The witch gives credit where credit is due. “Originally, yes. I modified—”

“Bring me Mycroft Canner!” Papa screamed, his tracker humming as he routed his call to minion after minion. “Get my whole team! Anybody who had today off doesn’t anymore! I need the creators of the Pet Registry on the line, our best explosives team, burn experts, trauma experts, and every record we have of Mycroft Canner’s dog! But above all bring me Mycroft Canner!”

Thisbe frowned. “Mycroft’s dog? No, Bridger’s registered as my dog.”

“Have you slept with Mycroft?”

Even the witch blushes at times. “What?”

Papa had the good sense to return Croucher to the tabletop as passion tempted his fists. “Mycroft’s been spending nights here for eight years, we all assumed you were lovers, but you said it was just an excuse to visit Bridger. Have you ever actually had sex with Mycroft Canner?”

“Of course, we—”

“The truth!” Papa seized her wrist.

“They haven’t,” Croucher answered for her.

“Never? Not once?”

“Not once,” the Private confirmed.

Papa glowed, his hand still locked around Thisbe’s wrist, hungry to lock around mine. “Can’t you see it? Saladin Canner is alive!”

“Who?”

“Saladin!” Papa cried, a decade’s climax in his fortissimo. “Mycroft had a dog, a dog we never found. For years after the murders the computers kept picking it up as a stray in random places all around the world, but whenever pet control went after it, it was gone, like a ghost. But it wasn’t a ghost, it was Mycroft’s accomplice, the ba’sib everyone assumed was dead: Saladin Canner! They were childhood lovers. The majority of Saladin’s body was never found after the explosion that wiped out the Canner bash’. We assumed they died with the others, but they must have just lost their tracker in the blast, and Mycroft hid them. That’s how Mycroft seemed to be in two places at once during the murders! Oh, very good, Mycroft! Very good!” His face glowed. “Hiding an entire second person for over twenty years! Hundreds of interrogations and not a hint, not one!”

The witch blinked, more insulted, I think, than surprised. “Mycroft has a lover?”

“It explains everything!” Papa cried, almost dancing. “How they could guard one victim while simultaneously going after the next, how they could beat a Utopian in combat, even why they were so uncharacteristically brutal to Ibis Mardi. That wasn’t Mycroft getting sloppy, it was Saladin punishing a rival! Ibis who wanted to elope with Mycroft!”

Say it, reader. Call me traitor, failure, fool. I deserve it. During our two weeks my Saladin and I claimed victim after victim, untraceable thanks to our iron-fast law: never use the same trick twice. If you use a knife, throw it away; a disguise, burn it; a way to trick the trackers, use it once then never think of it again. Anything the cops have seen once they can recognize; reuse it and you may as well turn yourself in. Perhaps thirteen years of peace made me complacent, but that is no excuse. I failed, recycled our most critical deception, the Pet Registry, and now my folly had given Saladin’s scent to the one hunter who would never stop.