A rectangle of laseprint paper crinkled under my fingers as I drew it out. Gabe's daughter grinned up at me, the edges of the glossy paper wrinkled with blood. I tucked the picture securely in my bag, reached up to push a strand of wet heavy hair out of her face. My fingertip slid over her emerald, dead and lifeless now; the tat that would never shift to answer mine again. My cheek burned, though her emerald was dark.

A slight crackling buzz sparked between the gem and my fingertip. An EMP. Of course. They trigger an electromagnetic pulse, and everyone's so busy trying to get their holovids reprogrammed they don't notice a Necromance's murder. But what about the AI well? Her pulse monitor would have sent distress signals every half-second! Unless… unless it was a focused EMP pulse, that would reset the hardcode.

I touched the datband with one finger. It flushed red: Hardcode wiped. It was about as useless as plain plasilica now. A focused EMP pulse, cop or Hegemony hardware. Which meant I was dealing with someone very serious about killing her for some reason. Someone who had the funding and hardware to get away with triggering an EMP pulse within the borders of the city's hoverzones.

"I have to go inside." I straightened, my fingers leaving Gabe's cold motionless wrist reluctantly.

"We must be quick." Japhrimel cocked his head. "I hear sirens."

In a city this size, of course you hear sirens. It was useless, he had some way of knowing the cops were finally coming. Hours too late.

Why? Why were they coming now?

I took one last long, lingering look at Gabe's body. Fixed every line, every curve, every drop of blood in my Magi-trained memory.

Roanna. Lewis. Doreen. Jace. Eddie. And now, Gabe. My throat swelled again, I swallowed the scream. Some of those deaths I had avenged, never enough to assuage the deep sleeping sense of guilt; there is only so much satisfaction to be had from spilling blood for vengeance.

But I owe it to her. To both of them, to Eddie and Gabe. I turned on my heel and stalked away. Japhrimel fell into step behind me, silent again. The pressure of his attention wrapping around me helped to keep the scream inside, I couldn't let it out while the velvet fingers of his aura stroked my skin, the mark on my left shoulder burning deeper and deeper into my flesh.

Gabe's house shields quivered. They would eventually lose Power and become no more than shadows, holding the psychic impressions of her family, generation upon generation of Necromances and cops. But since her family had been shielding this house for a very long time, it might well take hundreds of years for the Power to fade.

The back door was unlocked and open, and I peered in. Let out a sharp breath. This door gave into the kitchen, and I could see smashed plates and appliances. Someone had tossed the hell out of Gabe's beautiful, expensive, comfortable kitchen.

My boots ground on broken ceramic and plasglass as I picked my way inside. Japhrimel laid a hand on my shoulder. "I do not like this," he said quietly.

I inhaled. Sage, and salt. Someone had been cleaning up in here, erasing psychic traces. "Her shields aren't torn here. Someone she knew, then. Someone who didn't have to break in."

Which pretty much ruled out demon involvement. I was fairly sure this had nothing to do with Lucifer, which was a huge bloody relief. Finally, something the Prince of Hell didn't control.

The thought of Lucifer turned my stomach over hard, splashing its contents against the sides of my ribs.

I slid through the hall-even the pictures had been torn down, some yanked out of their frames. The first-floor living room, where Gabe and Eddie had done their meditating and had their altars, was a shambles. Gabe's exquisitely painted ceramic statue of Graeca Persephonia lay smashed on the floor, Persephonia's sad flat eyes gazing up thoughtfully at the ceiling. The tang of sage was very thick here, nose-stinging, overpowering Gabe's kyphii.

I made my way to the stairs, counted up to the seventh one, and knelt below it. My fingers ran along the bottom of the wooden lip of the seventh step.

"Dante? They are drawing closer. Do you wish to be seen here?"

I ignored him. My fingers found the slight groove, pressed with a small tingle of Power along my nails, and the nonmagickal lock yielded. The top of the step came away in my hands. I let out a low sigh.

There, in the hidey-hole, were four sheets of heavy-duty paper with Skinlin notations-snatches of musical notes, ancient Judic symbols, and complicated chemistry equations. There were also four vials of a white, grainy substance. Otherwise, the hole was empty and suspiciously clean. Gabe must have hoped I'd find this-or hoped nobody else would.

Her house exhaled around me, shaking free of sage-reek, the frowsty smell of old construction and uneven, sloping, renovated floors mixing with the heady spice of kyphii and the comfortable soft scent of a well-lived-in home. Faint tang of synth-hash smoke-she'd been smoking, probably not around the kid.

Where exactly was Gabe's daughter? Had she been kidnapped? In a safe place, Gabe had said. I wondered where, and hoped the place was safe enough.

What the hell is going an?

I scooped everything up. Paper crackled in my hands. "Let's go."

Leander still wasn't back at the hotel, and Lucas was nowhere in sight. I stalked past McKinley without a glance, into the suite I'd slept in. Dropped down on the bed, laid my sword down carefully, and dug in my bag, retrieving Eddie's murder file. Pearly sunlight fell through the window, making a thin square on the blue carpet. I swallowed a scorching curse, my rings sizzling and sparking. Tasted bile.

Japhrimel closed the bedroom door and leaned back against it, his arms folded and his eyes alight. I looked at the file, set it aside with the sheets of paper covered in Skinlin scribbles, and held up one of the vials.

The grainy substance inside glowed faintly in rainy afternoon light. Silence stretched inside the room. The curtains fluttered uneasily, once, and were still. Between Japh's taut alertness and my own furious, tightly-controlled pain, the walls groaned a little and subsided.

My chest ached. My eyes burned, dry and determined to stay that way. Nevertheless, my hand shook a little, making the fine grains inside the glass vial tremble and spill from one side to the other.

The mark on my shoulder lay quiescent against my skin now, no longer burning or spurring me away from shock. But the deep prickling sense of Japhrimel's attention remained, sliding around me the way a cat might, rubbing its head against its owner. Offering comfort, maybe.

Was it so bad of me to want to accept it? Things were as hopeless as ever between us.

I looked over at the door. His eyes were half-lidded, the green glow muted; perhaps for my sake. Still, they were the most vivid thing in the room, so bright they cast shadows under his high cheekbones.

We paused like that for twenty long seconds, each ticked off with a single deadly squeeze of my heart. My traitorous pulse still beat, reminding me I was alive.

"She's dead," I said finally, dully. Who is that, using my voice? She sounds defeated. Hopeless.

"I am sorry." It was the first time I heard his voice shake with sadness, ever so slightly. "If I could make it otherwise for you, I would."

I almost believed him. No, that's a lie. I did believe him. How was that for ironic? If he could have torn Death away and brought her back, he would have. Simply another present for his hedaira, a token of his strength given because he did not know what else to give me. How else to make me happy.