I moved to follow.

“Stop.” Linus’ voice snapped like a whip.

I froze.

Linus strode into the room, still the picture of elegance. If he had gotten into a brawl in the Grand Foyer, he’d come through it undamaged.

“Did you get it?” Linus asked.

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

“But—”

“That isn’t your fight. He can handle himself. He took the contract as your bodyguard. Let him do his job while we go and do ours. Follow me.”

“But—”

“Now.”

I gritted my teeth and followed Linus back to the Grand Foyer.

Chapter 15

I sat on the opulent sofa in Linus’ Houston mansion and watched him scrutinize my video testimony.

After the opera, Linus and I drove here. He reviewed the recording of Cristal, told me I did well, then interrogated me about it. I wanted to run and find Alessandro. I wanted to kill Benedict. I wanted to search for Cristal’s lab so I could rescue Halle. Instead, I had to patiently recount everything that happened, several times over. Once I was done answering questions, Linus instructed me to write an account of what happened, which he then spent half an hour editing, then he had me recite the statement in front of the camera. He wasn’t satisfied with my first try, so I’d had to do it again. And again. He was reviewing attempt number three now.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“We wait for authorization. Once granted, we will dismantle House Ferrer until someone tells us where the lab is.”

“How long will that take?”

“Does he mean so much to you?” Linus asked.

He was asking about Alessandro. “It’s not just him. Halle’s life is on the line.”

Linus pivoted to me in his chair. “That’s not what I asked.”

“He means something.”

“Why him instead of all the others?”

“What others?”

“You’ve had opportunities, Catalina. I’ve watched you come in contact with several young men in the past three years. Four months ago, at the Mercier Exhibit, Justin Pine followed you around like a tail for the entire hour you were there. He is also handsome, wealthy, and a Prime.”

I’d barely noticed. I only attended because Arrosa wanted someone to go with her and Nevada couldn’t disentangle herself.

“Alessandro Sagredo is dangerous. You could do better. Is it a teenager crush?”

Linus waited.

“I like him,” I said. It seemed completely inadequate to describe what I felt. “He’s immune to me.”

Linus leaned forward, his face serious. “When I was asked to witness the birth of your House, I researched your talent.”

How exactly had he done that? I was the only siren in existence. There was another family somewhere in Greece, but they claimed to have lost the magic generations ago.

“Have you ever wondered why your family is immune?”

“They already love me.”

“Exactly. Your talent is a survival mechanism, like all magic. It seeks to keep you alive. It activates when it senses someone is a threat. Think back to your childhood. Some adults succumbed to your magic, but others didn’t. Do you understand me? Any man who truly falls in love with you and is invested in your survival will be immune. Alessandro isn’t your only chance at happiness.”

“Even if that’s true, I still like him.”

“Why?”

I spread my arms. “I don’t know. Half of the time I’m with him, he makes me grind my teeth. But I know that if I were in danger, he wouldn’t stop until I was safe. He looks at me like I’m beautiful. And he makes me laugh.”

Linus put his hand over his face. “God help us all.”

What did I say now?

He waved his hand. “Go. Go save Halle and help that young idiot. I’ll have the car ready for you.”

The little dog stirred on my bed and let out a quiet woof. I opened my eyes. My bedroom was dark, gloom pooling in the corners. The clock on my nightstand said 3:21 a.m. All was quiet.

When I’d gotten home, everyone had swarmed me. I’d kept the explanation short, omitting anything to do with the Osiris serum. I’d told them that Cristal was doing illegal research to make super assassins for Diatheke. They’d bought it, probably because it was mostly true. I told them about Benedict. We made plans for tonight with Heart. We had to get the location of that lab no matter the cost. Every minute we delayed, Halle was in danger.

Alessandro hadn’t responded to my text messages. I asked Bug to track him down, but he couldn’t find him. I scoured Cristal’s background and her family, looking for any scrap of information about the location of the lab until the words on the screen blurred. Finally, I went up to my room and collapsed. That was two hours ago.

Shadow looked at the window. Woof.

Woof.

An intruder was coming.

I sat up, scooped Shadow into my arms, and carried her to the bathroom. I set her on the floor and shut the door. I didn’t want her to get hurt.

A long-clawed hand hooked my window and slid it up.

I leaned against the wall in the corner.

A dark figure slipped through the open window and into my room. Tall and gangly, he wore a black bodysuit painted with swirls of grey. It clung to him like second skin, highlighting every imperfection of his odd, disjointed body. His shoulders and thighs were too short, while his forearms and shins ran disproportionately long, ending in huge clawed hands and feet. His neck, long and flexible, supported a round head, and as he crawled through my window, he swiveled it like an owl to glance back at the street.

He stepped on the floor and straightened, a bogeyman born from childhood nightmares.

I held very still.

He turned, scanning the room, and the moonlight caught his eyes, big and white, reflecting the light with an eerie green glow.

In the bathroom, Shadow broke down into a cacophony of barks and snarls, digging at the door.

He pivoted to the bathroom door. Step. Another step.

Another.

Far enough. I stepped into the soap circle on the floor and sank my magic into it. The arcane lines ignited with sapphire flames in a complex, dazzling array. The assassin froze, startled, his face clear in the glow of the glyphs. Bald, with thick glossy skin mottled with a patina of green, brown, and orange, like the carapace of some strange beetle, he didn’t look even remotely human. The typical contours of a man’s face, the cheekbones, the nose ridge, the brow, were thickened, as if someone had injected fat under his skin in all the wrong places. The nose had no tip, reduced to a broad, flattened bulge. His chin receded, almost delicate by comparison. The eyes, unnaturally large, stretched toward his ears. Only the mouth was somewhat normal.

Revulsion slithered through me. The urge to flee was so strong, I almost took a step back. I couldn’t even tell if it was his magic or just intense xenophobia, triggered by encountering a thing humanlike but not human enough.

Benedict had sent his butcher. He must’ve given up on taking me alive.

The lines around the assassin pulsed with yellow. The feedback jolted me. He’d struck at me and the circle dispersed it. A wave of emotion washed over me, disgust, hate, and anger, and underneath it all, a sucking vortex of bloodlust. The circle had lobbed his feelings at me. There was no way around this feedback.

The assassin leaped to the side. The circle pulsed in response, and he landed back where he started.

I had designed the circle by modifying an Acubens Exemplar spell to incapacitate an intruder, no matter what brand of magic he or she wielded. It was an all-purpose trap created to contain and interrogate. From above it looked like a large circle filled with a maze of lines and glyphs, with a double circle inside it at one end. Five smaller circles, each filled with progressively smaller rings, touched the outer rim of the main circle.

I stood within the smaller double circle, while the assassin was trapped in the larger ring. The complex pattern around the butcher imprisoned him. He couldn’t attack me. He couldn’t leave the circle either. His own magic interacting with the boundary held him back. However, he could still attempt to strike at the circle itself, and when he did, his magic would surge through the lines and run off into the five smaller magic sinks.

The assassin crouched on all fours, looking around. The circle fluoresced brighter under his feet. His big, misshapen eyes found me. “Die.”

A bright yellow flash exploded from him and ran through the lines of the circle. The five magic sinks spun, absorbing it and became still.

“Die. Die, die, die.”

Each burst sent a fresh spike of fury and hate through me. I waited until the sinks stopped spinning. I had all the time in the world.

The assassin stared at me. “Release me.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Release me or I’ll eat your family.”

That’s what I liked about warped assassins. They were reasonable, pleasant people. Such deep thinkers.

“Tell me your name.”

“I’ll kill you and eat your guts while you scream.”

“Not in that order, you won’t.”

He charged my circle, clawing at it, his mouth gaping, his small, sharp teeth trying to scrape at the wall of magic. We were barely six inches apart, yet we might as well have been on different continents.