I gritted my teeth, swung my legs out of bed, and padded toward the bathroom. Good thing I’d had a nice hot shower the night before because I was about to take a cold one.

The breakfast choices in the estate’s dining room were quiche Florentine and waffles with real maple syrup.

I love waffles. Real maple syrup? Not so much. It’s sort of thin and strange.

And no, they didn’t have the fake stuff. It’d taken me weeks to work up the courage to ask one of the waiters. I’d been afraid I’d get a snooty look in response, and I did. Well, it wasn’t an obvious look. I’m sure it was there, though.

I set my waffle atop my coffee cup and started stirring sugar into the puddle of syrup I’d poured onto my plate.

“That’s not something you see every day,” Andy said. “What’s the word I’m looking for? ‘Disgusting’ — yeah, that’s it.”

“Shut up. It’s not sweet enough.”

Andy and Theo laughed at me. Even Gwen, who was more reserved, chuckled.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, at least I wasn’t up all night staring at my Gene Kelly poster.”

Gwen let out a startled bark of laughter.

Theo went, “Ooooooo.”

Andy pointed his syrupy knife at me.

“Sweetheart, your sexless existence is the source of all your problems.”

I flushed and looked down. He didn’t know the half of it.

Theo shook his head. “Beth, you’re throwing slow-pitch. When’re you going to learn?”

Andy wrinkled his brow in mock concern. “You’d think all these months hanging out with the brute squad would’ve taught her.”

I focused on floating my waffle on the pool of doctored syrup.

“Must be because the brute squad isn’t all she hangs out with,” Andy continued.

Gwen shot him a warning look.

“Yeah, yeah. You know he doesn’t come to the dining room. All these worthless-peon cooties.”

They were talking about Yellin. I’d be spending the day with him.

I really would rather have buried rat kings.

Twenty minutes later, I knocked on a door in Cordus’s wing of the mansion. A reedy, heavily accented “you may enter” wafted through from the other side, and I went in.

Lodovico Yellin sat behind a heavy wooden desk at the far side of the room. It was a spacious office — not as large and opulent as Cordus’s, but nice enough.

Yellin was a tall, slender man. He wore fashionable little glasses, and his brown hair was liberally mixed with gray.

He looked me over with an expression of distaste.

“If you will excuse the observation, Miss Ryder, the cut of those slacks does not flatter you. The rise is too low. In addition, your hair is unevenly parted.”