, flatter, but still sharp.”

“It’s weird.”

“Tess, ‘weird’ is a pretty vague adjective in our line of work.”

I returned my gaze to the body. “Ordeño had serious power. He was a skilled necromancer with years of experience, and he had access to destructive and entropic forces that I can barely wrap my head around. How could someone get close enough to tear his face apart like this?”

She shrugged. “Everyone falls eventually, no matter how powerful they are. Maybe it happened too quickly for him to raise an adequate defense.”

“Or maybe he trusted his attacker.” I let my hand hover an inch above Ordeño’s ruined throat. “The first wound could have easily incapacitated him. Adrenaline kicks in, and the blood pumps blood even faster, not realizing that it’s all just spilling onto the floor. It was probably over before he even knew what hit him.”

“Maybe that’s a blessing in disguise.” Tasha reached into a cabinet and withdrew a black ALS handscope, which looked like a bulky, industrial-strength flashlight. She switched on the scope, and the 12V cooling fan inside began to hum softly. “You know, they call this thing ‘portable, ’ but it feels like a bowling ball.”

I chuckled. “It’s better than the previous model, with the big dial that reminded me of my parents’

old color TV.”

Tasha handed me a pair of protective glasses. Then she hit a switch on the wall next to her, and the autopsy suite went dark, save for the cone of blue light shining from the handscope’s xenon lamp.

She passed the light slowly over Ordeño’s body, from head to toe. Then she switched to an orange filter, and, after that, a red filter.

“Nada.” She turned the lights back on. “Not even a stray hair. No biological stains of any kind that I can make out.”

“If only we had a filter that measured materia on a body.”

Tasha gave me a sly look. “You know—”

I leaned in close. “Lab gossip?”

“Just a rumor. I heard that Miles Sedgwick was working on a pilot project with Ben from DNA and Linus from Ballistics.”

“That seems like an odd team.”

“I know, right? Supposedly, they’re trying to design some kind of crystalline lens for detecting minute traces of materia within tissue samples. It has something to do with Raman spectroscopy, but that’s a little beyond my ken.”

I wanted to ask her if Raman spectroscopy had anything to do with Ramen noodles, which I found quite tasty. But it seemed like one of those questions that was best left unasked in public.

I also wondered if Derrick knew about this alleged collaboration. Maybe it was the reason why Miles had been looking so tired lately. But Ben and Linus both worked the night shift, and Miles was more of a swing-shift consultant. It seemed like I should have seen them all together in the lab.

Unless they were hiding.

“I hope he’s not pushing himself too hard,” I said. “This year has been a tough transition for him, moving from the Toronto facility, adjusting to our lab. And a lot of dark shit went down last year.”

“That’s a succinct way of putting it.” Tasha gave me a look. “How are you doing, Tess? With the dark shit?”

How am I doing?

Every day, I feel a little bit closer to a complete systems meltdown.

I’m seeing a goblin psychiatrist who knows that I’m full of shit.

I’m trying to raise two teenagers, and both of them have the power to either kill me in my sleep or burn down my house.

And most mornings, I wake up with the feeling of hands on my throat.

I untied the apron, pitched the gloves in the trash, and smiled. “I’m breathing. In and out. Repeated-ly. Seems to be working.”

“That’s really all you can do.” She tore a sheet from her clipboard, placed it in a manila envelope, and gave it to me. “We’re still waiting for the toxicology report, but here are my notes from the post exam. At least it’s something.”

“I’ll put them on Selena’s desk.”

Tasha winced. “Try not to make extended eye contact with her. She’s especially predatory this morning.”

I turned around and walked toward the door, envelope in hand. “I can deal with her. I already live with a predator.”

As it turned out, Selena’s office was empty. The fax machine was whirring, and a slight breeze from the open window had disturbed the leaning tower of forms next to her computer, but the room’s oc-cupant was nowhere to be found.

I started to walk toward the trace lab, then thought better of it. No use disturbing Cindée when she’d probably only just started analyzing the breastplate. It wasn’t every day that you got a sixteenth-century suit of armor to play with.

I headed for the break room to look for Derrick, and found it empty as well. Had I missed something? Had everyone gone on a pilgrimage to the Bread Garden across the street? If so, Derrick had better bring me back a cinnamon twist. My blood sugar was starting to dip.

Becka’s office door was open. I poked my head in, trying to locate her amidst the slithering blue and red Ethernet cables and blinking routers. Her long black hair had purple tips this week, and she was squinting at a bank of monitors.

“Corrupt boot sector?” She clicked the mouse that was nearest her, a tad aggressively. “I’ll show you a bloody corrupt boot sector, you sack of—”

“Hey, Becka.”

She wheeled around her office chair. “Tess. I was just in the middle of fixing the lab’s netware.”

“I don’t really know what that means.”

“Actually, neither do I. We just upgraded to something even more complicated than Vista. And I didn’t think there was such a thing.”

“They’re probably not paying you enough.”

Her eyes sparkled for a second. “Actually, my paycheck is the one thing I don’t complain about around here. The CORE offers some kickass remuneration.”

“Wow. Maybe someday I’ll see some of that.”

“If you become a systems analyst, you definitely will. There’s just no money in fieldwork anymore.”

I shrugged. “My last application for a line of credit got approved. That’s something, at least. And Derrick’s pretty good at saving. Unless there’s any kind of sales activity at Holt Renfrew.”

“I just saw him in the interrogation room with Selena.” I stared at her. “Derrick’s getting interrogated? What did he do?”

“I think he’s just doing an exercise. Something to do with precognition. Selena had flash cards.”

“This I have to see.” I waved. “If you’re still here in two hours, I’ll bring you a coffee. How do you take it?”

“Enormous.” She turned back to the screen. “Thank you.” I found Selena and Derrick sitting across from each other in the interrogation chamber. The room was sealed, but I could watch them through the two-way glass. Selena had two decks of cards in front of her, which she kept behind a raised metal partition. Derrick sat with both of his hands palm-downward on the table, staring straight ahead. Selena shuffled the cards.

I concentrated for a moment, channeling a bit of earth materia, which tingled on my fingertips. I let the strand of materia flow into the two-way glass, willing it to change its composition, but only slightly. All I had to do was nudge the atoms in the sheet of glass, convincing them to spread out just a tiny bit in order to allow the sound waves to pass through more efficiently. The air in front of the glass rippled slightly, and then I could hear their voices, which had a slightly a metallic cast. It was like listening to a cell with bad reception, but it worked.

I smiled. Meredith Silver, my old teacher, had taught me that trick. Just remember, she’d told me.

Only eavesdrop if you don’t mind hearing people say the most beastly things about you. That’s the price of listening.

I missed her. She’d died well before her time.

“Ready?” Selena asked.

Derrick nodded.

She turned over the first card. It bore the picture of a red star.

“Okay. What’s on the card? Be as specific as possible.” Derrick kept eye contact with her for a few seconds, unmoving. Then he relaxed slightly and smiled. “Star.”

“Good. What color?”

“Red.”

“Excellent.” She flipped over the next card. It had a yellow square with a purple triangle inside of it.

“Okay. This time, I’m going to use a shielding exercise. I’m no telepath, but I have enough training to block out some rudimentary psychic invasions. Let’s see if you can break through my defenses.”

He nodded.

Selena’s eyes hardened. “Okay. Go for it.”

Derrick’s brow furrowed. Just for a second, I felt something like a tremor pass through the air, disturbing the equilibrium of the materia flows within the room. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. That was about as close as I ever got to detecting raw dendrite materia, the energy that psychics channeled.

Derrick blinked. “A square?”

“Be more confident. Is that your final answer?”

“Yes. It’s a square.”

“Good. What color?”

He frowned. “Sort of a buttercream?”

Selena sighed. “We’d also accept yellow. Anything else?”

“There’s a triangle inside the square. It’s purple.”

“You sure it’s not mauve?”

He grinned slightly. “I was going to say amethyst.” “Right.” She picked up a card from the second pile.

“Okay, this is a remote empathy exercise. Each of these cards has an image on it that’s designed to elicit a strong affective response. I want you to try to read what I’m feeling. It’s different from just picking an image out of my brain. It requires more finesse.”

“I’ve got finesse.”

“I’ll just bet you do.” Selena gave him a small smile. Then she flipped over the card on the top of the deck. There was a picture of a steaming cup of coffee.

I instantly felt content. The test worked.

Derrick frowned. He almost looked like he was on the verge of sneezing. Then he suddenly broke into a wide smile.

“You’re happy!”

She nodded. Her expression hadn’t changed at all. With Selena, “happy” was a matter of extreme subtlety.

“Right. Next.” She flipped it over. There was a picture of a Glock 9mm pistol.

What emotion was this supposed to draw from my supervisor, who carried a gun in a shoulder-holster every day? Irritability? Anger? Maybe it was like showing Becka a picture of a wireless mo-dem.

Her face was set in stone. “What am I feeling?”

Derrick frowned again. His eyes seemed to go distant. I felt that faint charge of dendrite energy in the air again. If I relaxed my vision, I could almost see a current of dim light passing between them.

“Who’s Jessica?”

Selena’s expression broke. “What?”

Derrick shook his head slightly. “I’m not sure. I just heard the name when I was reading you. Is it important?”

Her features tightened. I saw something like a wall pass before her eyes, and she stood up. “No. I’m sorry, Derrick. I have another appointment. We’ll have to continue this exercise tomorrow.”

He gave her an odd look. “Is everything okay? Did that name have something to do with the card?”

“It’s nothing.” Selena opened the door to the interrogation chamber. She couldn’t even look at Derrick. “The cards don’t always elicit a clear emotional response. Sometimes they can be fuzzy.”

“But I did feel something.”

She looked at him then. “What did you feel?”

“Fear. I think.”

She shrugged slightly, then handed him the card. “When you’re dealing with weapons, fear is usually the correct response. You did good, Siegel.”

“Thanks. Selena, are you sure—”

“It’s nothing. I promise. I’ve just got somewhere to be.”

He nodded slowly. “All right.”

She walked into the hallway and saw me. Her eyes softened for just a second, and I saw what the wall was trying to protect. Derrick had been right. I’d never seen Selena Ward scared of anything, but there was fear on her face.

Her mouth tightened again, and the fear receded. Her defenses were nearly impeccable. Far better than mine.

“You’ve got two visitors,” she said. “They’re waiting at reception. Make sure they get the proper badges. Probationary clearance only.”