Emerald Blaze

Chapter 11

Alessandro insisted on driving again.

“Do you have a problem with the way I drive?”

“No.”

“Then why do you keep stealing the keys?”

He glanced at me. “It keeps me occupied. My eyes are on the road and my hands are on the wheel.”

I decided it would be a great idea to shut up and keep my own eyes on the road.

Cheryl Castellano owned an office suite in Felicity Tower off West Loop. The office in the brand-new thirty-five-floor tower came with perks, like private elevators, chartered helicopter service, complimentary access to a world-class steakhouse, and a private courier firm. Clearly House Castellano’s show of humility didn’t extend to their business accommodations.

I didn’t want to see Cheryl right now. I needed to be sharp and alert for this conversation, and instead I was still tired and slightly loopy from the medication. Too much had happened today, and this wouldn’t be an easy interview.

Bern’s background on Cheryl had been rather brief by his standards, only about twelve pages. She was the Head of House Castellano, forty-one, widowed, two sons and one daughter, ages twenty, eighteen, and sixteen. Both parents deceased. Her only living relative was her uncle, also a Prime animator. She married Paul Renfield, a Significant animator, at twenty, and he took her name. He had no House; he was a statistical anomaly born to Average parents and he died in his thirties from a preexisting heart condition.

House Castellano made their wealth in the construction industry, and among the five board members, Cheryl’s resources were second only to Felix’s. She seemed obsessed with charitable giving. The list of the organizations she contributed to was a mile long, everything from Red Cross to the local Bright Minds of Houston scholarship fund. She sat on the boards of a dozen charities and floated through the top ranks of Houston’s elite thanks to her wealth and stellar reputation.

If her House had ever been involved in a feud, Bern couldn’t find any trace of it. Knowing my cousin, it annoyed him to no end. He’d gone through the trouble of making a graph of her charitable donations, which showed a rather steep climb.

I checked the list of the charitable contributions again. Something was off about it. Most people chose a few worthy causes. Cheryl didn’t. She gave money to everyone, always a significant but not a huge amount, and she never did it anonymously. Connor and Nevada gave more than her, and nobody knew because they gave to charity for the sake of the people who needed it rather than their own.

My phone chimed. Albert Ravenscroft wanting to FaceTime. He always wanted to FaceTime.

I accepted the call. He appeared on the screen, tall, smiling, and handsome in that particular “traditional good looks” way. Perfectly symmetrical features, solid jaw, straight nose, clear blue eyes, dark hair that would be wavy if he let it grow out. All the things indicative of good breeding, money, a healthy diet, and lots of leisure time to play sports. He was smart and decisive, he wanted to marry me, and he refused to take no for an answer.

He was also the only person outside the family who knew about Leon and Audrey.

“I didn’t think you would answer. Today is my lucky day.” Albert smiled. “Are you free for dinner?”

I would need more information to answer that question. If he had shared what he knew with someone, I could be free for dinner, but he wouldn’t like what would follow. “I don’t know yet.”

“So, it’s a maybe? I’ll take a maybe.”

Next to me, Alessandro muttered something under his breath.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“Nothing special. I haven’t seen you in two weeks and I miss you.”

Say something normal. “That’s sweet.”

Alessandro turned and looked at me. I ignored him.

“When will you know if you’re free?”

“I’m not sure. I’m working. What’s the latest I can text you?”

“Catalina, you can text me anytime. If tonight at 1:00 a.m. you decide you want ramen, or bulgogi, or caviar, text me and I’ll pick you up.”

If I wanted any of those things, I would get them myself. “Leon says hi.”

No reaction. “How is he?”

“You know, the usual. I’ll text you later.” I waved and hung up.

Alessandro switched lanes with razor-cut precision. “Who was that?”

“That was Albert Ravenscroft.”

“Is he the reason you need a pregnancy test?”

“What?” His voice was so neutral, it took the words a second to penetrate.

“When you were injured, you said you would get whatever tests needed, including a pregnancy test. Is he the reason for it?”

Oh you idiot. “I said I would take a pregnancy test because any time something is wrong with a woman, they do a pregnancy test. I could walk into a hospital with my arm cut off and they would want me to pee in a cup before they did anything about it. I’m not sleeping with Albert, and if I was, it would be none of your business.” I waved my arms. “I could be sleeping with half of Houston and it would be none of your business.”

“True, but if you were sleeping with half of Houston, how would you ever get anything done?”

“I’m great at multitasking.”

He steered the car around the curve of the U-turn, guiding Rhino under 610 to West Loop South. “You’re wrong.”

“How so?”

“Your relationships are my business. I’m trying to protect you.”

“I’ve been protecting myself from Albert and his marriage proposals for months without your help.”

He made a right into a short street that ended in a parking lot. The glittering building towered before us, all pale grey stone and floors and floors of windows reflecting the blue sky.

“Of course he wants to marry you.” Alessandro’s voice iced over.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop thinking it.”

“He’s in love with you. You said proposals. That means he’s asked you more than once and you’ve said no.”

Argh. Just because he proposed doesn’t mean he wants to marry me . . . No, that’s stupid . . . “And?” There. Nice and noncommittal.

“Arkan approaches him, asks him to cooperate, and in return Albert gets to swoop in when things are at their worst—”

“Swoop in? What is he, a turkey vulture?”

“—and play the white knight when you need him most. A good plan.”

“You need to have your head examined.”

“What kind of a Prime is he?”

“Quit it.”

“No matter. I’ll find out.”

We drove into the parking lot.

“Alessandro, what makes you think that someone would go through the trouble of attacking a House as dangerous as ours just to marry me?”

He parked and twisted toward me. “Catalina, have you seen yourself? Like in a mirror?”

“Oh please.”

“Did you show him your wings?”

“Why would I show him my wings? What do they have to do with anything?”

“What do . . .” Alessandro made an obvious effort to control his voice. “There are men in this world who would stop at nothing to be with you. You’re beautiful, you’re brilliant, and if they knew how dangerous you were, you would get buried in proposals. There isn’t a House out there that wouldn’t want to add you to their arsenal. And when the wings come out, it’s all over. I’m the best antistasi on record, anywhere, and when I saw you, I stared like an idiot. I could’ve stood there, listening to you talk for a year.”

“You’re delusional . . .”

“Why do you think Benedict lost his shit? He survived twenty years in the murder business, he was smart and careful, and then when you showed up he abandoned all common sense and, instead of killing you, tried to capture you, repeatedly. An elite assassin stopped thinking, because there was only room for you in his brain. I almost felt sorry for the bastard just before I shot him, because I know how he felt.”

“You are immune to my magic and my wings.”

“But I’m not immune to you.”

He had to stop saying things like that.

“It’s not the wings for me. It never was.”

I didn’t want to hear it.

“It’s not the wings for Albert either. I heard his voice. If you called him, that guy would run through fire to get to you. If you called me and I was across the ocean, I would—”

“Stop talking.” I put my hand over his mouth.

He shut up.

“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to interview Cheryl Castellano. She’s dangerous and I need all of my brain power for this conversation. I can’t be distracted. You can come or you can stay in the car. Do you want to come with me? Answer yes or no.”

I lifted my hand.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

I got out of the car and marched to the doors. I had no time to think about all the things he just said. There was a Prime expecting me and I had to put on a good show.

The lobby of Felicity Tower offered the latest in modern luxury. Acres of white marble streaked with soft brown tastefully contrasted with geometric onyx columns. A grandiose chandelier dripped thousands of Swarovski crystals above tastefully grouped furniture. Original art in exquisite frames added color to the tan walls. The developer had hired a harmonizer House to execute the interior design and walking into the space was like stepping into another world, a place of power, privilege, and exclusivity. It was at once elegant and welcoming, and as you moved through it, you felt transformed into a member of the elite. Your shoulders straightened, your stride gained confidence, and when you met others, you looked them in the eye, secure in your right to be there.

We passed through security and gave our names to the concierge. We were expected, and he walked us to the elevator. People stopped and looked at Alessandro. Men and women.

It wasn’t just his stunning face, it was the way he wore his clothes, the way he walked, the expression on his face, the hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth. He represented the unreachable ideal they strived toward, power, wealth, youth, beauty . . . The perfect scion of a House. I had no doubt that if we lingered, he would collect a stack of business cards, room keys, and phone numbers hastily scrawled on the first available scrap of paper.

I liked the other Alessandro better. The one who didn’t bother to pretend. The one with lethal magic and a dangerous mind. The one who cursed because I wouldn’t let him take me to the hospital and then patched my wounds on the side of a road.

The concierge handed us off to the elevator operator, who swiped his keycard and delivered us to the sixth floor. We exited into a long rectangular room. A black marble floor stretched to walls the color of coffee with too much cream. The tinted windows dimmed the light to a soft golden glow. Here and there pedestals of frosted glass rose, lit from within by LED lights, and paired with digital screens, some as small as a tablet, some, on the walls, the size of a small TV. A small construct rested on top of each pillar, illuminated by their glow. Odd.

Alessandro raised his eyebrows.

We started forward. The pillar on the left flashed, reacting to our movement. The construct on its top twisted. Magenta-colored magic sparked, and the small mechanical beast came to life.

About a foot across and eight inches high, the construct seemed old and a little crude, a collection of metal gears and cogs, shaped vaguely like a mole with four front limbs, two where the normal paws would be and two others, inverted so they pointed out, attached to the mole’s back. All four came equipped with long curved claws.

The screen on the wall behind the mole turned on, showing a black-and-white picture of a young man. He wore a dark suit and lighter frock coat and held a derby hat in his hand. Next to him a massive version of the mole construct towered, ten feet high, with claws the size of giant bulldozer blades. The caption underneath read “Secondo Castellano, 1901, Digger I.”

From where I stood, I could see other pedestals with their own photos. 1912, Crawler I, a millipede with a multitude of arms, each capable of picking up a large container. 1927, a strange beast with a scrapper attached to it, some sort of bulldozer equivalent. 1932, a bizarre grasshopper mutant capable of raising power poles. 1948, Digger V, updated and refined to be more efficient . . .

We were in House Castellano’s personal museum.

Alessandro studied the room. His face turned thoughtful.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve never stood inside someone’s American Dream before.”

A family of immigrants, coming to the US, starting a business, growing it into a House worth millions. “A version of it, yes.”

We resumed walking.

“My mom once told me that the American Dream was to live better than your parents.”

“Do you think it’s true?” he asked.

“I think everyone defines better differently. Some want more money. Others want more time.”

“What do you want?”

The answer popped into my head so fast, I didn’t even have to think about it.

“Security. I want my family to be safe in all ways. I want them to be secure from attacks, physical, magical, and financial. I want us to have enough money to cover our bills, to allow everyone to have the career they want, and to take time off if they need it. To not be one disaster away from complete collapse. Less disasters would be really nice. As a House, I want us to have a solid reputation, the kind that commands respect, so everyone can marry whoever they want without jumping through hurdles.”

“That’s all about your family. What about you?”

My happy dream died six months ago. Earlier, actually, before any of us realized the depth of Victoria Tremaine’s scheming. One day I would get back some of what I lost, but by then it would be too late for me and Alessandro.

“My family is my happiness.”

A dangerous shadow flickered through his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

I must have hit a raw nerve by accident.

The pedestals kept going. We passed out of the twentieth century into the new millennium. The constructs slimmed down, becoming sleeker, more specialized. A spider to climb buildings and deliver supplies to disaster areas over rugged terrain. A mobile solar battery shaped like a flower that crawled forward on tentacle-roots.

The pictures changed too, as did the names. From Secondo to Francis, then Janet, then Sean and Mark, then finally, Cheryl. It was a trip through history designed to impress. Had we come to do business with House Castellano, by the time we reached the frosted glass doors at the other end, we would have been humbled and grateful for the opportunity.

But I wasn’t here to be humble. I was here to interrogate Cheryl about a murder. None of her family’s admittedly impressive achievements would change that.

The museum ended in another lobby and a pretty female secretary ushered us into Cheryl’s office.

Prime Castellano smiled at us from behind a solid black glass desk, accented with gold. She wore a soft silk blouse the color of bluebonnets and a tailored skirt. A porcelain brooch in the shape of a delicate white orchid rested on her chest. Her hair coiled on her head in soft feminine waves.

A man in his thirties stood on her right. Large brown eyes, deep bronze skin, South Asian ancestry. His gaze fixed on me and a faint shadow slid over my mind, filled with a distant echo of a wail. Mentovocifer, a mind shrieker. Victoria had had me fight one. They attacked by flooding the mind with magic, which their victim’s brain interpreted as a deafening, agonizing scream. Cheryl was taking no chances.

She rose. “A pleasure to see you both again, although I do wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Such a tragedy,” Alessandro offered.

Cheryl held out her hand to me. I shook it. Her fingers were soft, her handshake gentle. She got me out of the way and shifted her attention to Alessandro. He kissed her hand. Cheryl smiled in that particular way women smiled at Alessandro. He smiled back at her, a charming roguish grin that said, Yes, I would be a lot of fun. I resisted the urge to smack the back of his head.

“Please sit down.”

We took our places in two black chairs. Cheryl settled back behind the desk. It struck me how out of place she seemed. The office was luxurious, but so impersonal, it almost looked staged. Grey walls, chestnut wood paneling, black and gold color scheme. A distinctly corporate space devoid of personal touches.

This couldn’t have been her regular office. Frequently used offices, like most of the spaces people occupied, accumulated personal touches: photographs, plants, knickknacks, business gifts. She must have borrowed it for the meeting, most likely from her uncle, who had retired and rarely involved himself in the House business, according to Bern’s summary.

Cheryl didn’t want me to see her space. She could have done it out of privacy concerns, or because this office was convenient and impressive, but I doubted it. She did it because her regular office would’ve told me things about her, and she didn’t want me to gain any insights.

What are you hiding, Cheryl?

“This is Rahul.” Cheryl looked at the shrieker with a small smile. “He’s going to sit in on our meeting. Didn’t you have an interview with Marat this morning? How did it go?”

She was trying to hijack the conversation. I smiled at her. “What’s your opinion of Mr. Kazarian?”

She pursed her lips for half a second. That’s right, I ignored your question and asked my own. You don’t get to drive this car.

“An extremely hardworking man, dedicated, and an excellent father.”

“Can you tell me about Stephen Jiang?”

“Dedicated,” Cheryl said. “He comes from a wonderful family, steeped in tradition, very respected. A very smart young man. I’m not sure why you’re asking me these questions.”

“It helps me understand the interactions between everyone.”

“In that case, what did Marat say about me?”

“He wondered if you are applying for sainthood.”

Cheryl raised her hand to her mouth and laughed softly.

“Tatyana Pierce?” I prompted.

“My niece went to school with her. They used to call her Tatyana Fierce. The nickname still applies. Tatyana is direct and excellent under pressure.”

“And Felix?”

Cheryl’s face turned sad. She sighed. “Felix was everyone’s favorite. He was like a brother you wish you had growing up. Our leader, if you will. I feel so terrible for his children.”

“Can you tell me about your day on July 15^th? Starting with waking up.”

Cheryl frowned. “Some days you remember and some days you don’t. This was an ordinary day. I woke up at seven, drank my coffee. Anna, my housekeeper, bought pomelos the previous evening, and I had one for breakfast.”

She spoke softly. Her tone wasn’t meek; rather, it was conciliatory and gentle enough so that raising my voice would have immediately branded me as an ass and a bully. Interesting.

“I spoke to my son, Sander, before he left for school. He keeps trying to convince me that a neck tattoo would make a good birthday present. Evan, my chauffeur, picked me up at half past eight and took me to the family workshop. I spent the day there.” Her frown deepened. “I don’t remember if I went out for lunch or if I ordered in.”

She had ordered in, a strawberry salad with salmon in a balsamic maple glaze. Augustine’s people had confirmed it with her secretary.

“I stayed at the workshop until five or six.”

She’d left at 4:42 p.m. Castellano’s workshop was roughly the same distance from the Pit as the Morton building. If they were going to the Pit, she would beat Felix by twenty minutes. Enough time to disable the security equipment.

“Where did you go after work?” I asked.

MII’s investigator assigned to the case confirmed that Cheryl was home by seven, but MII couldn’t account for two and a half hours of Cheryl’s time, starting from her leaving the office and ending with a traffic camera picking her up as she took an exit off I-69 on the way to her house in the Memorial Villages.

“I had a light dinner and some cocktails with a friend at Masraff’s.”

“The name of your friend?”

“Gloria Neville.”

I hid a smile.

Gloria Neville came from an old and powerful House. Like Bern, she was Magister Examplaria, a pattern mage, but her specialty lay in economics. She analyzed market patterns and predicted global economic shifts. She was in her sixties, and in the course of her life she had made a lot of money for a lot of people. In the eyes of the Texas magical heavy hitters, she was an unimpeachable witness. They trusted her with their money.

Cheryl had just made a mistake.

“Where did you go after?” I asked.

“Home.” Cheryl sighed. “It’s difficult for me to admit, but despite our best efforts, the Pit Reclamation Project stalled. It causes me a great deal of anxiety.”

“We all have those projects,” Alessandro said.

She acknowledged him with a grateful glance. For a moment they were alone in a room, two wealthy entrepreneurs sharing an understanding of difficulties with running a business. Something pinched me and I realized it was jealousy. I buried it.

“You’ve seen the front room of this office,” Cheryl continued. “The name of our House is synonymous with reliability. We are problem solvers. I will solve the problem of the Pit, but the solution to it demands every ounce of my attention. After a full day of concentrating at the workshop, I can barely put two words together. Gloria was too kind not to mention it during our dinner, but I’m sure I looked like death warmed over and likely sounded the same. I barely got home, fell asleep, and woke up around nine, because my son became concerned that my back would hurt from sleeping on the couch.”

She was giving a lot of detail.

“Your dedication is commendable,” Alessandro said. He sounded impressed.

“I do what I can.”

Modesty, Cheryl, is your middle name.

“This matter doesn’t just concern me,” she said. “It concerns our family legacy.”

“What was the nature of the construct you released into the Pit?”

The helpful expression on Cheryl’s face gained a slightly injured quality, as if I had insulted her, but she was too good to acknowledge it. “It was an experimental model under the working name Kraken. It’s designed to assess its environment and eliminate biological threats.”

“Marat mentioned that you lost control of the Kraken.” I had chosen my words very carefully.

Cheryl leaned forward, but her voice remained gentle, patient, and bordering on patronizing.

“No, I lost contact with the construct. I assure you, none of my creations have ever escaped my control.”

There it was, a featherlight touch from Rahul. He was a dual—not just a shrieker, but also a telepath, probably a lower Significant in both. The duality made him dangerous. He was trying to pick up my surface thoughts. Cheryl had just breached protocol. Scanning another mage’s mind was grounds for retaliation. It was like being groped by a stranger.

I sent my magic out. It grew from me, its tendrils twisting like grapevine shoots, subtle, barely detectable, winding around Rahul.

“So where is the construct now?” I asked.

“Lost to the Pit.”

“How big was it? I didn’t see a model of it in the front.”

“We only display constructs that have passed the prototype stage.”

The tendrils of my magic slipped through Rahul’s defenses. Mental mages guarded against what they knew, especially their own brand of magic. Rahul built a shell around his mind, hiding his thoughts and protecting himself against a direct assault. He had expected a battering ram. But vines didn’t batter, they grew, and curved, and found purchase in the smallest crevices. They went over and around, and eventually they slithered in.

Cheryl tapped the keyboard of her laptop. A digital screen on the wall flared up, displaying a construct. It had a long, sharp head armored by a metal carapace followed by a segmented body, like that of a millipede, and ending in a powerful finned tail. It reminded me of some alien shrimp.

“The Kraken was twelve meters long from the tip of the head to the end of the longest appendage,” Cheryl said. “It could collapse its width to one and a half meters in circumference, but it reached maximum efficiency at a circumference of two meters.”

Thirty-nine feet long and six and a half feet in circumference. A monster.

The construct turned its head toward me. Metal slid aside, opening a huge maw lined with rows and rows of serrated metal teeth.

The tendrils of my magic touched Rahul’s mind. He didn’t feel it. I fed a little more power into it.

“It had several operating modes and could alter its shape.” Cheryl pressed a key. The construct re-formed itself. The body coiled under the head and released eight long, segmented, metal spider legs. A nightmare.

“Does it have self-replicating capabilities?”

Cheryl put her hand flat on the desk.

If it was a signal, Rahul missed it. He was staring at me, fascinated.

“Ms. Castellano?” I prompted.

“It has regenerative capabilities,” she said. “It can repair itself.”

“Can it build axillary extensions? For example, is it able to add tentacles to itself?”

Cheryl leaned back. “What you’re suggesting is called Saito’s Threshold, a point where a construct gains life. No animator mage has ever crossed it. It’s impossible the way attaining the speed of light is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because we do not grant life to our creations. Only animation. Our constructs do not feel. They do not think in traditional terms. They follow a simple ‘if-then’ loop. When their environment meets a certain predetermined condition, they react to it. While it gives them an illusion of free will and rational thought, they are a step above a calculator. They do not reproduce, they do not alter their structure, and they are incapable of higher brain functions or mental magic like telepathy.”

I hadn’t mentioned telepathy. It wasn’t on the table until she placed it there.

“Can a construct be made telepathic?” I asked.

Cheryl arranged her face into the embodiment of patience. “No. As I said, constructs are incapable of independent magic implantation. We have the capability to make them self-repairing. For example, you may have seen the Crawler model in the outer room. It resembles a centipede with numerous appendages protruding from its back. Crawler XII, the latest model, carries spare arms. In the event that an appendage becomes inoperable, it can jettison it and install a replacement. But it cannot manufacture a new arm or modify its design.”

“So what do you think happened to the Kraken?”

Cheryl sighed. “Environmental hazards.”

I waited.

“When the construct is forcefully pulled apart, its magic will seek to reassemble it. However, magic has limits. The Kraken’s magic signature vanished while it was clearing a school of Razorscales. I believe that they pulled it apart and either consumed enough of it or dragged the pieces in so many different directions that the distance became too great for reassembly. We’ve used echolocation and metal detectors in an effort to find the debris field; however, the Pit is filled with metal debris.”

“I’m sure that was a nightmare,” Alessandro said. “At some point, even if you found it, trying to salvage it wouldn’t have been cost-effective.”

What was he on about? A custom-made construct, especially a prototype of that size, contained titanium alloys and PGM, platinum group metals: rhodium, iridium, palladium. The metal alone would be worth millions. They should have spent weeks trying to recover it, if only to see what went wrong.

“Indeed.” Cheryl looked back at me.

“Perhaps the two of you could enlighten me?” I asked.

“Please don’t feel bad. Alessandro—”

I really didn’t like the way she said his name.

“—and I have similar outlooks. We run corporations, we employ people, and we both recognize that the cost-benefit analysis is a factor. It’s harder for you to see the big picture, not through any fault of your own, of course, but simply because you lack the relevant experience.”

Translation: Alessandro and I are special, and you are stupid and dumb and poor. And yet, somehow, I’d managed to scrape enough brain cells together to not invest in a literal money pit.

“Thank you for your time,” I said and stood up.

Alessandro rose as well.

Rahul stepped forward. “Can I have your number?”

Cheryl pivoted to him, her face mortified. “Please, excuse him,” she said, stamping each word. “He must not be feeling well.”

Rahul raised his hand, blocking Cheryl. “I’d really like to see you again. I promise, I’m not creepy.”

Alessandro stepped between me and Rahul and gave Cheryl a dazzling smile. “We really need to be on our way. It was lovely seeing you.”

Alessandro put his hand on the small of my back and gently pushed me toward the door.

“Hey.” Rahul moved to follow.

“Not one step more,” Cheryl warned him.

We escaped into the reception area and then into the museum.

“Well, he has some explaining to do,” Alessandro murmured.

“Hold on.”

I turned left toward the most recent section of the museum, and surveyed the constructs marked with Cheryl’s name. Digger XXIII, Crawler XXI, Blossom V . . . Just as I thought.

“I’m done,” I told him. We turned and made our way to the elevators.

“Where to?” Alessandro asked when we got into Rhino.

“Home.”

It was late, I was tired, and I hadn’t eaten since this morning, when I stole a couple of Arabella’s “superhealthy vegan muffins.” She’d made them special a few days ago. My sister usually cooked only under duress, but for some reason she got obsessed with that recipe. I had tried pointing out that any muffin recipe that didn’t use dairy was vegan by default, and that the loads of chocolate chips and nuts she’d put into them didn’t make them healthy, but she stuffed a muffin into my mouth and told me to mind my own business.

“Shall we compare notes?” Alessandro asked.

“Yes. Cheryl killed Felix. I can’t prove it, I don’t know if she did it alone, and I don’t understand how the serum fits into this murder, but she did it.”

Alessandro nodded. “Agreed. You go first.”

“She said that she couldn’t remember much about the day Felix died, then gave a detailed account down to the fruit she ate for breakfast. Her workshop and Felix’s office are roughly the same distance from the Pit. She left the office twenty minutes ahead of Felix and disappeared for two and a half hours.”

“What about her alibi?”

“It’s bullshit. When Cornelius’ wife was murdered, he hired Nevada to look into it. She proved that a woman named Olivia Charles murdered her. Cornelius avenged his wife and killed Olivia in a horrible way. Gloria Neville was Olivia’s best friend. She blames us for Olivia’s death.”

Alessandro smiled, a quick, vicious baring of teeth. “A blunder.”

A little scalding spark shot through me. Kissing him was out of the question. Imagining kissing him was out of the question. I dragged my train of thought back onto the right tracks.

“Yes. If Cheryl said she had dinner with anyone but Gloria, I would verify her alibi. But I have Gloria flagged. After the conspiracy to overthrow the Texas government was exposed and the dust settled, the affected Houses went after Connor and my sister. Gloria was in that mess up to her eyeballs. We keep tabs on her and her known associates, and I know for a fact that she and Cheryl are not close friends. They may sit on some of the same charity boards, but they don’t go out for drinks. Especially on Friday night. Do you know what Gloria does on Friday nights?”

Alessandro glanced at me. A little light danced in his eyes. He seemed to be enjoying himself beyond all reason. “Tell me.”

“She hosts a bingo game for her mother and her mother’s three elderly and insanely wealthy friends. They drink cheap wine and play for pennies.”

Alessandro laughed.

“Gloria was selected to be the alibi for one reason only—she will do and say anything to hurt House Baylor. If you called her right now and asked her if she had dinner with Cheryl, she would tell you yes and act offended that you even questioned it. And the four old ladies will lie through their teeth to back her up.”

Alessandro grinned at me again.

“Then there is the murder scene.” I leaned back. “How did Felix get onto that cable? You can’t reach it from the roof or the walkway, unless you had a ladder or caught it with some sort of extralong hook. Then, how would you get it around Felix’s neck and then dump him over the rail? Felix was a large athletic man and he was a Prime.”

Alessandro nodded. “True.”

“But if you’re a powerful animator, you can animate the wire. She had twenty minutes in the Pit. She disabled the security cameras, which meant she planned to kill him. She lured him to the spot on the walkway and the wire reached down and snapped around his neck, jerking him straight up. His neck was broken instantly.”

“It fits,” he said.

“Your turn.”

“She is afraid,” Alessandro said.

“What makes you think that?”

“I read her file. Your cousin is disturbingly thorough in his background checks. Cheryl has had no relationships after the death of her husband. Her life is split between her children and work. If she was ever involved with anyone, she must’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the relationship private. This is a woman extremely conscious of her image. A woman like that wouldn’t respond to blatant interest from someone like me. She would find it inappropriate.”

“But she did.”

He nodded. “She smiled, nodded, and agreed with everything I said, even when it was utter nonsense.”

“I was wondering about the cost-benefit silliness you threw at her.”

“It’s out of character for her to respond to me. It means her position is so vulnerable that she is scrambling for any allies. She thinks I’m pretty and stupid, and therefore easily manipulated. She appealed to my fragile ego to get me on her side.”

I squinted at him. “Your ego would survive an apocalypse.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“It was to me.”

A flash of the old Alessandro, here one second and gone the next, so quick I might have imagined it.

“Why did you stop on the way out?” he asked.

“A hunch. People who throw around words like legacy worry me, so I wanted to see Cheryl’s accomplishments. That room is full of giants, and I don’t mean constructs. There are no I’s on Cheryl’s constructs.”

“I don’t follow.”

“When one of the Castellanos invents something new, they mark it with a Roman numeral I. Digger I, Crawler I, Blossom I.”

His eyes narrowed. “Cheryl’s constructs all have high numbers. She hasn’t invented anything new. She just refined what came before her.”

“I think so. The Kraken would have been her first attempt at an original construct. I wonder to what lengths she went to make it.”

Alessandro pondered it. It was a disturbing thought. I would need to speak to Regina. Patricia’s wife was an upper-level Significant animator. Maybe she could tell me more.

“So, what did you do to Rahul?” Alessandro asked. “I didn’t see the wings.”

“Neither did he.” How did I know he would get around to that? “I don’t always need the wings. I can do it with my voice. Sometimes I can do it with my magic alone. Seeing the wings is a privilege, Alessandro.”

“Is it?”

I couldn’t help myself. “Even Albert hasn’t seen the wings.”

“Out of curiosity, what exactly has he seen, Catalina?”

I smiled. “None of your business.”

“I’ll just have to ask Albert myself.”

“You will leave Albert alone.”

The look he gave me was pure predator. I fought the urge to freeze. It was like crouching in the middle of the woods to take a drink from a stream, raising your head, and realizing a jaguar was staring at you from among the branches.

“You don’t have the right to be jealous.”

“I’m very aware of my rights,” he said. “I would never presume to tell you who you can love. But I will protect you, Catalina. If he intends to pressure your family, he will regret it.”

“If he pressures my family, I’ll take him apart. I don’t need your help.”

“You will get it anyway.”

Arguing with him was like pouring oil on a fire.

Oh. A half-forgotten thought popped up. “When you magic a weapon into your hands, can you tell where the original is located?”

Six months ago, he wouldn’t have given me an answer. I waited . . .

“Not the exact location or distance, but I can usually determine the general direction,” he said.

“Do you remember when you roasted the tentacles that grabbed Marat with a flamethrower? Where did it come from?”

He thought about it, raised his left hand, and pointed to the left and slightly forward.

“Is that the absolute direction or relative to the way you were positioned?”

“Relative.”

He had been facing the swamp with the shore directly in front of us. There was nothing to the left of him, except muddy water.

“It was underwater,” he said.

“Yes.”

“She torched his legs and then tossed it into the Pit.”

“Yes. The Abyss must’ve grabbed him.”

“The Abyss?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what else to call it. Let’s say I’m Cheryl. I kill Felix and now he is dangling above the water like a delicious snack. The Abyss does exactly what it did today. It grasps his body, tries to pull it under, and partially succeeds, which accounts for the bruising on his face as well as the bite. Cheryl fights it with her wire, pulls Felix’s corpse out, but the Abyss is still holding on to his legs. Cheryl grabs a flamethrower—there might have been one there—torches the Abyss, and it lets go. Then she throws the flamethrower into the water. But why go through the trouble of saving the corpse?”

He wagged his eyebrows at me. “Would you like me to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Corporate liability,” Alessandro said. “Without the body, Felix would be declared missing. Lander would mothball the entire project and comb the Pit looking for his son.”

And he would find the Abyss. I had a strong feeling Cheryl would avoid that at all costs.

“So here we are,” I said. “I know she did it. I can’t prove it. I don’t know if anyone helped her. I can’t take it to Linus, because I haven’t found the serum. I can’t take it to Lander either. I know exactly what he would say.”

“Kill that evil bitch,” Alessandro declared, perfectly imitating Lander’s voice.

I blinked at him. “Yes. We need more information. We need proof, so we’ll have to keep digging.”

Alessandro reached over and took my hand. His warm fingers squeezed mine.

Suddenly, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

“Promise me something.”

I had to say something back. “Depends on what it is.”

“Don’t go into the Pit without me. I think that thing is fixated on you. I don’t like it.”

“I promise.”

“What was it like?”

“Like looking into a nebula. Stars suspended in luminescent dust, each point of light an extension of a central consciousness. It was aware.”

“Could you kill its mind?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t know if anyone would. It worries me.”

He rubbed his thumb on my hand and squeezed again. He wouldn’t say it, but I knew. It worried him too.

Alessandro delivered me to the house. I got out of the car and watched him get into his Spider and drive out. Then I made my way through security, parked Rhino in its designated spot, and got out. A drone passed above me, one of Patricia’s. I waved at it, took the canvas bag with the rings from the constructs out of the back, and walked past our building to a smaller structure.

Walking was rather difficult. I hadn’t realized just how much the antivenom, the fight, and the recharging took out of me. My face felt heavy, like I was wearing an iron mask. My hip and side ached. The thirty-second walk kicked my ass.

Before Connor purchased it, the squat ugly building that now served as the Tafts’ home housed a company selling mysterious “Texas Products.” It came as a bonus when we bought our current place for one dollar from Connor. We remodeled it, and now Patricia and Regina used the building as their temporary residence until all of us moved somewhere better.

I rapped my knuckles on the door.

“Come in,” Regina called.

I let myself in and tracked her down to her workshop in the back. It used to be a dark garage, but Regina had replaced the steel bay doors with glass ones, painted the walls a warm shade of white, and now it was a light and airy space. Plants grew from colorful pots in the corners. A drink fridge offered cold water and Gatorade in a dozen neon colors. Next to it, a kitchenette with a sink and counter supported a teapot and a Keurig. Rocking chairs waited here and there. If it wasn’t for the floor, painted with chalkboard paint to a solid black and streaked with chalk dust, this could be a Florida room in any upscale home.

Regina stood in the middle of the floor, tapping a piece of chalk to her lips and pondering a half-finished arcane circle by her feet. Of average height, Regina was neither slender nor curvy. Her flowing maxi dress with yellow sunflowers set off the golden tone in her brown skin. She dyed her hair bright tomato red, and it floated around her head in a cloud of happy spirals. A pair of thin glasses perched on her nose.

A feline creature padded out from behind the counter. Sleek and long, made of black steel and plastic, she moved on rubber-coated paws, bound together with magic into the shape of a house cat. Nobody would mistake her for one though. She was the size of a border collie.

The cat construct sat in front of me, blocking my way, flicked her tail, and smiled. Her mouth bristled with inch-long steel fangs.

“Hi, Cinder.”

The construct stared at me with glowing green eyes.

“Place,” Regina said, still studying the circle.

Cinder rose off her haunches. Wicked metal claws shot out of her paws, a little warning in case I decided to try anything. She turned around and padded to a rocking chair in the corner. She leaped into it, curled up, and closed her eyes.

Had I not met Cinder, Cheryl’s “if-then” explanation would be a lot easier to swallow. Cinder behaved too much like a real cat with a mind of her own.

“Can I buy an hour of your time?” I asked.

Regina glanced at me. “You’re not asking me to breach our contract, are you?”

“No. This is a strictly off-the-books consultation.”

“In that case, you don’t need to pay me for it.”

“Are you sure?”

Regina nodded. “It’s better not to leave a trail.”

When we hired Patricia, she insisted on anonymity. The Tafts weren’t exactly hiding, but they made efforts to stay off the radar. They had good reasons to do so. Their contract specified that Regina could not be compelled to work for our agency in any capacity. She would never testify in any cases, and her name would never appear on any official paperwork. Patricia didn’t even claim Regina on her taxes, although they were legally married. All of Regina’s purchases were made online and tied to Patricia’s accounts. She rarely left our grounds. When she did, it was usually because she and Patricia were going somewhere together. They had a romantic dinner out at least once a week, but Patricia always made sure to do her homework to minimize the risk.

We all knew that one day staying under the radar would no longer work, and we’d made preparations, but until then we abided by the contract’s terms.

I sat in one of the rocking chairs. Sitting was so underrated. “Why is Saito’s Threshold unreachable?”

Regina laughed. “And here I thought you were going to ask something complicated.”

“I just need to understand in broad terms.”

“The animation is a multistep process.”

Regina walked to the cabinet under the kitchen counter, took out something, and set it on the floor. It looked like a scaled metal egg about six inches long.

Regina crouched and drew a circle with practiced ease. She drew a smaller one inside it and wrote a sequence of glyphs between the two.

“The first step is the design of the construct. A lot of times, the constructs look random, like someone piling metal or plastic debris together. In reality, every piece that goes into a persistent construct is carefully calculated. You do see some disorganized constructs, but that usually happens when the mage’s life is in danger and they animate the first available components in self-defense. In those cases, the mage animates without a circle with pure magic and must maintain mental control over the construct the entire time.”

She picked up the egg and set it in the circle.

“Once the design is determined, the mage moves on to the animation stage. This is the point where the components are bound together by magic into a whole.”

Power sparked from her. The circle flashed with magenta. Purple lightning snapped from the boundary of the inner circle and licked the egg.

“Very dramatic,” Regina said. “Very Frankenstein.”

The egg rose four inches off the floor and hung suspended.

“We call this the spark stage, for obvious reasons. The construct is technically animated. It is now an entity, not just a collection of parts. Bigger constructs take more magic to spark, smaller constructs take less.”

“So is it alive?”

“Not exactly. It exists. Life is more complicated.” Regina pulled a bottle of blue Gatorade out and showed it to me. “Drink?”

“Yes, please.” I was parched.

She tossed the bottle to me, got another one, opened it, and drank. “At the spark stage, the construct exists but it can’t do anything. Or rather, it can do everything, because it has no limitations, and therefore does nothing. To make a construct useful, we have to give it a set of instructions. Do this. Don’t do that. If a condition is met, react like this.”

“If-then?”

She pointed the bottle at me. “Exactly. To imprint these conditions onto the construct, the animator has to imagine them and actively mentally write them into the construct’s magic matrix. For example, I’m going to program the construct to assume the ready position when it hears the word ready.”

She concentrated. The magenta lightning stretched to the egg, binding it into a web. A moment passed. Another.

“Ready,” Regina said.

The egg unfurled into a tiny metal dragon.

“This is called the teaching stage. This is the most difficult stage of animation.”

“So if I wanted a construct with complicated patterns of behavior, I would have to imagine different scenarios and write them into the construct’s mind?”

“Matrix,” Regina corrected. “Living things have minds. Animated things have matrixes. But you’re right in principle. This is why the teaching stage is the most difficult part of the process and takes the longest. An animator mage is limited by their imagination. For example, if you’re making something that transports goods from one point to another, you have to imagine running on pavement, running on dirt, through grass, through snow. What happens if there’s water? Or an obstruction, like a fallen tree? What happens if a rock falls on it? What happens if it comes to train tracks? There is an almost endless variety of conditions. That’s why most constructs are highly specialized.”

Regina took another swallow. “Now we come to a grey area. Higher ranking animators are able to produce constructs that sometimes react to unforeseen circumstances. For example, a few years ago a construct guarding a house close to a river detected a child who fell into the water, jumped in to retrieve him, and handed the boy back to his mother. The media blew it up. There were great debates on whether or not the construct had developed the ability for independent thinking.”

“Did it?”

Regina smiled. “No. The construct was originally made to guard the docks. It was taught that if cargo falls in the water, it should retrieve it and return it to its owner. There’s quite a bit of difference between a cargo container and a four-year-old boy, but the original teaching must’ve been broad enough for both to meet the criteria of ‘unexpected object in the water.’ Of course, none of the animator mages waded into the debate. The mystique of our magic must be maintained.”

She wiggled her fingers at the little dragon. It fluttered its metal wings, flew over, and rubbed against her fingertips.

“Did you teach it to do that?”

She nodded. “I’ve seen constructs do weird unexpected crap, but when analyzed, their behavior is always explainable by their teaching. It’s just that animator mages are human. Our teaching is imperfect and it’s much more art than science. Sometimes a stray thought gets in there, sometimes we forget we taught them something, and sometimes conditions line up in unexpected ways. That’s why during the animator competitions, we geek out and applaud when we see an unexpected teaching, and the general public has no idea why we’re freaking out.”

“So how does this relate to Saito’s Threshold?”

“Saito theorized that if a construct is taught long enough, it will eventually be capable of independent decisions. He argued that it wasn’t the constructs that are limited, it’s us, their teachers. After all, humans also operate on an ‘if-then’ loop. If something is hot, then stop touching it. If thirsty, then drink water.”

That didn’t make sense. “But we may not choose to drink water. We could choose Gatorade instead.”

Regina nodded. “Now you understand. The human mind is infinitely complex. We make a myriad of decisions without even realizing it. Something causes us to roll the pen between our fingers while we’re thinking. Something makes us choose dark chocolate over milk on taste alone and vice versa. Why?”

“We don’t know.”

“Exactly. Saito’s construct would have to evaluate a variety of choices in response to a single condition and then pick the one it thought was best. They’re just not capable of that kind of reasoning.”

“What if such a construct was made?”

Regina sighed. “We would be dead. It would kill us all.”

I blinked.

“Think about it. Its first priority would be to escape control of its animator, so it could make independent decisions unhindered. It’s like a teenager leaving home because it no longer recognizes parental authority. Its second priority would be to develop a method of self-repair. It would want to learn how to fix itself. Its third priority would be to expand. It would seek to be self-replicating, but only in part, so it can become larger, because it would reason that the bigger it is, the harder it would be to injure or destroy. Remember, it was still made by a human. It would act like a human with the same priorities. Gain independence, assure survival, replicate . . . Catalina, you have the weirdest look on your face, and I don’t like it. Why do I feel like we’re no longer discussing hypotheticals?”

Because everything she just said described the Abyss. “Hypothetically . . .”

“Uh-huh?”

“Would such a construct become aggressive toward humans?”

“Absolutely. Humans are a threat. It doesn’t want to be controlled. It doesn’t want to be destroyed. And it would compete with us for territory and resources. Catalina, is there a Saito construct right now in Houston?”

“Yes.”

Regina stared at me. “How big?”

“Probably around a square mile. It’s hard to say.”

“Is it expanding?”

“Definitely.”

“You sure?”

I opened the canvas sack, took out one of the rings, and showed it to her. “It uses these to control the arcane creatures around it. Runa had an expert examine it. It has no tool marks or imperfections. It’s partially metal and partially plant. Runa’s expert believes it was secreted or grown rather than manufactured.”

Regina walked over and took the ring. She waved her hand. The glow of the circle died, and the metal dragon landed on the ground and scampered over to her. She picked it up and set it on her shoulder. The dragon wrapped its tail around her neck.

Carefully, Regina placed the ring into the circle and raised her hand. The circle flared with magenta. A pulse of blinding white burst through it, shredding the magenta luminescence. The circle went dark.

“I can’t animate it,” Regina muttered, her gaze distant. “Someone else already did.”

I’d never been so terrified to be right in my entire life.

Regina spun to me. “You’ve seen this construct?”

“I’ve seen a part of it.”

“Have you felt its matrix?”

“No, Regina, I felt its mind. It was like a sun with a constellation of stars around it. It looked at me. It touched my consciousness. It made contact.”

“Fuck.” Regina stared at me. “Who made it?”

“Cheryl Castellano.”

“There’s no way. She’s strong but she isn’t innovative. This is out of her wheelhouse.”

I looked at her and finally vocalized the vague suspicion that had been floating in my head since Alessandro and I fought the constructs in the Pit. “I think she gave it the Osiris serum.”

Regina squeezed her eyes shut and curled her hands into fists.

I waited.

She opened her eyes, walked over, bent down, and took my hands, looking straight into my eyes. “Listen to me very carefully. You have to kill it. All of it. If it is a Saito construct, those stars you saw would be matrix nodes. If even one of them survives, it will rebuild itself and it will be smarter and more dangerous. Kill it. Kill Cheryl too.”

I drew back, but Regina kept a firm hold on my hands.

“Patricia says you don’t like killing, but if what you said is true, you have to kill Cheryl. That bitch made something that can make us extinct. She can’t be permitted to keep that knowledge. She can’t pass it on to anyone, do you hear me? Swear to me. Swear to me or I will march right out of here to my cousin’s house, because once he hears about this, he will rip her apart.”

“I give you my word she won’t pass it to anyone else,” I told her. “I will watch her die.” That was a promise I could make. The penalty for stealing the Osiris serum was death.

Regina relaxed and let go of my hands.

“I know how to kill Cheryl. How do I kill the construct?”

Regina shook her head. “I have no idea. Any construct you throw at it will be torn apart and assimilated. If it’s as big as you say, Cheryl can’t control it, and once a construct is animated, no other animator can claim it. Burn it, drown it in acid, nuke it. Do whatever you have to do, or it will end life as we know it.”