“This second of hers, though. The one who recruited you.”

The muscles along his jawline twitched. “Her name is Rosanna.”

“And she done you wrong,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“’Cause when you talk about her, your face says that you been done wrong.”

He gave me a brief smile. “Do you know how many black men live in Russia, Dresden?”

“No. I mean, I figure they’re kind of a minority.”

Sanya stopped in midstrop and glanced at me for a pregnant moment, one eyebrow arched. “Yes,” he said, his tone dry. “Kind of.”

“More so than in the States, I guess.”

He grunted. “For Moscow I was very, very odd. If I went out to any smaller towns when I was growing up, I had to be careful about walking down busy streets. I could cause car accidents when drivers took their eyes off the road to stare at me. Literally. Many people in that part of the world had never seen a black person with their own eyes. That is changing slowly, but growing up I was a minority the way Bigfoot is a minority. A freak.”

I started putting things together. “That’s the kind of thing that is bound to make a young man a little resentful.”

He went back to sharpening the sword. “Oh, yes.”

“So when you say that Tessa prefers to take recruits she knows will be eager to accept a coin…”

“I speak from experience,” Sanya said, nodding. “Rosanna was everything that angry, poor, desperate young man could dream of. Pretty. Strong. Sensual. And she truly did not care about the color of my skin.” Sanya shook his head. “I was sixteen.”

I winced. “Yeah. Good age for making really bad decisions. I speak from experience, too.”

“She offered me the coin,” Sanya said. “I took it. And for five years the creature known as Magog and I traveled the world with Rosanna, indulged in every vice a young man could possibly imagine, and…obeyed Tessa’s commands.” He shook his head and glanced up at me. “By the end of that time, Dresden, I wasn’t much more than a beast who walked upright. Oh, I had thoughts and feelings, but they were all slaves to my baser desires. I did many things of which I am not—” He broke off and turned his face away from me. “I did many things.”

“She was your handler,” I said quietly. “Rosanna. She was the one getting you to try the drugs, to do the deeds. One little step at a time. Corrupting you and letting the Fallen take control.”

He nodded. “And the whole time I never even suspected it. I thought that she cared about me as much as I cared about her.” He smiled faintly. “Mind you, I never claimed to be of any particular intelligence.”

“Who got you out?” I asked him. “Shiro?”

“In a way,” Sanya said. “Shiro had just driven Tessa from one of her projects in…Antwerp, I believe. She came storming into Rosanna’s apartment in Venice, furious. She and Rosanna had an argument I never completely understood—but instead of leaving when I was told to do so, I stayed to listen. I heard what Rosanna truly felt about me, heard her report about me to Tessa. And I finally understood what an idiot I’d been. I dropped the coin into a canal and never looked back.”