He was dressed casually, in a fine-gauge graphite gray sweater, dark jeans, and black boots. Something had happened while I had amnesia, because he still looked like the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.

Ian smiled sadly and said, “Hello, darling.”

I was tangled in my long T-shirt, so I sat up rather ungracefully and brushed my hair out of my face. My heart was pounding from the shock of being awakened, from being near him. “Hello, Ian.”

“I came to talk to you in my capacity as a member of the Council.”

“You could have knocked.”

“I thought you might not open the door. You haven’t called me since you’ve recovered your memory.” He took a key and set it on the floor. “I won’t do it again.”

“That’s good, because I won’t be here,” I said. “Did Mercedes tell you I was leaving?”

“Yes. She broke her rule about keeping out of our relationship,” he said. “The Council has cleared you of all charges in Wilcox Spiggott’s death and we would like to thank you for helping to apprehend his murderer.”

“Sure, anytime. I apologize for accusing you of killing him.”

Ian shrugged and I thought of the powerful shoulders moving beneath the soft fabric.

“It was a reasonable suspicion. I certainly considered it,” he said. “I understand that you have accomplished what Professor Poindexter did not—you are able to raise the dead. Well, I have always found your presence uplifting.”

“Ha, ha, and ha, Ian,” I said, and when he smiled it made me feel … wonderful. Ian always made me feel wonderful. “You bought that house so you could meet Ford and, through him, his father.”

“Yes. I’d heard through various acquaintances that Poindexter had been contracted to reanimate corpses for warfare.”

“You weren’t skeptical about such a story?”

“When there is profit enough, man achieves things that seem impossible,” he said. “I hadn’t counted on Cricket’s too-avid interest in me. I tried to channel her behavior, but you see how badly that turned out.”

“Of course, it doesn’t answer why you wanted to befriend a man misusing his genius to create a zombie army.”

“I didn’t want to befriend him. I wanted to find him and stop him.”

“You found the facility and set the explosives.”

“I expected to use a more subtle approach, but I let my emotions get the best of me. I believed you were safe at the ranch with Oswald.”

“I thought you were still with Ilena. Perhaps we should coordinate efforts in the future.”

We sat quietly for a minute and then I said, “You were right about me. I killed a guard to escape Poindexter’s compound, and I killed Professor Poindexter when I saw him because … because the absence of any good can be evil. He was evil.”