"We tested for the vampiric retrovirus." I heard him take a breath. "The test came back positive, Tess. Mia has been infected."

I held the phone and stared straight ahead. I didn't know what to say. Every muscle in my body felt paralyzed.

"Tess?" Mia smiled at me strangely. "Is something wrong?"

22.

She sat on the edge of a steel counter, staring straight ahead while a nurse carefully swabbed the inside of her mouth. When the older woman was finished, she clicked the plastic cap closed around the swab-to protect it from contamination-then said quietly, "All right, sweetheart, I'm just going to take some hair samples now. It's uncomfortable, but it'll be over soon. You just lie back, okay?"

Mia did as she was told, lying back on the cold examining table while the nurse slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. I could see it all happening through the exam room window, and I turned away, before Mia could meet my eyes.

"How long have we known?" I asked.

Selena was absently moving a stir stick around in her Styrofoam coffee cup. She'd been stirring it for the last five minutes. She looked up at me, as if I'd only just magically appeared in the room that very moment, and her dark eyes seemed even more weary than usual. "Ben logged the results shortly after he called you," she said. "He discovered that her red blood cell count was unusually high, so he did further testing, and the vampiric viral plasmids showed up. I don't understand the science any better than you, but obviously, Mia Polanski is an unusual case. She hasn't shown any outward signs of vampiric transition, but her blood is clearly V+. We're going to collect another sample to make sure that the first wasn't contaminated, but I'm pretty certain that the results will be the same."

I remembered the article that Derrick and I had read earlier on Interstitial Vampirism-halting the siring process.

In some cases, the effects of the siring process can be delayed-perhaps indefinitely-due to immunological resistance within the host. Certain blood types, particularly B positive and AB positive, have been known to counteract vampiric viral plasmids.

Mia's blood was AB positive. And since she obviously had latent mage powers, that might explain why the transformation had been arrested. If Mia already had demonic viral plasmids-from some other source-in her bloodstream, the first contagion might very well be holding off the second. A microscopic battle between mages and vampires, being waged in the immune system of a thirteen-year-old girl.

"So far, her body is fighting off the viral plasmids," Selena was saying. "She seems to be producing natural antibodies. But we don't know how long, immunologically speaking, she'll be able to suppress the virus. We're going to have to do some more tests . . ."

But it still didn't explain who had infected Mia, or why. It couldn't have simply been a random act. I needed to talk to Lucian again. But if he knew about this-the urge to kill him was suddenly very powerful. Not that I'd survive, but I might at least be able to take him out in the process.

"Tess?" Selena was staring at me. "Where did you go?"

I shook my head. "Sorry. It's been a crazy couple of days, and my mind isn't exactly running on all four cylinders right now."

"Of course it isn't." She looked at me carefully. "So I'll repeat the question. Is there anything about this situation with Mia Polanski that you haven't told me? Anything that we might be missing?"

I felt my stomach constrict. Oh shit. I didn't think I could lie to her again. In fact, I didn't want to lie anymore.

So I told her.

My hesitant friendship with Mia. How she seemed connected with Eve somehow-a strange and painful link to my past-and how I wasn't even sure who I was trying to protect anymore. I even told her that I wanted to go to Sebastian's apartment, just to look around-to see if there was even the smallest clue that might link everyone in this insane tapestry together.

She was silent for a while. Then she folded her hands and looked at me.

"All right-which lecture do you want first? The ethical one, the legal one, or the one where I just plain break my foot off in your ass."

"It's your choice," I said, keeping my voice low. "I know that I screwed up. I know that I should have told you everything in the beginning-but honestly, Selena, everything I did was to protect Mia. I was looking out for her, not for me. And I know that Marcus would say the exact opposite-that if I'd really been concerned about her, I should have used CORE resources to protect her. But Marcus is a machine. I'm not like that." I exhaled. "I have to trust my instincts. Like you said, sometimes that's all we've got. And my instincts told me to act quickly and quietly. So that's what I did."

"And your instincts didn't tell you to notify your supervisor? " She raised an eyebrow. "They didn't suggest that, just maybe, I might have been able to help you? Or was I the enemy, too?"

I shook my head. "You were never the enemy. I just didn't want to drag you into this. If I lose my job-and I probably will-I don't want to take anyone else with me. Derrick's already implicated, but I can probably get him off on a technicality. The review committee might believe that I coerced him, that I took advantage of his trust. Which I pretty much did, so it wouldn't be a huge stretch."

"I know that kid," Selena said, "and he may be a pushover, but he's not an idiot. If he followed you, he did it because he thought you were right. It wasn't just blind trust, or loyalty.

He did what you asked for exactly the same reason that I chose to look the other way"-her eyes darkened-"even when I knew that you were openly defying me. Even when I was pretty sure that you didn't trust me, which, coming from you, was pretty fucking ironic."

I looked down. "You're right."

Selena shrugged. "Yeah. But blind faith isn't always a positive quality in an agent, Tess."

I looked at her. "Selena, you're being too forgiving here. I screwed up, big time. I conducted my own private investigation of Mia and her family, without sanction from the CORE, and I continued to work on Mia's case long after Marcus had me pulled off it and put me on leave. I shouldn't even be in the lab right now. I should be sitting in my apartment, watching reruns of Golden Girls, or whatever else normal people do when they're given a paid vacation."

"Technically," Selena replied, "you're only getting half pay."

"Great." I rolled my eyes.

Selena leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands.

"Here's what I know," she said. "I know that you acted in Mia's best interests, even if you potentially endangered her in the process. I know that you refused to stop working on a case that you were personally involved with-and it's standard procedure to pull any agent from a case like that, but at the same time, any agent will fight that order kicking and screaming. It's their life, after all. You're no different." She idly tapped the desktop with her knuckles. "I know that you disobeyed Marcus and myself by continuing to work on this case, and you withheld information about your prior relationship with Mia. But as far as the evidence is concerned, I can't see any tampering with the chain of custody. You haven't done anything to actually obstruct the investigation. And your prior connection with Mia may not have been relevant at the outset, though it's certainly relevant now."

I said nothing.

"If it were up to Marcus," Selena continued, "we wouldn't even be having this conversation. You'd be out on your ass-no question about it. And you'd probably be under CORE surveillance for the rest of your life."

I kept my mouth shut.

"Lucky for you," she said, "it's not up to Marcus."

I finally allowed myself to breathe. "Okay." It didn't seem like the necessary answer, but I wasn't sure what Selena wanted me to say.

"That isn't to say that you aren't in trouble," she clarified. "You're most definitely on my shit list, and you know from experience that that is not a good place to be. If you thought Marcus was riding you, his methods pale in comparison to my own personal scrutiny."

I swallowed. "Okay," I said again. It was all I could say.

"I only watch two kinds of people-those who I don't trust, and those who I'm impressed with. In your case, it's a bit of both. So you're not off the hook, but I'm not about to reward you for being an asshole either. For now, let's just say that we're starting from square one. Complete and total honesty."

I nodded. "Of course. I've told you everything now. And I intend to tell you everything from here on in"-I sighed- "which won't be much, since I'm officially off this case. So I won't have anything to report, I suppose."

"You may not be on active duty," Selena said, "but that doesn't mean that I can't enlist your expertise as a consultant. Although if you go anywhere near that vampire's apartment, I will personally beat you down. Understand?"

"I read you, loud and clear." I said. Then I smiled crookedly. "You actually think I have expertise?"

Selena just smiled. "Now that I know what you know-" She reached into a drawer and pulled out a manila file folder, which she set on the desk. "Here's everything that we know. Pretty much."

She opened the folder, and a sheaf of pictures fell out- Cassandra, Mia, the crime scene photographs, Sebastian, and various other bits of evidence, all labeled and numbered by Selena's exacting hand.

"Mia Polanski was born May 4, 1992, in Kelowna, British Columbia. Her parents were Anthony Taylor and Christine Polanski, unmarried, and so she retained her mother's maiden name-also the surname of her maternal aunt, Cassandra Polanski. Anthony and Christine moved to Elder in 1994-I guess Kelowna was too big for them." She scanned farther down the file. "In 1998, both parents went missing. We have the missing persons report from the Elder RCMP."

"Let me guess," I said. "It was Cassandra who filed the report."

Selena nodded. "Cassandra was Mia's godmother and legal guardian-all the papers are accounted for, and they check out. Anthony and Christine were never found. The last place they were seen . . ." She squinted, trying to decode the RCMP officer's squiggly handwriting. "Looks like Anthony had a job at a computer repair shop, and he clocked out like normal around five thirty p.m. on Tuesday, May 2, 1998. Christine was the assistant coordinator for a nonprofit women's shelter, which has since been torn down and replaced by a video rental shop." Her eyes were flinty. "Government cutbacks."

"And she was seen at work as well?"

"She clocked out at the same time as Anthony-around five thirty p.m., according to her boss. They both shared a car, so one of them must have picked the other up. Then they just vanished."

"Obviously, it doesn't add up," I said. "And it strikes me as suspicious that all of this would happen so close to Mia's birthday. No mother that I can think of would abandon her only child when she was two days away from her sixth birthday. "

"Oh, but it gets stranger." Selena flipped a page in the file. "After Cassandra died, we pulled all of her records. If anything, we just needed someone to claim the body, so that she could be interred. But it was the oddest thing." She looked at me. "The woman doesn't seem to exist before 1998."

I shook my head, angry at myself now for not being even more suspicious of Cassandra and her demon heritage. "The year that Mia's parents go missing."

"We got quite the runaround from all of those paper pushers. Documents got lost. They were updating their record systems. A new birth certificate was in the process of being printed. Some records were destroyed in a flood." She looked disgusted. "The bottom line is that Cassandra Polanski wasn't on anyone's radar before 1998. And guess when her guardianship papers for Mia were signed."

I sighed. "The same year that her parents disappeared."

"She officially became Mia's legal guardian in February of 1999-government bureaucracy, of course-but Christine Polanski had already named Cassandra as Mia's godmother prior to that, in a document that was signed by both parties and dated April 15, 1998."

She handed me the document, and I saw Cassandra's signature, along with the faint, scrawled autograph of Christine Polanski-Mia's biological mother.

"So she signed this about two weeks before Mia's parents went missing?"

"You got it."

"Identity theft is easy-and even easier for a demon, especially since we're not even sure what kind of demon Cassandra was. She could very well have been some kind of shape-shifter, impersonating all sorts of people in order to secure a claim on Mia."

"Actually," Selena said, "Tasha just called me from the morgue. The histopath samples have come back from the lab, and they've been able to determine Cassandra's demonic heredity. She's waiting for us with the results."

I practically jumped out of the chair. "Then let's go."

"Easy, cowboy." Selena followed me out of the office. "You're consulting on this case, remember? You're not the primary. However closely this might concern you, I still can't offer you complete access. You're just going to have to trust me."

"That's what I should have done a long time ago. And I promise it's what I'm doing now."

We walked down the congested hallway until we reached the elevator that only went down. It had only one destination, after all-the morgue. Tasha called it the Carnival Cruise of the Damned. Currently, she was typing up something on her computer-she saw us enter, but didn't smile.

"Thanks for taking another look at her body," Selena said.

"Well-" She stepped away from the computer and slipped on a pair of blue plastic gloves. "When Tess brought in that trace evidence from the victim's house, I hoped that we might have missed something the first time."

"But I get the impression from your tone of voice that we didn't," I said.

She shook her head. "I've been over every inch of Cassandra Polanski's body with every form of ALS that we have. We didn't miss anything the first time. There aren't any stray fibers, and there certainly aren't any fibers as remarkable and unique as the silk thread that you found in her house."

"So it must have been transferred by someone else," Selena said. "Maybe someone who visited after the fact? Or from the vampire's body?"

"But we didn't find any fibers on Sebastian's body."

"We didn't find anything at that crime scene," I reminded her. "It was swept clean. Maybe, like you suggested the first time, Tasha, our killer got messy. Left something behind by accident."

"Do we know for certain that Cassandra killed Sebastian? "

Tasha smiled. I knew that I wouldn't like what I was about to hear.

"Oh yes. But it didn't happen the way you originally thought. We finally got some results back from Serology, and we were able to determine what demon bloodline Cassandra came from." She flicked on the X-ray screen, and I saw two images of what looked like Cassandra's skull appear. "I also called a few forensic osteologists-bone specialists-and did a little research of my own. I was sure that I recognized something about Cassandra's cranial X-rays when I saw them the first time, but it took me a while to figure it out."

"And are you ever going to tell us?" Selena asked mildly.

In response, Tasha pointed to a peculiar ridge on the topmost part of Cassandra's skull-from where I was standing, it looked like little more than a dark smudge. "Do you see this bony outgrowth-right next to the sagittal suture on the frontal plate? At first I thought it was part of the epiphysis-the cartilage and tissue where the bones connect-but it's actually a naturally growing arch that's meant to protect a hidden nerve canal. Like a secret pocket inside of her skull."

Selena stared at the ME blankly. "She had pockets in her skull?"

"Well, strictly speaking, we all do. We have bony arches and fissures that protect our optic nerve canals, and the delicate sphenoid and ethmoid bones that line our nasal cavities-the skull isn't just a hunk of solid bones. It's a system of connective tissue, fissures that grow and harden as we get older, cavities and lacunae where delicate optic and neural equipment gets tucked away."

She kept smiling. "But Cassandra, it seemed, had a secret hideaway that even I didn't know about, until I realized where to look for it. You see-" She pointed to the second X-ray, which was a magnification of the bony ridge. It looked almost like a miniature vent, like the kind you'd see in the surface of volcanic rock. "This cavity protects a delicate mesh of nerve fibers that hook directly into the optic nerve. As far as I can tell, this is what would allow Cassandra to use her unique powers-without laying a hand on anyone. Her eye movements would trigger the nerve cluster, and the effect would be instantaneous. She could literally stare you to death."

My eyes widened. "You're saying she was a telepath?"

"Not just any telepath. Cassandra was a Krell demon. It's a rare shamanic half-breed, capable of performing telepathic surgery."

I remembered my conversation with Lucian, when I'd suggested that only a few rare types of demon would be able to inflict the kind of substantial neurological damage that was evident in Sebastian's brain. My hunch had been correct from the start.

"If Cassandra was a telepath," I said, "and one powerful enough to kill, then we've been going about this all wrong. We've got the order of death wrong. All of this must have started long before we first suspected."

"All I know," Tasha said, "is that Cassandra was more than capable of killing someone without even laying a finger on them. But she didn't possess any superhuman strength or speed. Aside from her telekinetic abilities, she would have been no stronger than any of us."

"Certainly not strong enough to tear a Vailoid demon apart," Selena said.

I looked at her. "I think we should take this to the simulation room-see if we can reenact these events, but this time in the right order."

"It's already prepped and waiting for us."

23.

The simulation room was the ninth wonder of the CORE crime lab. While most conventional crime labs had 3-D modeling software that allowed them to re-create crime scenes, inputting the correct angles, body positions, ballistics, and every other exacting detail that was involved in violence, we could go a step further. This room was a virtual reality environment, and with the right details, and the right biometric peripherals, we could literally build an interactive crime scene from the ground up.

Part of it was technological, but the most important part was mystical-a simple illusion charm, or glamour, that had been taken apart and multiplied a million times in complexity, until it became an ingenious algorithm for building whole interactive worlds. With the help of the electronic equipment, the materia channels allowed us to bend, tweak, and manipulate every detail of our constructed worlds, and its verisimilitude was unparalleled. I'm not talking about boxy, hexagonal graphics and clunky interfaces. I'm talking about the freaking Star Trek holodeck. That real. Sometimes it even scared me a little. It was uncomfortably close to reliving the actual crime.

Selena opened the door with her keycard, and we stepped into the sealed chamber, which was kept at arm's length from the rest of the lab for good reason. We didn't want inexperienced lab techs taking the sim-room for a joyride, only to discover that the graphical interface was just a little too lifelike. If you weren't careful, you could actually get the life scared out of you.

The room itself was spheroid, with a domed roof and smooth, egg-shaped walls that were covered in reflective white paneling. The panels were made of delicate fiber-optic nerves, which was where the room got its nickname-The Nerve. Rebecca got really twitchy if you touched any of them. In fact, this room was so expensive that most people were afraid to breathe in here.