I felt my chest constrict as the vision rose in front of me—ash drifting up from white marble, a hot breeze lifting smudges and scatters of it. Ash and the single, restrained curve of a black urn, left as a final cruel joke.

My right hand twisted into a claw.

I owed her too much to easily walk away from. Gabe was old-school. She'd gone with me into hell and nearly been eviscerated on the way. She hadn't ever uttered a word of anger at my rudeness or my distance or about the fact that she'd almost died because of my hellbent need for revenge on Santino. Or about the fact that I held her at arm's length, refusing to talk about Rio or demons or anything else of any real importance that lay in the air between us, charged and ready to leap free.

"I don't know, Gabe." Why is my voice shaking? My voice never shakes. "I haven't gone… there… for a while."

And I missed it. I missed communing with my god, feeling ever-so-briefly the weight of living taken from me. I made my offerings and kept my worship, and every once in a while when I meditated the blue light of Death would weave subtle traceries through the darkness behind my eyes, a comfort familiar from my childhood.

But still, if I went into Death, what would I meet on the bridge between this world and the next? Would I see a tall slim man in a long dark coat, his golden hands clasped behind his back as he considered me, his eyes flaring first green, then going dark? Would he tell me he'd been waiting for me?

You will not leave me to wander the earth alone. But he'd left me, burned to death, crumbled in my arms. Seeing him in Death's country would make it final. Too final. Too unbearably final.

"You're the best, Danny. You can even hold an apparition out of a box of cremains, you've always been the best. Please." Gabe never begged, but her tone was dangerously close. She didn't even shift in her chair, leaning forward, her elbows on her desk. She's ready for action, I realized, and wondered just how tense and staring I looked. I was bleeding heat into the air, a demon's trick.

It wasn't just that Gabe was asking me. I closed Christabel's file and met her eyes squarely. At least she didn't flinch. Gabe was perhaps the only person that could look me in the eyes without flinching.

She still saw me. For Gabe, I hadn't changed. I was still Danny Valentine, under the carapace of golden skin and demonic beauty. She wasn't afraid of me—treated me no differently than she had ever since we'd become friends. For Gabe, I would always be the same person; the person she had dropped everything, leveraged her personal contacts, and hared off to Rio for. She had never even considered letting me face Santino by myself.

I would go into Death just for that reason alone.

I looked away. "What else is going on, Gabe? Come clean."

"Can't fool you, can I?" She shrugged, reaching again for her crumpled pack of cigarettes. She couldn't smoke in here, but she tapped the pack twice, a habitual gesture both soothing and oddly disturbing. I had never seen her this distracted. "It's not much, Danny. If I had anything more to work with…"

"Give it up." I sounded harsh, my voice throbbing at the lower registers of "human." The brandy bottles chattered against the desktop, my right hand ached. I wished the alcohol would do me some good. If it would have, I would have reached for it.

"Moorcock was found in her apartment. I searched the place, of course, and found exactly nothing. Except this." She held out a folded piece of pale-pink linen paper.

I took it, the black molecule-drip polish on my nails reflecting stripes of fluorescent light. Actually, they looked like nails, but they were claw-tips, just another mark of how far away from human I'd been dragged. My rings shimmered. They were always awake now, not just when the atmosphere was charged—though the air in here was heavy enough with Power and tension to qualify. I was radiating, and so was she. The line of force between us was almost palpable. Jace, of course, lounged like a big blond cat, smelling hungover and human with a soupçon of musk and male thrown in; spiky, spicy Power contained and deadly within a Shaman's thorny aura.

I caught a fleeting impression from the paper—a wash of terror perfumed like cloying lilacs, an impression of a woman. Necromances are an insular community, for all that we're loners and neurotic prima donnas. We have to be a community. Even among psions, the juncture of talent and genetics that makes a Necromance is unusual. I had known Christabel peripherally for most of my life.

The paper was torn on one corner. I gingerly opened it, as if it held a snake.

It pays to be careful.

I looked at it. All the breath slammed out of me again. "Fuck," I let out a strangled yelp.

Her handwriting was ragged, as if she'd been in a hell of a hurry. Great looping, spiky letters, done in dragons-blood ink; the pen had dug deep furrows in the paper. Like claw marks.

Black Room, it said. And below, in huge thick capitals, REMEMBER REMEMBER RIGGER HALL REMEMBER RIGGER HALL REMEMBER REMEMBER—

There was a long trailing slash at the end of the last letter, daggering downward as if she'd been dragged away while still trying to write.

I gasped for breath. The lunatic mental image of my body flopping on the floor like a landed fish receded; I forced my lungs to work. The world had gone gray and dim, wavering through a sheet of frosted glass. My back hurt, three lines of fire; another throbbing pain right in the crease of my left buttock. No. No, I don't have those scars anymore. I don't. I DON'T.

It took me a few moments, but I finally managed to breathe again. I looked up at Gabe, who sat still and solemn behind her desk, her dark eyes full of terrible guilt. "Fuck." This time I sounded more like myself, only savagely tired.

Only like I'd been hit and lost half my air.

Gabe nodded. "I know you went there. Before they had the big court case and the Hegemony closed it down. Moorcock was a few years older than you, she actually testified at the inquiry."

My mouth was dry as desert sand. "I know," I said colorlessly. "Sekhmet sa'es, Gabe. This is…"

"Blast from the past?" For once her humor didn't make me feel better.

Nothing would make this feel better.

I realized I was rubbing at my left shoulder with my wounded right hand, fiercely, as if trying to scrub away the persistent ache. I stopped, dropping my hand into my lap as I examined the paper again. There was a tiny ward-glyph at the top of the page, sketched hastily. It held no Power—it hadn't been charged.

Maybe she'd been interrupted by whatever had torn her body apart. Whatever. Whoever.

Could a person do this? I'd seen some horrible things done to the human body, but this was…

"When did she write this?" I actually sound like myself again, maybe because I can't breathe enough to talk. Hallelujah. All I have to do is get the wind knocked out of me, and I'll sound normal. Simple.

"We can't tell," Gabe said. "We had Handy Mandy try it, but she just passed out. When she came to, she said it was too thick and headed straight for a date with the bottle, hasn't sobered up since. It was on Moorcock's desk in her bedroom; she was in the living room when she was… killed. There was no sign of forced entry—her shields were still in place, fading but still in place, and ripped from the inside."

From the inside? "So it was someone she knew?" I wanted to rub at my shoulder again, stopped myself with an effort that made my aching fingers twitch. I smelled something new on the air.

Fear. A sharp, sweaty stink, as if I were tracking a bounty.

Except it was my own.

Gabe's eyes were darker than usual, the line between her eyebrows deepening. "We don't know, Danny."