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Don’t stare at me,he murmured.It looks weird.

I faced the brushed-steel desk and the two people behind it.

What is she?I asked.

What do you think she is?

I completely forgot what he’d just said and looked at him.Black. Just tell me what you think she is. She’s not a seer or a vampire is she?

I don’t know,he sent, now sounding as annoyed as me.As far as I can tell, she’s pure-blooded human. But I already know what I think. I wanted a second opinion.

I frowned.Why would you need a second opinion? Why mine? You’ve looked at a lot more seers and humans over the years than I have. Since when don’t you trust your own vision?

He gave me a brief look, eyes hard.

Well, I certainly don’t trust it as much as I used to,he retorted.But we’re on the clock, doc. Does she look human to you? Or not? I can only stall this psycho for so long.

I fought not to react to his words, or go too far into the meaning of them.

I focused on the woman, Rania Gorren.

As I did, it occurred to me that Black had never stopped talking.

Neither had the blond woman.

“Absolutely not,” Gorren snapped. “Not only do we have military agreements that prevent us from sharing that information––”

Black cut her off.

“That is… if you’ll pardon me saying it… utter bullshit,” he retorted. “Given the conditions surrounding my hire, you pretending to suddenly care about thelegalityof your military contracts would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting. Not to mention directly impeding my ability to do the job I was hired to do.”

The blue eyes narrowed behind perfect but artificially-lengthened lashes. “We will give you enough to do your job, Mr. Black.”

“You’re not, though. You’re clearly not,” Black growled. “You’ve already implied, numerous times in this very conversation, that the tech itself is the most likely motive behind Rucker’s murder, yet I haven’t even got a basic description of why it’s significant. Now I find it has something to do with why you’re not involving the police? You’re already broken our agreement about leaving my colleagues out of that side of things, incidentally––”

“This conversation is over,” Gorren cut in coldly, checking her watch. “We will revisit it at another time, once you’ve assessed thephysicalfacts of the case, like you were hired to do. Right now, I have somewhere to be.” She glared at Wicker, her fingers tightening on his shoulder, which she now appeared to be clutching. “Dr. Wicker is in no way authorized to speakto you about any of this. He was merely supposed to share the surveillance recordings.”

“That’s not my problem,” Black growled. “I want to know what you intend to do about the legal peril you’ve just put me and my company in. I can hardly claim I ‘didn’t know’ when you’ve likely got me and my colleagues on tape discussing your boss’s dead body in your building. How do I know that wasn’t the plan all along? That you won’t use that to pin all of your illegal crap on me and my company?”

The was a silence.

In it, the woman gave him a shrewd look.

Honestly, in that handful of seconds, I wondered if Black and I were wrong, if she was a seer after all. When I looked at heraleimi,however, I still saw what Black saw. Gorren’s living light wasn’t only shielded and inactive, it seemed, if anything, diminished.

Like she had lessaleimithan most humans, not more.

Rania Gorren glanced towards the door behind us, and a smile touched her lips.

“Ah. Hello, Mr. Morgan,” she said, that cold smile still on her lips. “You may come on in. Mr. Black is ready for you.”

I glanced at the man standing in the doorway, a tall, thin, specter with small, close-together eyes. I somehow disliked him the instant I looked at him. He made me think of a vulture. He stared at me like he was trying to see through my skin and flesh to my bones.

Peck. Peck. Peck.

The man never stopped staring at me.

“He’ll assist you and your team with the security tapes,” Gorren said, her voice still holding a vague warning. “Including any from this room during the conversation you had with Dr. Wicker in the past hour. You have my full permission to destroy anything you find problematic.”