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I nodded, mostly to myself.

I was trying really hard not to be offended by the fact that Black was obviously angry with me. Was it seriously because I’d been thinking about Nick being a vampire? Because we were sooverthat now, weren’t we?

I must have thought that too loudly, too.

Next to me, a plume of anger rippled off Black’saleimi.

I forced myself to ignore it, to put my mental energy on the woman with the blond bob. Black was right about her, of course. I’d assumed she was protecting Wicker because of the way she hovered over him, and because I couldn’t get into her mind. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d been thinking of her like I would a seer, simply because I couldn’t read her.

But she might not have any idea. She might have zero clue that her implant turned her mind into a locked box to a whole other species.

“So, did you decide what you think of her?” I asked Black. “Do you think she knows about us? Does she have any idea what you are? Or that seers exist in general?”

Black shrugged. “If you’re asking purely for my opinion, I would say no, she doesn’t know. She never would’ve put us in a room with Wicker if she knew, or left us alone with Morgan. But I don’t have anything I could call proof.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic.

She’d obviously been livid about what Wicker told us. He was likely being reamed out, even now, or worse.

“So whatdidyou find?” Nick asked, blunt. “You read him, right?”

Black turned slowly, again hiding his hostility towards Nick, but only just.

“I can’t answer that yet,” Black said, pulling his eyes off Nick to glance at me.

“Can’t? Or won’t?” Nick snorted. “Is it about that tech?” Nick waited for Black to answer, and scowled when he didn’t. “I thought you were kind of over the top about that… but you were just trying to keep their minds on it, weren’t you? His, anyway? Wicker’s? You wanted him to think about the tech to make him easier to read?”

Black didn’t answer, not directly.

“Let’s go to Rucker’s house,” he said. Black’s gold eyes returned to the windshield––bright, sharp, reminding me of a great cat. “We’ll see if we can find anything useful there. Then maybe we can go get some lunch.”

I knew what he meant.

That’s when we’d talk about whether it was time to call the police.

Ihadn’t actually known Lucian Rucker lived in San Francisco.

From everything I’d read and scanned in headlines and news briefs, I’d assumed his main residence was in New York, or possibly Los Angeles.

Locally, they’d always talked about him as someone “flying into town,” or “staying a week,” or “here for a conference.” It always sounded temporary, like an event, something we should all care about for some reason. I’d never known anyone to have seen him around, either, unlike other local celebrities and CEOs.

Until now, I’d never read or heard a single mention of Lucian Rucker having a significant property in San Francisco, much less that he’d designated it his primary residence. I’d seen photo-filled features about properties he had in other countries, across multiple continents, and a yacht the size of a barge with two helipads and a swimming pool, but nothing about the gated property we were given directions to by Ethan Morgan, his security chief.

I wondered if that was a security issue, as well.

Also, maybe it was premature to assume this particular house was the place he considered “home,” versus some tax designation required for other reasons.

Still, everyone had some “main” dwelling they slept in, didn’t they?

Or was that just something non-billionaires did?

Like Nick, and probably Black, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around why Black had been hired by these people at all, especially given how hostile Gorren seemed. If not to pin a murder on him, or help provide cover while they tried to Frankenstein their boss’s brain chip into a new body, then why were we here?

It didn’t sound like they’d be successful with the chip side of things. Black confirmed that Wicker had been even more skeptical about their success with the chip than he’d told us. Wicker was apparently under a lot of pressure to make it happenanyway; apparently some of Rucker’s big stock holders were in denial about how death worked, and seemed determined to bring Lucian Rucker back to life.

That whole side of things was weird as fuck.

If they had been successful, what then? Was no one supposed to notice when Lucian Rucker showed up at his next event, looking (and likely acting) noticeably different? Even utilizing some kind of cloning technology, he’d inevitably look different in various ways. How they planned to explainthatwas something I almost wanted to see.