his dark eyes wide. “She what?”

The Japanese guy inhaled sharply, like I’d just taken off my clothes or made an embarrassing bodily

noise.

I took a deep breath. Jesus, these guys didn’t know anything. Why had they waited for days before

interrogating me? Although this was more like I was questioning them. My stomach rumbled

again.“Showed me a transcript. Only Dylan said it wasn’t the original but a redacted one. He gave

me a copy of the original. Christophe’s got it.”

Silence. They all kept giving each other little sideways glances. Telling glances, only I had no idea

what they were saying. You could cut the silence with a cheap cafeteria spork.

“Reynard.” The blond in the gray suit finally spoke, and he said Christophe’s name like a curse.

“Always thinking he knows best.”

“In this case, he very well may.” Bruce’s expression settled somewhere halfway between amused

and worried. “Perhaps we should hear the entire tale. You are a mystery, Milady. Enlighten us.”

I struggled with the urge to tell him to call me Dru. On the one hand, this milady thing was like being trapped with a bunch of D&D nerds. I mean, they’re nice people, but sometimes you just want

them to talk like human beings, you know?

On the other hand, these guys were probably old enough to be my father. Or older. It didn’t feel

right to get all buddy-buddy with them.

A rock made of heavy panic lodged in my throat; I had to work twice to swallow it and winced in-wardly. I was beginning to get that nothing about this was going to get any easier.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “You want the whole story? Fine. It started out with me shooting a

zombie. But he wasn’t just an ordinary zombie. He was my dad.”

And to make everything even worse, my voice broke on the final word. How could I explain to a

bunch of djamphir what it meant to shoot a zombie who had been your father, for Christ’s sake?

“I think this would go easier with some breakfast. By the way, I’m Alton.” The coal-skinned kid

smiled kindly at me, those white teeth peeping out again. They all looked like a shampoo commercial, healthy and clear-skinned, perfectly proportioned, a group of handsome young men. Their

clothes hung on them like they were glad to be gracing such supermodels. And here I was, jeans and

a ratty old hoodie and my hair—I could almost feel it start frizzing. This was just the sort of situation where every loose thread and frizz will start poking out.

And every one of these guys could probably kill me without thinking twice about it, unless I had the

jump on them and some firepower.

Brains were going to have to be my edge. But I was so, so tired.