Olivia laughed. “Kind of. Only Skilled parents would never do that. Anyway, the second reason Cam gave you a nickname was to help protect you. We’re taught to shorten our own names and to use friends’ nicknames in public, because using your full or even part of your real name in front of people you don’t know is like walking around handing out loaded guns to total strangers. Eventually, someone’s going to sot. Just because you don’t know your name can be used against you doesn’t mean it never will be.”

Van’s brown eyes were huge. “That’s pretty damn scary.”

Olivia nodded. “It should be. Kids can’t grasp the importance of not shouting their names for the whole world to hear. Hell, most unSkilled adults can’t even grasp that. Which only fuels the black-market demand for names.” She paused long enough to take a sip from a fresh bottle of water I’d set out on the counter—two beers apiece was plenty for three o’clock in the afternoon, and more than enough to lift Liv onto her soap-box. “But my point is that if you tell a child his full name before he’s old enough to keep a secret, he’ll inevitably tell someone else. And every little bit of his identity that he lets slip gives a stranger power over him. It works the same way with blood.”

But Vanessa already knew that. The first thing I’d taught her was to destroy every single drop of blood she either shed or spilled. She was a fast learner.

“I’m at a serious disadvantage, having only one middle name, aren’t I?” she asked, and Liv nodded. “So…how can I get a second one?”

“Do you know which parent gave you the middle name you have now?”

“Yeah.” Van frowned, as if she was thinking. “My dad. It was his sister’s name. She died when he was a kid.”

I knew exactly what Liv was going to say next, and I’d been itching to tell Vanessa myself—to give her one more way to defend herself—but I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. But hearing Liv say it was almost as sweet. “Then your mother can still give you a middle name.”

“She’s dead,” Van said, and her frown deepened into worry. “Does that mean I’m screwed?”

“Quite the opposite.” Liv grinned for the first time since we’d been reunited. “That means you have the power to name yourself. Just…decide on a middle name, and keep it to yourself. Don’t write it down, and don’t tell anyone.”

“It’s that easy?”

“Yup,” I said, pleased to be able to add something to the conversation. “But think about it carefully—when you decide on a name, it becomes part of your identity, and you can’t change your identity, even if you change your name legally. But once you have a second middle name, you’ll be that much harder to track or bind.” And as long as Tower didn’t know she had a second middle name, he couldn’t order her to divulge it.

“Awesome.” But she looked distinctly less than thrilled. In fact, she looked kind of scared. “So, if you Skilled people have this much power over names, and blood, and oaths, and contracts, why aren’t you ruling the world? I mean, why haven’t you guys just kind of…taken over?”

Liv glanced at me, and when I shrugged, she returned Van’s somber gaze with one of her own. “What makes you think we haven’t?”

Vanessa’s eyes went so wide she would have looked funny if she hadn’t looked so stunned and terrified.

“Not us personally,” I clarified. “Liv and I have no more power over the rest of the world than you do. But the people in political power have a lot more at their disposal than just a lot of money. Why do you think that not one single country’s government has been able to officially recognize—and thus claim the ability to regulate—Skills?”

Van blinked. “Because somebody in Washington doesn’t want that to happen?”

“More than one somebody,” Liv said. “And more than one somebody in Ottawa, and London, and Paris, and Berlin, and Mexico City, and Beijing, and…”

“I think she gets the picture, Liv,” I said, before she could recite the seat of government in every country in the world. And before Van’s eyes could bug out of her head.

“So it’s a conspiracy?” Van whispered, and that time I wasn’t even sure if she was talking to us.

“It’s a way of life,” Liv corrected. “It’s a game of misdirection. It’s the wolf dressed in lamb’s wool, holding a filibuster on the senate floor. You’ll hear what he’s saying, and you may even see his sharp teeth peeking out of the disguise, but you’ll never know what he’s trying to distract you from with all the noise and the political controversy.”

I scowled. “Well, now that you’ve scared the shit out of her, how ’bout we return to the job at hand, and let D.C. run itself into the ground without our help?”

Vanessa glanced at her watch, then turned back to her laptop screen, obviously relieved to have something else to think about. “Well, if Mr. Eric Richard Hunter had a second middle name, it’s not on anything I’ve been able to find online.”

I rounded the corner of the peninsula to join Liv in looking over Van’s shoulder. “What worries me is that his first middle name was so accessible.”

“Why does that worry you?” Van asked, cracking the top on her water bottle.

“Because we don’t actually use our middle names,” Liv said, before I could answer. “That would defeat the entire point of having them. They don’t go on our birth certificates, or any other official paperwork. That’s like handing out the key to your house every time you fill out a routine form.”