“Because I’ve lost DeGeorge, the automatons, and Gutenberg himself,” Pallas said. Fatigue slurred her words. “As a cataloger who’s unfit for field duty, I imagine you’re low on the list of potential vampire targets. At least you were, until Lena led them to you.”

“Or maybe I’m the perfect target,” I shot back. “Someone low on the food chain, who you wouldn’t bother to watch as closely.”

“Which is why I asked someone from outside the Porters to look in on you and confirm your humanity.”

Someone from outside . . . “De Leon?”

“He owed me a favor. Isaac, there are larger problems here. Moscow was struck by an ‘earthquake’ two weeks ago which appears to have been magical in nature, destroying several former KGB facilities. Similar strikes have been reported in London, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, and Nigeria over the past three months.”

I remembered hearing about the quakes in London and Hong Kong. “Automatons?”

“Possibly. Though we suspect at least one such attack was carried out by a Porter with an all-too-human grudge. There’s no pattern, and with Gutenberg and the automatons gone, I’m doing everything I can to keep the Porters from fracturing beneath the weight of regional and national differences.” She took a long, slow breath. “None of which is your concern. What else have you learned?”

I described my fight with the vampire, including the way he had self-destructed at the end. “I’ve never come across anything like it, either the eyes or the ability to burn a vampire from within.” I hesitated, then added, “I think it might have been Gutenberg’s work.”

“Unlikely,” Pallas said flatly.

“Who else could control the automatons? Who else would speak a six-hundred-year-old German dialect?”

“I know Johannes Gutenberg as well as you knew Ray Walker. Better, in fact. We would know if he had been turned. He would never turn against his own Porters, and there’s not a man or woman living today with the power to force him to do anything he doesn’t want.” When she spoke again, she sounded pensive. “You’re certain about the dialect?”

“As certain as I can be without having lived in fifteenth-century Mainz.”

Another pause. “So what do you intend to do next?”

“Ted said there had been other problems among the vampires. We need more information, and I figure the best way to get it is to go to the source.”

“I see. Be careful, Isaac. I’m short on people, and would prefer not to lose any more.”

The phone went dead. I stared at it in disbelief. “She didn’t tell me to back off.”

“That’s good, right?” The bed shifted as Lena sat down beside me. “Would you have followed her orders if she had?”

“Pallas doesn’t generally give her underlings much choice in the matter.” I replayed our conversation in my mind. “She doesn’t believe Gutenberg could do this.”