Turning, I put my hands behind my back. “I don’t trust your friend.”

“I never have. You’ll live longer that way.” Trent’s tight jaw eased and the green of his eyes went a little less hard. “Lee and I spent our summers together when we were boys. Four weeks at one of my father’s camps, four weeks at his family’s beach house on a manmade island off the coast of California. It was supposed to foster goodwill between our families. He’s the one who set the ward on my great window, actually.” Trent shook his head. “He was twelve. Quite an accomplishment for him at the time. Still is. We had a party. My mother fell into the hot tub, she was so tipsy. I should replace it with glass now that we’re—having difficulties.”

He was smiling in a bittersweet memory, but I had stopped listening. Lee set the ward? It had taken the color of my aura, just like the disk in the game room. Our auras resonated to a similar frequency. Eyes squinting, I thought about our shared aversion to red wine. “He has the same blood disease I do, doesn’t he?” I said. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Not with Trent.

Trent’s head jerked up. “Yes,” he said cautiously. “That’s why I don’t understand this. My father saved his life, and now he’s squabbling over a few million a year?”

Few million a year. Pocket change for the rich and filthy. Restless, I glanced at Lee’s desk, deciding I had nothing to learn by sifting through the drawers. “You, ah, monitor the levels of Brimstone you produce?”

Trent’s expression went guarded, then, as if making a decision, he ran a hand across his hair to make it lie flat. “Very carefully, Ms. Morgan. I’m not the monster you’d like me to be. I’m not in the business of killing people; I’m in the business of supply and demand. If I didn’t produce it, someone else would, and it wouldn’t be a safe product. Thousands would die.” He glanced at the door and uncrossed his legs to put both feet on the floor. “I can guarantee it.”

My thoughts went to Erica. The thought of her dying under the flag of being a weak member of the species was intolerable. But illegal was illegal. My hand smacked into his gold earrings as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I don’t care how pretty the colors are that you paint your picture with, you’re still a murderer. Faris didn’t die because of a bee sting.”

His brow furrowed. “Faris was going to give his records to the press.”

“Faris was a frightened man who loved his daughter.”

I put a hand on my hip and watched him fidget. It was very subtle: the tension in his jaw, the way he held his manicured fingers, the lack of any expression.

“So why don’t you kill me?” I asked. “Before I do the same?” My heart pounded, and I felt as if I was at a cliff’s edge.