‘‘Then I’ll just have to open this one.’’

‘‘May . . .’’ He frowned. ‘‘I do not like this. You should wait until I can come to help you. This blackmailer is clearly dangerous. You could be harmed.’’

His words washed over me with a warm, comforting sensation. No one had ever worried about me when I was out on a job—it never seemed to occur to Cyrene that I could be harmed, and Magoth . . . well, Magoth didn’t particularly care what happened to me so long as I succeeded.

‘‘If you were here, I’d spend all my time kissing you and we’d never get Cy rescued,’’ I told him with a smile. ‘‘Don’t worry, I’ll shadow as soon as the lock is open. This hallway is dim enough to hide me if anyone is standing on the other side of the door.’’

He didn’t react to my light flirtation, just stood watching me with worried eyes as I persuaded the lock to open.

‘‘Well, I guess we were worried about nothing,’’ I said a few moments later as Gabriel straightened up from where he had been kneeling next to the crumpled form on the floor. ‘‘Is he dead?’’

‘‘I believe so. I can detect no signs of life, although I would have to be able to touch him to know for certain if he could be resuscitated.’’

Unwilling to touch the body, I used my foot to nudge it over onto its back. ‘‘Agathos daimon! It’s Porter.’’

‘‘The thief taker?’’ Gabriel asked, frowning down at the twisted face of the dead man on the floor. The handle of a knife emerged from his chest.

I avoided looking at the grimacing face and examined the handle as best I could without touching it. It was silver, carved with runes I couldn’t identify. Something about it tickled the back of my mind. ‘‘I think I’ve seen this before.’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘I don’t remember. It just looks . . . familiar.’’ I steeled myself and laid two fingers across the man’s neck. The body was cool to the touch. ‘‘No pulse.’’

‘‘If he’s dead, then where’s your twin?’’ Gabriel asked.

I rose and looked around the room with him. One corner held a grimy bed, a chair, and a three-legged table. A filthy, rust-stained sink hung crookedly off the wall on the other side of the room, below a mirror that was missing most of its glass. ‘‘That is a very good question.’’

I had come out of the shadow world to examine the body of the thief taker but slipped into it again to look for signs of Cyrene.

‘‘There,’’ Gabriel said, pointing at the window.