"I can try. It'll take some time, though."

"Thanks, Becka. I definitely owe you lunch."

She laughed. "Lunch won't fix my aching metacarpals nor will it repair the permanent eyestrain-"

"Lunch, and a cappuccino."

Her smile was sly. "Make it a caramel macchiato, and we'll call it even."

"You're the best." I smiled as I walked out of the computer lab.

It was the last time that I'd smile for the rest of the day.

After hours of fruitlessly searching through just about every database that we had access to at the MCD, I'd come to the following conclusion about Mia and Cassandra Polanski: They were two of the dullest people on the face of the planet. No hits in CODIS or AFIS, so they'd never been printed or had their DNA recorded on file. Most women who'd gone for a Paptest had their DNA on file, but Cassandra didn't even have that. No hits for D-CODIS either, so if she was a demon, as I suspected, then she was also unregistered. Mia was home schooled, so I couldn't even pull up a report card. She 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. In 1998, both parents went missing. We had access to the missing persons report from the Elder RCMP, but it was a cold case.

"And fuck you, too, BC Family Services." Derrick slammed the phone down, then sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "This is putting me in a bad mood."

"The federal government has a way of doing that." I switched off the computer screen. "I'm not having any luck either. Cassandra's never even had a parking ticket. There's nothing in these files that would justify a search."

Derrick put his head on the desk. "I can't find anything out about Mia's adoption. All of the papers are 'on file' in some basement library somewhere in Ottawa, but I've talked to seven secretaries already, and I'm still nowhere close to getting the actual papers. They just keep referring me to surlier clerks and assistants."

I stared forlornly at my empty coffee mug. Garfield's smiling face mocked me. "Well, what's our angle with Mia? Do we think she's a mage, or a proto-mage?"

"You're better at mystical-assay than I am, and you didn't sense anything."

"Yeah, but my mage-dar could be broken. Anyway-just because I don't sense it doesn't mean that it's not there. It could be latent still."

"At thirteen?"

"It happens." I frowned. "Never. Oh, wait-there've been cases, I think, where someone's powers didn't manifest until they were in their late teens. Something to do with a retrovirus in the blood."

"Did you read that in Magic Weekly?"

"Could you not be a bitch for, like, two seconds?"

Derrick smiled. "Look, Tess, I'm just trying to be realistic. Chances are, Mia isn't a proto-mage at all. She's probably just caught in the middle of a mystical turf-war between warlocks and vampires."

"But why would she be in that vampire's head? And what about my dream?"

"We still don't know that it's the same girl-" He saw my expression, and gave a long sigh. "Fine. Let me check."

A window popped up on the screen, and I saw Derrick log into LOOM, the Local Occult Occupational Mainframe. He tapped away for a minute or two, then gestured to the computer screen, which displayed some records that he'd pulled from a private medical database. "Okay-there have been cases where exposure has produced a latent effect, and the subject's powers haven't manifested until late puberty." He blinked. "Two cases. One in 1912, and the other in 1942. Both subjects had neurological disorders."

"Well"-I paced back and forth-"maybe Mia is the exception."

Derrick frowned suddenly. "Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?"

"I just thought of something." He typed something else, and a new database popped up. This was the standard occult mainframe, with thousands of documented cases of just about any preternatural activity on file.

He typed in "vampirism," and a screen full of hits appeared.

"Why are you looking up stuff on vampires?"

"Just give me a second."

Derrick clicked his way through dozens of different articles, until he suddenly smiled and pointed at something. "There. Read that."

I leaned forward. It was an article on the vampiric siring process. The first paragraph was a detailed description of blood chemistry. But the second was a list of possible mutations, with one in particular highlighted.

Retrograde or Interstitial Vampirism: 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. Very powerful vampires-magnate class or higher-are rumored to have the ability to psychically control the siring process, delaying or accelerating it as they see fit. This has never been tested, but can be inferred from patients who enter spontaneous remission, or whose symptoms appear to manifest themselves with unusual slowness.

"You think the vampires did something to Mia?" I asked. "Found some way to control her powers?"

"It might explain why that vamp had her address."

"Like he was going to-what-activate her powers or something? That seems kind of far-fetched, Derrick."

He gave me a flat look. "We work for an occult government agency, Tess."

I sighed. "Go ahead."

"Vampires are demons, right? They may put on aristocratic airs, but they share the same genetic material as goblins and kobolds. And us. So why couldn't a demon-a really powerful demon-hypothetically be able to control the rate of exposure in an infected person?"

I frowned. "I guess it's possible. But what would the point be?"

"To camouflage her? Make her like a sleeper agent, just waiting to be activated?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Tess, come on-it makes about as much sense as anything that you've come up with so far. Right?"

He did have a point. Everything we knew about the higher-tier demons, we'd learned from vampires. They were like the demonic upper class. Some were allies. Most weren't. That didn't mean we were fighting in the streets, but we weren't exactly hosting joint Christmas parties either.

"So," I said, "you think that Mia is somehow being controlled?"

"It would explain why her aunt is an overprotective demon."

"But she wasn't a vampire."

"Maybe the vampires are working against her. Or maybe they're working with her, like an unholy coalition-"

"Or maybe this is all circumstantial," I interrupted him, "and we really don't have a whit of evidence to go on."

He frowned at me. "Well, Selena said she would call in a few favors with some demon high-rollers in town, see if they've heard of anyone fitting Cassandra's description. If she's powerful enough to have a mage-mark glowing outside of her house, somebody must know her."

"But someone could have just as easily left that mark for us to find, Derrick. Maybe they're just using this poor family as a distraction-"

"From what? Some vampire death-orgy that nobody has heard of? As far as we know, the vamps are enjoying their longest truce with us in history. You're going to stir enough shit up when you go talk to their necro flunky."

I closed my eyes. "I'm tired of this. It's nearly four o'clock, and we've been following dead ends since seven this morning. I'm bitchy, and hungry, and I need to eat something that actually contains one of the four food groups-excluding gummy bears."

Derrick shrugged. "I think they have, like, bone meal or something. Maybe that's got iron in it?"

I stood up. "Let's hit that sandwich place across from my apartment. I haven't taken a single break today, and Marcus is in a meeting for the next few hours. Nobody's going to care."

He smiled. "I think that's a capital idea. Can we get the roasted eggplant?"

"Yeah, but you have to order it. I hate that girl with the hoop earrings who keeps shouting 'real hip-hop!' at me every time I order a ciabatta."

As we crossed the parking lot, I zeroed in on Derrick's car-a rusted old Ford Festiva with about 200,000 clicks on its exhausted odometer. Derrick called it the Excelsior, because, like me, he was a dork.

What I didn't expect to see was a familiar teenager with long black hair, clutching her knapsack like a shield as she leaned against the car door. In typical andro style, Mia was wearing a pair of old khakis, Duff skate shoes, and a faded jean jacket. She looked nervous as hell-and as soon as I saw her, my stomach did a flip.

Really, in retrospect, I should have just turned around and walked in the opposite direction. It would have made everything so much simpler.

"Um-hi, Mia." Derrick gave her an odd look. "Any particular reason why you've set up camp beside my car?"

She flushed. "Sorry-I-ah-recognized it from when you were parked outside our house. I got your address from that card-" She looked at me, and I saw the uncertainty flash across her eyes. "I think I need to talk to you guys. There's some stuff that you should know-my aunt doesn't know I'm here. She's at work right now, and I have to meet up with her before suppertime."

"Mia," I said, already hating myself as I switched to professional mode, "if you want to make a statement about your case, we can go back to the department-I'll set up an interview with my boss, Selena-"

"I want to talk to you," she blurted out. Her eyes scraped the ground. "For some reason, I think I trust you."

Derrick looked at me. I could already tell that he was reading my mind, and his expression darkened.

"Tess," he said, "you know that it's against code. She's involved in an active case-we can't just take her to lunch."

I suddenly flashed back to being an undergraduate-I was taking a philosophy class to fulfill the breadth requirements for my Crim degree, and we had to cover a unit called French Post-Structuralist Critics. A particular quotation from Jacques Derrida shimmered into being, dancing like a riddle before me.

All passion is a passion for code.

I looked at Mia, then felt my muscles tense. This was about to get messy.

"I don't care much about codes," I said. "All they mean is what we want them to, and right now I'm more concerned with people. Come on, Mia. Let's go someplace and talk." I grinned at her. "Have you had lunch yet?"

7.

My apartment was one of those concrete block-monsters in the West End, just a short walk off Davie Street . I think it was built in the sixties, which meant that it leaked like a son of a bitch and had an elevator that I liked to call "capricious" (when I wasn't swearing incoherently at it). The lobby was floored in faux marble, which made visitors think that they were entering a nice hotel-until the elevator doors opened, and they smelled the distinct odor of pot and cabbage rolls. My suite was on the eighth floor, giving me an incredible view of EnglishBay, as well as a direct line of vision into my crazy neighbor's apartment across the street. Sometimes he walked around in nothing but a pair of black socks-the first time Derrick saw that particular display, he put his breakfast croissant down with a sour face, saying: "I just lost my appetite. Forever."

At first, I was a bit worried about dragging a thirteen-year-old girl down Davie Street , especially since she came from a small town. Some vestige of bizarre, wrong-headed moralism made me want to cover her eyes or something, as if she'd never seen drag queens and leather boys before. But when she grinned and said, "I love the PumpJack-the college bears always help me with my math homework!" I realized that Mia was no stranger to the city nor to this enclave of queer culture. Derrick's jaw dropped, but he didn't say anything.

We stopped by Jubilatka, the polish bakery, to pick up three cherry-cheese croissants the size of my head. So much for eggplant.

I unlocked the door to my suite, and was immediately assailed by that oddly fragrant mixture of ancient hardwood, Pine-Sol, and stale coffee. Mia took everything in without a word-the sagging chesterfield that my parents had happily pawned off, the IKEA bookshelves filled to overflowing, the deep grooves in the floor caused by innumerable pieces of furniture being moved, jostled, and scraped over thirty years, the bay windows overlooking a cherry tree that was in full blossom. The place was messy, but never dirty. That was my mantra.

"Have a seat," I told Mia.

She did so-and proceeded to sink about four inches into the old sofa cushions, as if the couch itself were swallowing her up.

I winced. "Sorry. It's pretty old-comfy, though."

"Um-yeah-" She grabbed on to the armrest as if it were a life preserver. "I'll bet it is. Thanks."

I sat down next to her, and Derrick took the rocking chair in the corner-another odd piece that I'd rescued from a garage sale on Jervis Street . I rather suspected that its previous owner had been crazy, since she offered the chair to me for "either two bucks or a cigarette if you've got one." Sometimes I was certain that an entirely different economy existed in secret areas of the West End, a crazy night market where you could buy or trade just about anything. My favorite piece of furniture was a cart on wheels that I'd rescued from some urban professional's garbage in Yaletown. It was currently trembling underneath the weight of a deluxe spice rack and my wandering Jew plant.

Derrick gave me a pointed look. "Tess-do you think we should maybe record this? We might have to enter the tape in as evidence later."

Mia looked alarmed. "You want to tape me?"

I shook my head. "No. It's all right, we don't have to."

"Tess-"

"No." I tried not to look at Derrick. If I saw his "what the hell" look, I'd lose my resolve, and I felt like I owed it to Mia to at least hear her out. Nobody else seemed to be listening to her, and Cassandra was being downright hostile about the investigation. If the necromancer didn't tell us anything, then we'd be stuck at a dead end-I was willing to break a few rules if it meant getting a new lead.

"We're in this already," I said. "It might be a violation of protocol, but right now, Mia's statement is all we've got."

"It won't be admissible-"

"We're not going to court, Derrick, and you know it."

"Fine," Derrick said, looking away. "I trust you. And we're already here, so there's no going back now."

"I don't want to get you guys in trouble-" Mia began.

I raised my hand. "Don't worry about it, sweetheart." God, why was I channeling my mom all of a sudden? Next I'd be offering her Peek Freans. "Right now, our priority is keeping you and your aunt safe-but to do that, we need to know everything. Even if it's odd, or embarrassing, or it doesn't make any sense at all, we need to know everything that you've seen or heard since yesterday."

"Well-I mean, it's not much." Mia fidgeted for a bit in her seat, and I could almost feel the truth inside of her bubbling up to the surface. It wasn't quite empathy, but something else-a connection all the same. Maybe Derrick was right about her being a mage-potential. If her talent was blocked, but still latent, we might be able to feel it as a kind of residual trace.

"Anything will help," Derrick said patiently, "no matter how far-fetched it seems. Not much phases us, Mia. Honest. Whatever it is, we can deal with it."

She nodded. "Okay. Well, when I said that I hadn't seen that guy-I sort of lied." She winced. "Is that really bad? I mean, will I get in trouble-"

I shook my head. "It's fine, as long as you tell us the truth. Lots of people who've witnessed something-unusual-lie about it at first. Sometimes they're not even sure what they've seen, which is why we have to count on the physical evidence rather than on eyewitness testimony."

"I thought you didn't have any physical evidence."

I gave her a level look. "Not yet. But we will soon."

"Right. Okay." Mia gulped. "Well, like I said, it's not much. The night before last, I was coming home late from the library-usually, Aunt Cassie gives me a ride home, but this time I decided to walk. I thought I heard her talking to someone in the living room"-she shook her head-"I don't know why I didn't just walk in the house, but something told me not to. So I looked in the window instead, and I saw her talking with-him. That blond guy."