“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. His mom gets killed, he comes after me, poisons me—”

“Yeah, about that,” Gabriela says. “Did he hit you with an arrow or something?”

“The street.”

“He poisoned the street and threw it at you?” Vivian says.

“Shot it at me, but yeah, pretty much. Here’s what I don’t understand. Why? He said I’d killed his mom. Only I didn’t. I haven’t killed anybody.”

“Recently,” Gabriela says.

“Uh huh. How’s that head collection coming along? Stones and glass houses, chica. I didn’t even know who the hell either of them was until just now. So why did he think I’d killed his mom?”

“Not just his mom,” Vivian says, not meeting my eyes. “All the other ones, too.”

Chapter 4

“Other ones?” I say. “Back up. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Kate’s not the first to die that way,” Vivian says. “Over the last month this has happened to at least seventeen families scattered around the city. All mages. House burned down, one person in it, nothing but fragments of bone left.” And too hot to find a bullet, probably. Just a little dot of slag in a pile of ash and bone.

“How did I not hear about this?” But I know how I didn’t hear about it. I didn’t hear about it the same way I didn’t hear about a serial killer mage who was poisoning people.

We’re a secretive bunch, us mages. We don’t talk to each other much and what little community we have is tight-knit and paranoid. Probably nobody started putting pieces together until it hit critical mass. And even then, information wouldn’t just get out there. The ones who knew would keep it close.

And let’s face it, though I grew up here, I’m an outsider. My name’s known, and not in a good way. I’ve brought some shit down on this city a couple of times. Gotten good people killed.

A lot of mages won’t give me the time of day. Gabriela’s an exception, but I understand why she does it. Hold your friends close, your enemies closer, and your shit-magnets close enough to use them as a shield when the shooting starts.

“People started connecting the dots about a week ago,” Vivian says. “I only found out myself yesterday. Once I came over and heard about what had happened and that it was you, I told Gabriela about it.”

“You didn’t know about this?” I say to Gabriela. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she’s not happy.

“Great, we’re all out of the loop. Now what’s this about me killing all of them?”

“I don’t know where it started, or how, but it seems everybody got the same message a couple days ago. Eric Carter killed your fill-in-the-blank.”