“Who is this?” Conway demanded.

Fullerton looked at him for a full second. “I’m here on behalf of Scroll, Inc., to perform genetic identification at House Etterson’s request.”

Conway’s eyes went glassy and wide. Panic shivered in his brown irises. He took a jerky step back and threw his arms out to his sides, touching each corpse. A wave of revulsion slammed into me, sudden and overwhelming, a terrible feeling that things had just gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The desiccated body on the table next to me lunged up. I saw it coming but my mind had half a second to react, and it refused to accept what it was seeing. The corpse leaped at me. Cold, hard fingers locked on my throat.

Panic slapped me. The air vanished. Pain clamped my throat in a steel vise and squeezed.

Conway sprinted to the door. Fullerton stepped aside, letting Conway pass, his face perfectly calm as if we were at a society lunch. Runa spun, aiming at Conway with her hand. If she poisoned him, whatever he knew would die with him.

I clamped my hands together and drove them up between the corpse’s arms. Its hands fell off my neck and I rammed my heel into its midsection. It stumbled back.

“No!” I croaked.

A burst of green shot from Runa like a striking viper and lashed Conway’s shoulders, just before the other corpse jumped over me and landed on her back. Conway dove through the doorway and vanished from sight.

Crap.

The first corpse righted itself. I sucked in a breath—my throat was on fire—and pulled my knife out. The reanimated bodies didn’t act like zombies; they were simply vessels for the reanimator’s magic, like puppets on invisible strings. Stabbing it in the heart or the head would get me nowhere. I had to disable it.

My magic sparked, pulling me, and I let it guide my strike. My siren talent came from my father, but this I inherited from my mother. It made her a deadly sniper, it allowed Leon to make impossible shots, and it never steered me wrong.

The desiccated husk of a human charged at me with its arms open wide. I caught its right wrist, stabbed my blade into its armpit, and twisted. The seven-inch CPM-3V high-carbon steel sliced through the shriveled gristle of the tendons and cartilage like it was old, dry leather. The arm fell from the shoulder, hanging by a thin strip of flesh.

I let go of its wrist, jerked the blade free, and slashed across the back of the corpse’s neck. Its head rolled off its shoulders. I stabbed my knife into its other shoulder, wrenched the bone out of the socket, cut across the body’s lower back, severing the vertebrae, and hammered a kick to the back of its knee. The corpse collapsed, falling apart. Pieces of the body writhed on the floor, no longer a threat.

The second corpse had sunk its fingers into Runa’s hair, hanging off her. Green mist wrapped around both, turning the body’s charred flesh green.

“Don’t touch!” Runa screamed. “I’ve got this. Go!”

I dashed past Fullerton and out of the room. The hallway on the right lay empty. On the left, Conway staggered forward, bent over and grabbing the wall for support. Yep, she poisoned him.

Never again. Runa Etterson wasn’t coming with me to interrogate any more leads. I had minutes, maybe seconds, to squeeze answers out of him.

I ran.

Conway glanced over his shoulder and sped up. He was nearly to the corner. I had to get to him before her poison finished him off.

He stumbled, clutched at the wall, and pulled himself up. I was almost to him.

A tall, lean man in an expensive black suit rounded the corner and stalked toward us. He moved with grace, not like a dancer but like a swordsman, swift and supple, and carried himself with complete assurance as if he owned the whole building and his mere presence was an honor to behold. His longish brown hair had fallen over one side of his face.

Conway lunged to the left, trying to avoid him.

The man’s hand snapped out. He caught the AME’s shoulder, steadying him, pulled a long, narrow dagger out of his jacket, and stabbed Silas Conway in the heart.

It was a breathtaking strike. Smooth, fast, flawless. My magic sparked, as if acknowledging the beauty of it. He didn’t even aim. He did it all in a single offhanded motion, as if he had taken his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to a friend. This wasn’t expertise, this was mastery, born of pure muscle memory and superior reflexes.

The man raised his head. Alessandro Sagredo looked at me over Conway’s shoulder, smiled, and smoothly withdrew his knife from the AME’s chest.

My brain short-circuited. I tried to stop, but I was sprinting on a polished concrete floor, and the laws of physics conspired against me. I slid. The floor squeaked under my boots, and I skidded past the two men at full speed. Alessandro tilted his head and watched me slowly come to a stop.

How was this possible? Alessandro Sagredo was a playboy. He took pictures in the Caribbean with his shirt off. He surfed in Fiji and shopped in London. He didn’t stab random government workers in the heart with surgical precision.

Alessandro was looking at me. Right at me. Like I was the only thing in the world. A hot, predatory fire played in his amber eyes. He looked at me like I was a delicious steak and he was a hungry wolf.

Say something smart, say something smart . . . “Hey!” Oh my God.

Without saying a word, Alessandro stepped over Conway’s body and walked toward me. I should have turned around and run the other way, or at least raised my knife. Instead, I just stood there, like a complete idiot.

Alessandro reached over and offered me his bent arm. I rested my fingers on his forearm. The muscle under the suit’s fabric felt like steel. Alessandro moved, and we strolled around the corner.

I was hallucinating. I had to be.

“I . . .”

“Shh,” he said in a slightly accented voice. “Just keep walking. Building security will be here soon, and we need to not be here.”

He had killed Conway. It didn’t bother him. It didn’t disturb him any more than swatting a fly. Alessandro had stabbed a human being in the heart before. Many, many, many times before.

I’d made a serious error in judgment.

“I like your knife,” he said. “You might want to put it away though, before someone gets excited.”

I slid the blade back into its sheath in my coat. Wait. He’d shushed me. Like I was five. He told me to put my knife away and I did. And now I was letting him walk me away.

What the hell am I doing?

“Why are we walking?”

He glanced at me, his tawny eyes amused. “Because I’ve just knifed someone. Security will want to ask me a lot of boring questions. I hate boring questions. And there will be paperwork. I hate that too.”

Oh yeah, well, in that case. “You killed Conway.”

“Yes, I did.”

I stopped. He stopped too and looked at me.

“Alessandro, what are you doing here?”

“Trying to get you to walk faster?”

My brain finally regained the ability to form complete sentences. “Why did you kill Conway? He was a lead in my investigation and now he’s dead.”

“He was a very bad man. You were chasing him with a knife.”

“I needed to ask him some questions.”

He smiled like a wolf baring its fangs in a dark forest. “Were you going to stab him if he didn’t answer?”

“I don’t need to stab people to get answers.”

He sighed. “Collect your friend and go home, Catalina. There are no answers for you here.”

What?

Runa rounded the corner at full speed, saw us, and froze.

“I’m so sorry,” Alessandro said. “I have to leave now. Go home, stay safe, and forget all about this.”

Ahead the elevator chimed.

“I’ll see you around.” Alessandro raised his hand. Somehow there was a gun in it. I didn’t see him draw one. The gun barked, spitting bullets, the window to our right shattered, and Alessandro jumped out of it.

The elevator doors slid open, and guards in grey uniforms poured out, guns drawn.

“Put your hands up!” the leading guard roared.

I put my hands on my head and let them handcuff me.

Ten minutes after the building security apprehended me, the Houston PD House Response Unit arrived at the scene in a blaze of glory. They released Fullerton, who was clearly a neutral third party, detained Runa and me, and asked us questions for forty-five minutes. The way they concentrated on the description of the mysterious male who stabbed Conway made me think Alessandro had tampered with the hallway cameras. After the third round of the same questions, I dug my heels in, gave them the name of our attorney, and pointed out that my client was traumatized by having her family reanimated and that she had enemies powerful enough to corrupt an AME and that I could see at least three spots from which one could line up a long-range shot and snipe her. After that I answered every question with “Are we free to go?” They gave up and released us. I grabbed Runa and all but shoved her into the elevator.