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or paper cups of hot blood.
Yeah.
See, that s the thing about this place. It does a real good job of seeming normal, at least on the
surface but then some little detail comes along and whacks you between the eyes. Cars look like cars
until you notice how many of them have windows tinted so dark you can t see inside, even through the
windshield. At Easter, the bunnies aren t made of chocolate though there s still a hunt and kids still
stuff their faces. And during the full moon, every thrope beneath it participates in a massive, three-day
party that makes Rio during Carnival look like a Mormon picnic. Okay, that last one isn t all that small,
but at least I only have to deal with it once a month.
You can make up your own joke. I mentioned it s Monday, right?
We march through the room to Cassius s office, which has a large, smoked-glass window beside the
door. The other side is sometimes blocked by retractable wood paneling, depending on whether he feels
like watching his people work. Mostly, just the fact that he might be looking makes them work harder.
Cassius s office looks more like a study dim lighting, lots of books. He s sitting behind the desk, and
of the four chairs in front of it, two are occupied: one by Damon Eisfanger, a forensics shaman, and
one by Gretchen Petra, one of our top intel experts.
Cassius is dressed in his usual dark-blue suit, his short blonde hair neatly combed, his hands clasped
together on the desk like a high-school student at his first interview.
Hey, Damon, I say as Charlie and I sit down. How s the baby, Gretch?
Growing at a prodigious rate, Gretch says. Gretch is British, sharper than a room full of razors and
just as dangerous. She appears to be in her late thirties, wears her blond hair pulled back into a tight
bun, and dresses like a librarian. She s a pire who recently had her first child, Anna there s a spell
here that allows that. As long as the parents are both willing, they age six months for every year the
child does. The kid becomes a full-fledged immortal when the spell is cancelled, restopping the clock
for the parents, too. That means Gretch is actually older than when we first met, though she doesn t
look it and so is Cassius.
Cassius isn t Anna s father her father was murdered by a psychopath I helped catch. But he did agree
to take on the victim s time-debt, which otherwise would have fallen completely on Gretchen. My
surfer-boy boss is growing up, after spending Lord-knows-how-many years with his internal stopwatch
stuck at late puberty.
Damon Eisfanger just nods at me. He looks a little nervous, and I wonder why. Damon s a thrope, his
bloodline descended from a pack of arctic wolves that gives him his ice-blue eyes and snow-white
crewcut. The wide, muscular build he gets from the other side of his family sometime in the past a
wolf-bitten pit-bull chomped one of his ancestors, passing along the lycanthropy curse and adding a
few additional canine genes at the same time. Damon s a geek who looks like he lives in a gym, but
he s also a friend who s slipped me information that could get him in trouble.
Jace, Charlie, Cassius says. Good morning to both of you. Sorry to get you out of bed so early
Oh my God, I say. You have a zit.
Excuse me?
A zit. On your face. I realize you may not recognize it because the last time you needed skin care
products they hadn t been invented yet, but that little yellow thing at the edge of your hairline wasn t
there yesterday.
I wouldn t know, Jace. I don t own a mirror.
Point taken. Are you a squeezer or a grower? Because I really don t want to have to sit here and watch
that thing expand every day
Jace
Hey, is your voice changing?
Cassius sighs. Are you done?
I ve got more material, but not all of it s ready. Let me do a polish and get back to you.
Cassius taps his keyboard and a panel behind his head retracts, revealing a large flatscreen. The face on
it drives a stake through the heart of the wisecrack I was about to make.
Aristotle Stoker.
Do this right, Cassius says, and you might not get the chance to perform any of it.
It s a shot of him walking down a street dressed in a trenchcoat, sunglasses hiding his eyes. He s a big
man, six and a half feet easy, with the build of a linebacker. Goodlooking in that craggy, implacable
way that speaks to the cave-woman genes one look tells you this is a guy who ll bring you a sabre-
tooth rug and a stack of mastodon steaks on the first date.
Time-stamp on the photo is three days ago. Where was this taken? I ask.
Brussels, says Cassius. He was spotted coming out of a meeting with a representative of this man.
The picture changes to a shot of a man sitting at a sidewalk café, cup raised to his lips. His upturned
collar and hat shade most of his face, but what I can see has an odd, shiny cast to it. Is that a lem? I
ask.
No, says Gretchen. He s human. He goes by the name of Silver Blue, and he s an arms dealer. The
color of his skin is a self-imposed condition known as argyntia, caused by consuming large amounts of
colloidal silver. It makes him immune to lycanthropy, obviously in fact, no thrope can even touch
him without suffering severe burns. Silver, of course, isn t quite as deadly to hemovores so he also
consumes an entire bulb of garlic every day.
Shiny and smelly.
And dangerous, says Cassius. Silver Blue supplies black market weapons to anyone who can pay
for them. That includes the Free Human Resistance, which is no doubt why Stoker was in touch. It
appears that some sort of major deal is under way, and more than just the FHR are involved. Also
present at the meeting was this individual.
The picture changes again, now showing me a golem dressed in a pair of cargo pants, steel-toed work
boots and nothing else. At first I think the picture s in black and white, but it s not; the golem s gray,
not a variation I ve seen before. Most lems are a sandy sort of yellow, though enforcers like Charlie are
black.
Tom Omicron, says Charlie. Founder of the Mantle.
The Mantle?
They re a radical golem rights group, says Gretchen. Based out of Nevada. Much of the golem
production in the country is centered there, due to the soil. The Mantle advocates civil disobedience,
workplace sabotage, and criminal negligence as tools for social change. Essentially, they believe in
isolationism; golems shouldn t even associate with the other races, let alone work for them. They ve
tried unsucessfully, thus far to organize several general strikes of all lem workers. Considering how
many golems are employed in essential support services, the consequences could have been
disastrous.
Sure. Most lems were used as manual labor, but that included everything from forklift operators to
construction crews not to mention soldiers. If they all decided to put down their pallets, shovels, and
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