However guiltless Carmichael appeared in the eyes of the law, I couldn’t ignore the reality of the situation—Ouroboros had abducted children to use as test subjects. It seemed an awful big coincidence that one of the leaders of that corporation had potential ties to another child-abducting organization. It even crossed my mind that the idea to take the street kids could’ve come from Carmichael originally. If so, I thought it would be pretty easy to get over my aversion to taking human lives. Easy as breathing. But a hell of a lot more gratifying.

I tried creating a gateway to someplace closer to the downtown high-rise Carmichael called home—I even went so far as to draw a likeness of one of the cluttered basements I’d ducked out in a night or two on the wall beside the original gateway, which would’ve left me just a few blocks from Carmichael’s place—but no matter how hard I tried to focus, I couldn’t get the magic to work. I couldn’t even get a spark of the increasingly familiar current of otherworldly energy to hum through me. My magical batteries were well and truly dead, and I had no clue how long it would take them to recharge. I’d have to go the long way.

It would’ve been safer to wait until dark to leave Garth’s building, but I had a narrow window of opportunity to get into Carmichael’s home while he was out—assuming he held anything close to normal work hours. He was on the Ouroboros board of directors, but unlike Constance, he didn’t hold an additional position at the corporation. So far as I could tell, he’d made his money elsewhere, or he’d fallen into it by way of inheritance, and that was how he’d ended up at the top of the corporate ladder at Ouroboros.

At least it was drizzling out, and a thick layer of storm clouds darkened the sky, threatening worse. Nobody would toss me a second glance for keeping my hood up. That was almost as good as moving through the city in the dark of night.

I shed my leather coat, strapped the sword harness on, buckling it across my chest, then put the jacket back on over the invisible sword. Mercy was slender enough that she didn’t cause the jacket to bulge or bunch uncomfortably, even if she did warp the line of my back a little. I dug through my backpack next, pulling out a device about the size of a deck of playing cards—a rechargeable handheld electromagnetic pulse generator strong enough to knock out all electronics within a hundred-foot radius. It was one of the few gadgets I had left over from my days as one of the Senate’s pet assassins. I’d brought it with me for my time as a rogue in case of an emergency. Well, guess what—this was a god damn emergency.

Hood up, I left the condo, locking the door behind me. I used the stairs, figuring they’d be less traveled, and once I reached the bottom floor, I ducked out through a side entrance, pleased I’d been able to get out of the building without running into a single person. Not even Dom chastised me for breaking my word about leaving the condo the conventional way. It was a good start to the mission.