He shrugged. "I'll let you know. Just stay out of trouble." He picked up the phone. "And relax. Siegel can help you. I'm sure he'd like some extra fieldwork."

Great. Not that I didn't appreciate Derrick's company, but he wasn't exactly a combat specialist.

"Thank you," I said slowly. "I'll-"

He pointed to the phone. "Sorry, Tess. You'll have to excuse me."

I gave him my best dutiful daughter smile, then walked out of the office. I kept walking, through another hallway, down a flight of steps, through an emergency exit, until I was standing on the outside terrace.

Then I screamed.

3.

There's nothing quite like the smell of formaldehyde and antiseptic at 7 a.m.

I paused outside the entrance to the CORE morgue facility.

Okay. I'm fine. This is fine. Everything is-I closed my eyes. Look, Corday, just get through this without throwing up. Tasha would never forgive you, and Marcus is just waiting for something like that to happen.

The examination room was cold, with dark cement floors that constantly smelled of industrial-grade antiseptic. You could hear the hiss of the vents, and the clicking of stainless-steel surgical instruments. There was an X-ray station against the far wall, and a small, neat desk adjacent to it. Every file-folder and notebook was tidily squared away on its proper shelf, and beside the desktop computer sat a black ceramic coffee mug and a Tupperware container. There was a small metal plaque on her desk, with the Latin phrase: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. "This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live."

In the center of the room was a stainless-steel operating table, with a smaller steel tray for holding instruments. Next to that was a scale for weighing organs, and beside that, a large sink with a detachable spigot for washing down the bodies. There was an ominously large metal drain in the floor next to the sink.

The vampire's body lay on the operating table, and Tasha Lieu, our chief medical examiner, was leaning over it, closing up the Y-incision. I could see the first cut running from shoulder to shoulder, and the second, longer cut running from the chest down to the pubis. I knew he couldn't feel it, but it still made me shiver. Being opened up like that, vivisected, your organs all weighed and measured. It was a private terror of mine.

Well-one of them.

"Come on over," Tasha said, putting down the needle and coarse thread.

"Great." I concentrated on keeping my breakfast down. "Have you identified the cause of death yet?"

"Nope-we might find something when we open up the skull, though." Tasha chuckled.

"Always seems ironic when we get a vamp on the table. Only demons I know of who actually die twice."

"Can we get on with this?"

Tasha looked up. "Feeling twitchy today?"

I sighed. "Sorry. Guess I just haven't been sleeping all that well." My eyes darkened. "Lots of bad dreams."

"If you want to sleep soundly," she said, laying the scalpel against the vampire's forehead, "you picked the wrong business, baby." Then she began to cut.

She made an incision just behind the vamp's left ear, then cut deeply with the scalpel, across the crown of the head and all the way to the bottom of the right ear.

"This is usually where the medical students throw up or faint."

Once, I'd actually seen Tasha make a newly minted OSI scream and run out of the room. She'd handed him a seedless grape when he wasn't looking, and told him that it was a victim's eyeball that he would have to withdraw vitreous fluid from using a massive needle.

Oldest trick in the book.

"I'll bet," I said, resisting the urge to look away. I wanted Tasha to respect me. And I could do this. I'd watched a demon's head explode like grapefruit; I'd seen what a mystical vortex could do to a human chest cavity at close range. I could certainly handle a bit of- -oh fuck- Reaching into the incision with her gloved hand, Tasha peeled back the scalp, revealing the skull that lay beneath. She picked up a Stryker saw from the steel tray, and flashed me a look.

"This is kinda loud."

"No worries," I said weakly.

The saw made a high-pitched bzzzzzz whine as it cut into the vampire's skull. The bone dust was stale, and oddly warm. I turned away to keep from sneezing. Tasha made two precise cuts. As she lifted off the top of skull, there was a distinct sucking sound. Once she'd removed the dura covering the brain, Tasha put down the Stryker saw and leaned forward for a closer look.

"Huh," was all she said.

I blinked. "Is that your expert medical opinion?"

She beckoned me over. "Come look at this."

I peered at the gray matter. "Is that blood?"

Tasha nodded. "There's visible bleeding within the subarachnoid space. We'd need an angiography to pinpoint the source, but I'd say that it probably started somewhere in the cerebral ventricles. Looks like there's some malformation there."

"So that's like hemorrhaging, right?"

Tasha nodded. "Just like a subdural hematoma, except it's deeper in the brain-harder to detect."

I finally had to look away from the bloody gray mess that had once been this vampire's brain.

"What normally causes that kind of trauma? Blunt force?"

Tasha made a face. "Could be, but then you'd find evidence of fractures in the skull. This guy's skull is clean. Judging from the striae in the bone, I'd say that his human life ended when he was still pretty young-twenty-five, thirty, tops. Since then, he hasn't sustained any kind of head trauma."

"Vampires don't just drop dead from a brain aneurysm."

I must have had an edge to my voice, because Tasha peered at me. "A little impatient to solve this one, Tess?"

I sighed. "Sorry. It's just-" I tried to look at her rather than the mess of blood and brains on the table. "Marcus has decided that the future of my career, or lack of said career, all depends on how I conduct myself in this case. It's a test."

She nodded sympathetically. "That's a bitch. So you're worried that you're gonna screw the pooch."

I scowled at her. "Doesn't anyone have confidence in me?"

"It kind of starts on the inside, Tess-or hadn't you heard?" Unexpectedly, Tasha put her hand on my shoulder. "Look, don't worry about it, okay? You may be the lead on this case, but you can't be expected to control every little detail. As soon as I know something, you'll know it."

The door to the morgue swung open, and Selena walked in. Behind her was Marcus. Great.

"Tess-" He glanced at his pager, then back at me. "I'd like a moment-by-moment report of how this turns out. Every move you make, I want documented."

"Of course," I said, gritting my teeth.

"Good. I want you to speak with our liaison to the vampire community. Lucian Agrado.

Young, but dangerous. He might be able to ID the vamp that we found in the alley, as well as the mystery woman in the photo he was carrying."

"Great," Tasha mumbled. "A goddamn necro."

Marcus leveled his gaze at her. "What's that, Dr. Lieu? Something discriminatory to add?"

She shook her head.

"Lucian Agrado is a necromancer, yes-but he's still on our side."

"Not entirely convinced of that, sir." Tasha gave him a dark look, then continued with her postmortem exam. "His kind cause me a whole world of trouble."

"I know that." Marcus almost sounded patient for a moment. "Undead politics aside, if we want access to the vamps, we have to deal with him."

Necromancers were like the drug pushers of the mystical community-everyone hated them, but there they were, patiently working their corners, knowing that you'd have to call on their services eventually. The CORE didn't like to admit that "necros," as Tasha called them, were really just the nonlegitimate brothers and sisters of practicing mages. Back in the day, they were called warlocks. Dante was convinced that they spent eternity in the middle ring of hell, trapped headfirst in impenetrable rock for all of their gross betrayals in life. Given the soaring real estate prices in this city, suburban inferno didn't seem all that bad anymore.

"We couldn't get any prints?" I asked hopefully. Being alone with a necro, even one who was ostensibly on our side, rated at least a nine on my one to ten scale of things that were really, really stupid and potentially fatal. Merging onto Highway 1 at the PortMannBridge was a four.

"None from the photo, and none from the vic either," Selena said. "D-AFIS didn't come back with a match. Nil for D-CODIS as well. The vamp had no priors."

"Well," Tasha interjected, "judging by his stomach contents, he didn't feed on humans-or even animals. Unless he was fasting. So maybe he's just an all-around nice guy with nothing to hide." She grinned.

"Right," Selena said simply.

"Um . . ." I stared at Marcus. "Can we get back to the part where you want me to interview a necromancer? Alone?"

Marcus looked preoccupied, as usual. "You can bring Siegel along," he said, still scanning paperwork.

"At least give me some backup! Another OSI. Even some rookies-they're always in need of field training-"

"We can't spare anyone." He finally met my gaze. "Don't worry, Tess. I'm sure you'll be able to handle this."

"Just keep your head up, and stay smart," Selena said, giving me a knowing look. "The vampire community can't afford to show hostility against the CORE. They aren't willing to violate our nonaggression pact, and a single OSI asking a few questions shouldn't pose too much of a threat to them. Lucian is their politician, and as long as we go through him,everything should be fine."

"He's a mortal in bed with demons," Tasha said distaste-fully. "He's not just their politician-he's their twink."

Marcus started to retaliate, but I positioned myself between them-the last thing I wanted was to spend the rest of my day filling out an intradepartmental fatality report.

"Remember," I joked, "my life insurance policy covers dismemberment."

"Actually," Tasha clarified, "if your body is completely disarticulated, you get quadruple the payout." She grinned. "Not that it'll help you much."

"Can I have a raise?" I asked.

Marcus ignored this. "Keep me posted. I'm supervising four other cases right now, but this one is high-priority."

Selena raised an eyebrow. "A dead vampire?"

Marcus shrugged, but the motion didn't seem innocent. "I just do what my superiors tell me."

He left the morgue, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Selena gave me a reassuring look. "He's just edgy because he's getting reviewed by CORE management. I hear he's in line to become some kind of occult director for the entire West Coast-if he makes the cut."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Did the QD lab at least manage to decrypt that vampiric script on our dead vampire's note?"

"They did, actually." She checked her notebook. "It was an address-878 Crescent Road. House belongs to a Cassandra Polanski-you can stop by there before you visit the vampire patrician. It's somewhere in ElderHeights, I think. Isn't that where your parents live?"

"God, yes. Selena, don't send me there, please-"

"A job's a job, Tess. Besides, you can stop in for a visit- daughter's duty, you know. We all have to do it."

"Orphans don't," I muttered.

Selena ignored that. "Bring a photo of the dead vamp when you talk to the necromancer," she said. "Hopefully, someone will know who he is. If the vampires don't want to cooperate, be firm, but don't push things. Let them know that the CORE wants to investigate the death, and that we're prepared to offer all of our resources to help the vampire community. We don't want this to become a publicity nightmare. "

Tasha laughed, still holding the Stryker saw. "Fat chance! A dead vampire, a human's address, and an assassination attempt. You'll have to spin this story so hard, it'll practically go into orbit."

Selena glared at her. "This is why we don't let you out of the morgue."

I was already heading for the door.

4.

I found Derrick in the Psionic Training Facility, or the "Psi-Tank," as the initiated called it. Kind of like the drunk tank, only a lot more dangerous. Speaking of which, never, ever get a telepath drunk. It's a bad scene-trust me.

Derrick's powers weren't kinetic, at least not normally, so he didn't do a lot of combat training. The Tank had a separate facility for that, with gymnastic-style floors and padded walls, perfect for bouncing around on a telekinetic slipstream. You'd often see random objects flying around, followed by swearing. The Reading Room was separated by a Plexiglas partition (mystically tempered to keep anything on the inside from getting out, and vice versa), and that was where Derrick spent most of his mornings, practicing thought-exercises and trying to see through walls. I wasn't sure how, but staring at cubes-within -cubes and ten-dimensional space was supposed to polish his abilities. It just gave me a headache. Derrick showed me a representation of something called "Calabi-Yau Space" once, a torque-shaped mass that had been folded into itself and was somehow crucial to string theory. I think it existed only as a mathematical abstraction-although to be fair, so did mages. I told him it looked like a lima bean.

Currently, he was staring at a series of holographic shapes projected from a black console, frowning as he tried to puzzle out-well-whatever. Sometimes telepaths all seemed like Mensa geeks, obsessed with getting the highest possible IQ scores.

Derrick looked up from the console and asked simply: "Coffee?"

I handed him a Styrofoam cup. "No-foam-extra-hot sissy-boy latte, just like you asked, hon."

He stuck his tongue out at me. "We can't all drink it black. Some of us would like to keep a working relationship with our digestive systems."

"Slow this morning?"