“It was Vihaela.”

Haken stared at me for a second. “You think it was suicide?”

“No. I’m saying Vihaela killed her.” I nodded down at the corpse.

“We don’t have time for—”

“Think about it,” I said. “What did we actually see? We saw someone who looked like Vihaela walk through the gate. Then the fight kicks off and there’s no time for anything else. She’s dead before she has the chance to talk.”

“You’re saying that wasn’t her.”

“You remember the briefing. Vihaela’s supposed to be the freaking death queen of White Rose. She shouldn’t have gone down this easily. White Rose uses fleshcrafters, remember? Perfect duplicates of whoever their clients want. If you were a Dark mage and you had those kinds of resources, wouldn’t you make some body doubles while you were at it?”

“She used magic—”

“Did she?” I asked. “Did your magesight actually see her cast any spells? Because mine didn’t. Yes, those green snake things looked scary, but they didn’t register as battle-magic, did they? Everyone was just so keyed up to fight that they reacted as if they were.”

Haken frowned at me for a second. “You’re saying they were faked.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. There had been exactly one person in the room who’d had the ability to create that convincing a show. I wasn’t openly accusing him, but there was only one way it pointed . . .

“What killed her?” Haken said.

“Here’s how I think this went down,” I said. “Vihaela’s on the other side of that gateway. She knows we’re waiting, and she’s got her body double ready. But she knows it won’t hold up under any kind of stress. So she makes sure the girl won’t be around to answer any questions. She uses some kind of spell before this girl steps through the gate. Time delay, maybe a triggered effect—but whatever it is, it was meant to make sure that this girl didn’t survive the encounter. She was dead from the minute she stepped through.”

Haken was silent for a few seconds. I knew he was going through what I’d just told him, checking it to see if it held up. “I’m going to make some calls,” he said at last. “Don’t tell anyone what you just told me. Understand?”

I nodded. Haken walked out.

I started to follow, then paused. I turned and looked back. The girl’s body was lying on the floor, alone in the room, still and lifeless. She hadn’t been involved in this at all, not really. She’d been a pawn, prepared and sacrificed. It was so utterly casual. They had treated her like one of my one-shot items, expended to produce a desired effect. Just like Leo.

Fuck these guys. The depth of my hatred surprised me. All of a sudden I didn’t care about the long-term consequences. I just wanted to see White Rose go down. I took out my phone and started making some calls of my own.