Words screamed in her head, acid hot—not the urgent, compulsive proclamation of an oracle; rather a cry of rage and vengeance. You discovered that truth after you murdered my mother. But she managed to swallow the accusation. Harlan would be searching for her. She had to buy time. That meant she had to maintain control.

“How did you find me?” she said instead.

“It wasn’t easy. I found Blake Sefton first. He was an old man by the time I located him. Sinking into dementia. He was one of the engineers involved in Vortex. His specialty was the paranormal physics of mirrors. He went into hiding when the word came down to destroy the lab and everyone connected to it. He was one of the few who survived the layoff process.”

Olivia’s stomach knotted. “Layoff?”

“When the order was given to destroy Vortex, it included all personnel closely affiliated with it. The explosives that were used to close the lab took care of several targets. The rest were tracked and removed within a few months. But there were a few who escaped detection for decades. Sefton was one of those. Got to hand it to him—he was well on his way to dying of old age when I found him.”

“Why?” Olivia asked, shocked. “Why murder all those people?”

“Because they knew the truth about what Vortex could do,” Spode said. “That made them a threat to the man in DC who was in charge of the project.”

Harlan had been right. The individual in charge of Vortex had tried to get rid of all the witnesses.

“Who is he?” Olivia whispered. “Who is the monster in DC who gave the orders?”

“No need to worry about him,” Spode said. “He’s been dead for a very long time.”

“I’m assuming it wasn’t natural causes.”

Spode chuckled. “Depends on your definition of ‘natural causes.’ The assassin who was selected to track down and eliminate the personnel associated with Vortex learned his identity and terminated him.”

“One of the monsters turned on his creator. Who could have seen that coming? Guess the guy back in DC didn’t learn anything from the Frankenstein story.”

“The assassin understood that once he had gotten rid of the Vortex team, he would become a liability as far as the man in DC was concerned,” Spode said. “He decided to be proactive.”

“Was that assassin the one who murdered my grandmother?”

“Unfortunately, at the time, he did not realize that Grace Goodwin was the only one who could tune the heart of Vortex.”

“What happened to him?”

“The assassin? He died when he was about my age.”

“In a lives-by-the-sword kind of way?”