One of Victor’s favorite tricks was programming his DVR to record and play back shows that wouldn’t air for another six months. He was supposed to send me next season’s Doctor Who. “How did it happen?”

“They tortured him to death in his own home.” Lena stabbed her spoon into the ice cream. Her shoulders were tight. “Nidhi was called down to Columbus to help examine the scene. The house was a wreck. Walls smashed in, windows broken, and blood everywhere. He put up a good fight, but it wasn’t enough.”

“Wait . . . how good of a fight?” Any serious magical conflict should have attracted attention.

Lena gave me a grim smile. “Exactly. From what we could tell, his television incinerated at least one vampire. He had rigged an extra channel to put out a burst of ultraviolet light through the screen. Nobody could understand exactly what he had done to his garbage disposal, but they found blood and a fang in there.” She crunched another bite of ice cream and M&Ms. “It should have been more than enough magic to alert the Porters and summon one of their automatons to investigate, but that didn’t happen. Nicola Pallas first learned of the attack on the news.”

Meaning the Porters hadn’t been the first ones to arrive. Most of the police officers I’d met were decent people, but they weren’t equipped for this kind of investigation and didn’t know how to avoid tainting any magical evidence.

“The next attack was similar,” Lena said. “An alchemist in northern Indiana. The Porters think vampires might also be behind the death of a telepath in Madison about six months back. That time, they tortured her whole family before killing her.”

Madison . . . that would have been Abigail Dooley. I remembered hearing about her death, but I hadn’t known the details. She had retired years ago, and had been making a comfortable living via the occasional visit to the casino.

“Why punish her family? She was out of the game. She didn’t know anything worth—” The realization made me ill. “They were torturing her. So she’d hear her family’s thoughts as they died.”

“That was Nidhi’s guess, too,” said Lena, her voice dead.

Three murders. “Why haven’t I heard about this before now?”

“I’m not a Porter. You’d have to ask them.” Lena stared at the table, but it was obvious she wasn’t really seeing it. “There were two more attacks yesterday,” she said slowly. “The first was against Nidhi Shah.”

And Lena was Doctor Shah’s bodyguard. “Is she all right?”

Even as I asked, I saw the answer in her face. “There were four vampires. I was forced to kill the first. I stopped another, but they found my tree. They cut it down. I’ve never felt pain like that before. I tried to fight, but as my tree died . . .”