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You have to honor it. Otherwise, you may call on it one day and find that it’s stopped listening to you.”

My face went red. “I’m sorry, Duessa. You’re completely right.”

And she was. I did take the power for granted sometimes. I assumed that it would always answer me, quickly and efficiently, as it had when I was a little girl. But even now, at twenty-six, I found that the magic came just a little bit slower. It didn’t always do exactly what I wanted. Basic techniques took more and more concentration to pull off successfully, and the recovery time got longer.

It was the same with drinking. I couldn’t pound back two pitchers of beer anymore. Red wine just made me want to go to sleep. Last week, I’d passed out on the couch while watching a Food Network documentary.

Duessa put her hand lightly on my shoulder—the same hand that, moments ago, had burned with frightening light.

“It’s okay, honey. We all forget sometimes. But trust me. You have to respect these mysteries, just like you’d respect a loaded gun. Your care and attention is the only thing that keeps them from turning on you. And nobody wants that.”

Lucian moved toward me. “Tess had been working really hard—”

Duessa raised a hand. “No excuses. That goes for you as well, Lucito. If any power needs to be respected, it’s yours.”

Cindée exhaled a tad loudly. “Can I put the cover back on now?”

Duessa nodded. “Of course. She’s sleeping now.”

“Right.” Cindée closed and locked the Plexiglas case. “And what exactly did y’all talk about?”

“It wasn’t really a conversation,” Duessa said. “More like a silent movie, with all of the scenes played out of order. But I still managed to pick up a few details.”

Cindée opened up her red notebook. “Did you find out when the breastplate was forged? Were we close?”

“Well . . .” Duessa raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t quite work that way.”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“Don’t give me sour face. For an artifact like this, determining time of birth can be as tricky as identifying time of death.”

Cindée blinked. “Okay. I can see that. How about a blurry estimate?”

“Mid-1570s. I’d guess.” She gestured to the armor. “Of course, there are some things you can tell just by looking at her. The cuirass is heat-blackened, with detailed piccadill borders, and overlapping lame-plates. That eliminates anything made in England or France before 1550. It’s far closer to Milanese plate.”

I nodded. “Right. I knew that.”

Cindée was writing things down furiously. “Lame-plates. Got it. What else?”

“There are brass studs on the shoulders and back-plates.” She gestured to raised gold buttons on the edges of the steel vest. “Post-1550, we might expect these to be Tudor roses, such as the kind you’d see on Henry VIII’s famous Montmorency garniture. But these studs are actually solid gold arming nails, meant to reinforce the cuirass against blows from a lance.”

“So it’s pageant armor,” Lucian said. “Meant for show, right?”

“It may have been made to look like pageant armor. But the steel remembers blood and violence.

It’s definitely been on a field of battle somewhere.”

“Time out.” Cindée put down her notes. “So far, you aren’t really telling us anything that we hadn’t already considered. And it doesn’t matter if the armor was made for a pageant or a war. We need to figure out where it came from, and why Luiz Ordeño was wearing it the night that he died.”

I gave her an admiring look. “Wow. You’re starting to sound like a real OSI. Maybe you should transfer to the field.”

She sighed. “I’ve thought about it more than once. There’s only so many filament samples you can analyze before you feel like you’ll die of boredom.”

Duessa was still looking at the armor. “Pieces like this were also national texts. They were meant to encode the values of the empire. When a prince put on a suit of armor like this, he became a Roman hero. The metal tells the story of centuries’ worth of bloodshed, warfare, and pain.”

I followed her gaze. “So we have to read it like a history book?”

“In this case, you have to read it like a spell-book. Ordeño knew how to read it. Now you have to learn as well.”

“Me personally? Because I’m not great with languages. I still don’t know how to conjugate tener in the simple preterite.”

Lucian grinned. “But you’re trying. And that’s what’s important.”

“In a way,” Duessa said, “you’re right. The great metal-smiths, like Negroli, or Diego de Çais . . .

they were working with a kind of steel alphabet. The damascene and the acid-etched images form a language, and in this case, the code is meant to conceal an old form of magic. Break the code, and you’ll figure out whatever the magic does.”

I gave her a look. “Really? That’s all you can tell me?”

“Why, Tess. You sound disappointed.”

“Come on. This is like when you said that you’d never met the Iblis. You know way more than you’re telling me.”

“Tess—” Lucian began.

Duessa just smiled. “Some things you have to figure out for yourself, niña. I’m not an esoteric GPS.

I can’t give you directions to everything.”

“Of course not. But you can give us something better than ‘mid-1570s.’ Right? I mean, what would someone like Ordeño even be doing with a fancy breastplate from the Renaissance? What was it supposed to protect him from?”

Duessa returned my look coolly. “To know that, you’d have to think like a necromancer. So maybe you’re asking the wrong person.”

I turned to Lucian. “Yeah. Maybe I am.”

He took a small step backward. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know anything more than you do about medieval armaments.”

“I find that hard to believe. I’ve seen your library.”

“Those books are mostly for show.”

“Lucian, come on. Ordeño was a litigator. When we searched his apartment, we didn’t find any other bric-abrac from the Golden Age. Just the armor. So what was he doing with it?”

“I don’t know. He was a mentor and an old friend, Tess, but I never knew much about his past.

Maybe it was a family heirloom.”

“Or maybe he was alive when it was made. A necromancer like that must have been pretty long-lived, right?”

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He seemed to be staring at a patch of space directly above my right shoulder.

“It’s possible. Skilled practitioners have been known to manipulate necroid materia into slowing the aging process.”

“Practitioners. But not necessarily Ordeño. Or you.”

He blinked. “Are you asking how old I am, Tess?”

“I’m asking you to give me something that isn’t a vague estimate or a cryptic joke. We’re working together here, Lucian. If we don’t keep the lines of communication open, we’re just going to go around in circles.”

“There’s only so much I’m authorized to tell you.”

I gestured to the armor. “We let you into our lab. We’ve given you access to materials involved in an ongoing investigation. That sounds like trust to me. The least you can do is give us a bit more in-fo on Ordeño.”

“What would you like to know?”

I looked at him flatly. “All of his records are sealed. Aside from the bio on his website, we know virtually nothing about him. Date of birth. Family. Attachments. He has no paper trail.”

“Most of us don’t. You’re the ones who value files and archives and standardized tests. Your CORE

may collect every scrap of information about its employees, but we’re not like that. Necromancers don’t have a union. There’s no online database that I can pull up for you, with information on all of Ordeño’s personal habits.”

“Then what do you know about him?”

He seemed to think about it for a moment. “Not a lot. And I’m telling the truth when I say that. I’m guessing that he was anywhere from three to four hundred years old. He was born in Valladolid. I think. No living relatives. He spent most of his time in court, in Trinovantum. He loved his job, and he was very good at it.”

“What cases was he working on?”

Lucian made a face. “That’s classified.”

“Fine. Is there anything you can tell me about his recent caseload? Anything remotely pertaining to this case?”

Lucian looked at Duessa. Something illegible passed between them. He shrugged, finally, and looked at me again.

“Ordeño was working on a very important piece of litigation. A political agreement of sorts. I can’t say much about it, because I don’t really know much. But it definitely would have made him a target.”

“A target to whom? Other necromancers? Vampires?”

“Both.”

“Great. And you have no idea how a sixteenth-century suit of armor ended up in his apartment, or why he’d be wearing it on the night that he died?”

“Honestly—I don’t.”

I looked at Duessa. “And you have nothing to add?” “Nothing that I haven’t already said.” She reached into her purse. “But I might know someone who can tell you a bit more.”

She wrote down something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I looked at it.

“Are these GPS coordinates?”

Duessa nodded. “In Stanley Park. Follow those coordinates, and you’ll find an associate of mine.

He’s called the Seneschal. Mention my name, and he’ll help you.”

“What kind of associate?”

“He’s a bit of a polymath, and a collector. He knows a little about a lot. But he can be a bit cranky sometimes, so don’t piss him off.”

I closed my eyes. “Is this associate human or demon?”

“Neither, really. You’ll see when you meet him.”

“Great. Because I love surprises.” I looked at Lucian. “Will you come with me at least? As moral support?”

He managed to look guilty. “I have a meeting. It’s sort of important.”

“Of course you do.” I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ll take Derrick. He loves surprises as much as I do.”

I walked out of the lab, leaving Cindée to deal with the two of them.

“Tess!” Duessa called after me. “Remember to bring a gift!”

I stopped in the hallway. “What kind of gift?”

Duessa leaned out of the doorway. “Something pretty. He likes things that are bedazzled. At least he used to.”

I stared at her. “Are you serious?”

She nodded slowly.

“Perfect.” I turned around and walked toward the reception desk. “But if I have to buy something from Forever 21, I’m debiting the department.”

6

It was a relief to step through the door of my house. The air was cool, and the smell of coffee drifted from the kitchen. I expected to find Mia studying in the living room, which would have explained the coffee brewing.

I tossed my bag on the table in the hallway. “I hope you’re not planning an all-night research fest on the wonders of attending Berkeley. You know, it would be a refreshing change to see you just being lazy for—”

Patrick looked up from where he was sitting on the couch, reading a math textbook. “Mia’s not here. She’s staying late at school for some yearbook thing.”

It was strange to see him home this early in the evening. “That’s fine. What are you up to tonight?”

He shrugged. “Nothing really. I might watch a movie later. I made coffee, and there’s some left if you want it.”

“Thank you. I’d love some.”

I walked into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboard, looking for my favorite mug. In truth, I was just stalling until I came up with something interesting to say to him. We didn’t spend a lot of one-on-one time together, and even though I was the one who’d invited Patrick to live with us, I found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable around him.

Maybe it was because I had no idea what he spent most of his time doing. He was gone most nights.

He’d return just before dawn and collapse into bed, then wake up a few hours later for school, looking exhausted. I knew that his constitution allowed him to spend a certain amount of time outside in the sun, without permanent side effects (such as self-immolation), but he wasn’t about to join the football team.

Aside from a few mumbled comments, I had no idea how he was fitting in with the rest of his peers in the twelfth grade. Did he have friends? A sweetheart? Maybe he was humping mortals left and right, like a horny vampire rabbit. He certainly wouldn’t tell me about it, if that were the case.

I didn’t even know what questions to ask. So, how are those vampire magnate duties coming along?

Is it tough to regulate demonic traffic within the city? Do you get competitive health benefits?

To be honest, I had no idea what a magnate really did. Caitlin had carried an aura of power and glamour about her, like an undead celebrity. But Patrick just looked tired and confused most of the time. He could barely find his iPod every morning. He didn’t seem to have the fierce acumen necessary for controlling vampire affairs citywide.

I sat down in the overstuffed armchair next to the couch, which Derrick had rescued from the neighbor’s backyard. I thought about sharing the couch with Patrick, but it seemed too intimate somehow.

We didn’t have that sort of convivial relationship. We kept a polite distance from each other at all times.

“How’s school?” It was the most inane question I could think of asking, but it still sprang from my lips. I couldn’t help it.

He groaned a little and stared at his textbook, which had colorful geometric shapes on it. “It’s killing me. Do you have any idea what molar calculus is?”

I shook my head.

“Me neither. But apparently we have to know it for the AP exam, which Mia is already going to get a hundred percent on. Because she’s a mutant.”

“I believe she prefers the term ‘magical savant.’ ”

He laughed. “Yeah. I’ve got weird shit in my blood, too, but it doesn’t give me the power to ace these exams. Mostly, it just drives me crazy.”

“Yeah?” I tried to sound only vaguely interested. This was the most personal information he’d shared in the last two months, and I didn’t want to scare him off. “I know that feeling. Sometimes I wish the earth would just shut up already and stop talking to me. Unless it knows how to get me out of my cell-phone contract.”

He smiled. “What does it sound like? When the earth talks, I mean?”

I thought about it, taking another sip of coffee. “Sort of like a vibration that starts somewhere in the back of my head. It gets louder, though. Sometimes the floorboards can sound downright pissed.”