Benedict Simons was the head technician in the Corps' version of a forensic lab. The magical community long ago gave up on the idea that magic is some mystical, indefinable quantity. There's still a lot we don't understand, but there are some hard-and-fast rules—like the fact that everyone's energy signature is slightly different. No two people cast the same spell in quite the same way. It amounts to a magical fingerprint that allows the caster to be identified in certain circumstances, such as being able to test four people who were still under her spell.

"Ben performed the trace himself—there's no mistake," Hargrove said brusquely.

"And her motive?" I pushed the photo back at him. "I don't know this woman; I've never even heard of her. Why would she go to so much trouble to have me killed?"

"Colafranceschi was one of the founding Assassins."

I frowned. "If she was an assassin, why didn't she just do the job herself?"

"Not an assassin," he said impatiently. "One of the Assassins. They were a group of hit men—and women—who styled themselves after a sect of eleventh-century Islamic extremists. The modern-day Assassins were wiped out twelve years ago. The mage who led the investigation and the final raid was Guillame de Croissets."

I blinked. "My father."

"Exactly."

"Okay." I rubbed my eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing headache that had been building all day. "I see why this woman might target his daughter. But why in such a convoluted way?"

"Because Colafranceschi specializes in weaving illusions. Perhaps she liked the irony of destroying you using one of our own spells."

And that hurt worse than anything—the idea that Adam had died attempting to impress me. He and the other students had attacked me while under a carefully crafted illusion. It was officially known as the Trials, although the local slang term was "Vegas Odds," because you had about as much chance of beating it as you did of hitting a million-dollar jackpot. Of course, that was kind of the point—this was one game you weren't supposed to win.

Students were led to believe that the Trials would give them a chance to demonstrate the skills they'd acquired by the end of basic training. In fact, it was a test of character. The specifics of the test varied from person to person, because each instructor designed and supervised their own. But they all had one thing in common: a no-holds-barred fight where your friends all died around you and you were left with the decision to either finish the allotted task and die, or save yourself and fail.

If you chose the latter, no matter how good your performance otherwise, you washed out. And if you chose the former, you found out how you faced death by actually doing it. The test was brutal but necessary. If a dark mage covertly entered the program, he or she wouldn't learn anything new in basic training. But the apprenticeship phase was much more advanced, and no one liked the idea of someone picking up the latest magical breakthroughs only to turn them on us.

Adam had been a year or more away from the Trials, but someone had spelled him and the other four to believe that they were undergoing it now and that their mission was to assassinate me. Of course, had they really been in the Trials, they would have been closely supervised, with someone in the illusion along with them to guide it and chart their progress. Nothing they experienced would have actually taken place—not my death, not their own. As it was, the Trials had wreaked the usual havoc, but this time, everything had been very real indeed.

"If the Assassins are reforming, it could explain the unusually high number of losses we've sustained in recent months," Hargrove was saying. "More than two dozen mages have been killed in suspicious circumstances, to the point that we started an investigation into a possible leak in the department. But it found nothing—possibly because there was nothing to find."

"The Assassins usually worked for profit alone," Simons added. "But in our case… it is conceivable that they bear enough of a grudge to forgo that in favor of revenge."

"And picking off our operatives would ensure that we were stretched too thin by the war to come after them," Hargrove added. "Now, I want to know everything that happened today—every detail—and don't tell me it's already in the reports."

I didn't bother arguing. It was too late and we were all too tired. Besides, if there was anything in what had happened that might help catch Colafranceschi, I wanted it as much as they did.

I sat there for another hour, recounting yet again a detailed description of the attack. It was starting to sound like a catalog of personal failures: caught half-asleep with inadequate weapons—check; let them get past the front door and thereby through the wards—check; unable to capture them without leaving one dead on the ground—check. It was hard to see how I could have screwed things up any worse.

Hargrove obviously agreed. By the time I finished, his mouth was even tighter than before and his shrewd blue eyes were slits. "Fortunately, there is a way to redeem your error," he told me sourly. "Colafranceschi has been located. She has a loft downtown in a converted office building." He gave me the address, and I had to admit, it was impressive work for the time they'd had.

"How did you get this so quickly?"

"We turned young Markham loose a few hours ago. He led us right to her."

"What?" I was certain I'd heard wrong. "You sent Jason back to that creature?"

"He remains under her spell," Hargrove said impatiently. "They all do."

"So you decided to use him as bait?!"

He flushed puce. "Better that than young Adam's fate," he hissed.

And that was enough to send me over the brink into anger so intense that I couldn't speak, couldn't even splutter, because all the fury—at Hargrove for being such a cold-hearted bastard, at the Assassins for existing, at the fucking universe for not letting me pause for one second before muttering that spell—was choking me, cutting off my breath.

"Illusions that deep are notoriously difficult for another mage to dissolve without damage to the mind in thrall," Simons said, glancing back and forth between the two of us. He looked a little spooked. "We… we tried, of course, but without her cooperation, I'm afraid there isn't much hope. Lifting the spell would likely shred their minds along with the illusion."

"That doesn't justify sending him back! Jason failed her. Do you really think she's going to keep him alive?"

"No," he said quietly. "But if the spell is not lifted soon, they'll all die. They will continue to attempt to carry out her last command to the exclusion of everything else. They won't eat unless fed intravenously, or sleep unless sedated or do anything except to search for you."

"Then we'll make them believe I'm dead," I said a little unsteadily. "We could fake—"

"Yes, but then they would be like robots on standby, waiting for the next order. Which would never come. A zombie, in effect, for life."

I had a sudden visual, and it was horrible. I strongly suspected that they'd prefer Jason's fate—whatever it was—to a future as drooling vegetables or comatose druggies. For that matter, so would I.

"If you want to help your students," Hargrove said, "I suggest you use the opportunity to remove this creature from my territory."

"We could call upon our own assassins, of course," Simons offered. "But you have one great advantage over them—your Were blood leaves you impervious to illusions. Her greatest weapon will be useless against you."

"Unless you would prefer someone else to clean up your mess," Hargrove said silkily.

"No, sir," I snapped. Hargrove was a dick, but he was a dick with a point. Adam's death was my fault, and if I didn't get this bitch soon, the others faced something even worse. I was suddenly, fiercely glad that this assignment was mine.