He went from casual and funny to deadly serious in half a blink. “What sexy werewolf?”

I laughed.

Curran’s eyes focused. He was concentrating on something.

“You’re taking a mental inventory of all the people working on the third floor, aren’t you?”

His expression went blank. I’d hit the nail on the head.

I slid off him and put my head on his biceps. The shaggy carpet was nice and comfortable under my back.

“Is it Jordan?”

“I just picked a random floor,” I told him. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

He put his arm around me. “Look who’s talking.”

We lay together on the carpet.

“We can’t let the necklace kill that boy,” I said.

“We’ll do everything we can.” He sighed. “I’m sorry about dinner.”

“Best date ever. Well, until people died and vampires showed up. But before that it was awesome.”

We lay there some more.

“We should go to bed.” Curran stretched next to me. “Except the carpet is nice and soft and I’m tired.”

“You want me to carry you?”

He laughed. “Think you can?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to find out?”

It turned out that carrying him to our bed wasn’t necessary. He got there on his own power and he wasn’t nearly as tired as he’d claimed to be.

Morning brought a call from Doolittle. When we arrived at the medward, Roderick was sitting on the cot, the same owlish expression on his face. The necklace had lost some of its yellow tint during the night. Now it looked slightly darker than orange rind.

I crouched by the boy. “Hi.”

Roderick looked at me with his big eyes. “Good morning.”

His voice was weak. In my mind the necklace constricted around his fragile neck. The bone crunched…

We had to get a move on. We had to get it off him.

Doolittle led us toward the door and spoke quietly. “There is a definite change in the color of the metal. He’s beginning to experience discomfort.”

“So that thing is getting hungry,” Curran said.

“Probably.” Doolittle held up a small printout. A pale blue stripe cut across the paper. The m-scan. The m-scanner recorded specific types of magic as different colors: purple for the undead, green for shapeshifter, and so on. Blue stood for plain human magic—mages, telepaths, and telekinetics all registered blue. It was the basic human default.

“Is that the necklace or Roderick?” Curran asked.

“It’s the boy. He has power and it’s obscuring whatever magic signature the necklace is giving out.” Doolittle pointed to a point on the graph. I squinted. A series of paler sparks punctured the blue.

“This is probably the necklace,” Doolittle said. “It’s not enough to go on. We need a more precise measurement.”