Jan looked toward me, a tired smile on her lips. “Normally, she watches movies straight from the file server, but she’ll watch them slow if it means I do it with her.” She removed her glasses, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “Motherhood is exhausting. What was I thinking, saying I could handle a County and then adopting a kid? I must’ve been crazy.”

“Jan . . .”

“This whole thing is crazy.” Sighing, she put her glasses back on. “I’m sorry we were so weird when you got here. We’ve been running scared for a while now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and was surprised to realize that I meant it. “We’re doing our best.”

“I know you are.” A flicker of something like anger crossed her face. “It’s almost ironic. What we’re trying to do here . . . people shouldn’t be dying. That’s the last thing that should be happening.”

“What are you trying to do here?”

“Nothing big. Design better computers. Get the Summerlands onto a decent phone plan. Save Faerie.” She waved a hand vaguely, like she was brushing off a fly. “The usual nonsense. What are you going to do now?”

“Go back to Quentin, and go through the rest of this paperwork.” I picked up the drawer, tucking it under my arm. “I need you to be more careful. All of you. Gordan’s in the cube maze, alone. Elliot is Oberon- knows-where, alone. Cut it out.”

“I’ll talk to them,” she said.

“We’ve reviewed the information you gave us and searched the offices we could find. Did Yui have an office?”

“Yeah—she just hid it really well.” She pursed her lips, looking momentarily unhappy. “When Elliot gets back, I’ll ask if he can lead you there. He can usually find it.”

“Elliot? All right. We can’t find anything the victims had in common, other than working here. I’m going to have a second look at the places where the bodies were found, but I don’t expect to find anything.”

“They were hired from a lot of different places, for a lot of different reasons,” Jan said, almost apologetically. “Colin . . . well, we needed a Selkie for some of our integration testing. It’s difficult to explain, but race really mattered. Peter was a history teacher with a specialization in folklore—that wasn’t just human folklore.”

“Faerie historian?”

“Genealogist.”

“Why did you need a genealogist?”

“Market research.” Jan shrugged. “You can’t use the same sales pitch with a Daoine Sidhe and a Centaur. It’s not going to work. Yui was our team alchemist. She could make just about anything compatible with anything else, if you gave her time.”

“What about Barbara?”

“Friend of Gordan’s, hired in a nonsecure position. She was from San Jose. That probably explains why . . .” Jan stopped.

“Why she betrayed you? Yes, it probably does.”

“Don’t the bodies tell you anything?”