“Myself,” muttered Eli, waving Victor’s ghost away like a wisp of smoke. “I’ve been thinking more about that electrokinetic teen . . .” He looked up. Stell was dressed for fieldwork, his broad frame cinched into a reinforced black suit.

“How did the extraction go?” asked Eli, managing to keep most of the disdain out of his voice. He’d spent two weeks researching the EO—

Helen Andreas, forty-one, with the ability to disassemble and rebuild structures with a single touch. Eli had given EON’s agents as much insight as he could, considering the confines of his situation.

“Not well,” said Stell darkly. “Andreas was dead when we got there.”

Eli frowned. EOs, despite their destructive tendencies, rarely veered toward suicide. Their sense of self-preservation was too strong. “Was it an accident?”

“Not likely,” said Stell, holding a photo up to the fiberglass. In it, Andreas lay on the ground, blood pooling beneath her and a small dark circle burrowed into her forehead.

“Interesting,” said Eli. “Any leads?”

“No . . .” Stell hesitated. There was something he wasn’t saying. Eli waited him out. After a long moment, the man finally went on. “This

wasn’t an isolated incident. Two months ago, another suspected EO

was found in the same way, in the basement of a club.” Stell slid both pages through the slot. “Will Connelly. We were still monitoring him, since we didn’t have enough data to construe the exact nature of his ability and assess his priority level, but we had suspected it was regenerative. Obviously not a power as efficient as your own, but something like it. At the time we assumed his death was a one-off, a run-in with the wrong people, someone to whom he owed a debt. Now . . .”

“Once is chance, twice, coincidence,” said Eli. “Collect a third, and you have a pattern.” He looked up from the paper. “The weapon?”

“Unregistered.”

“Keep the ballistics on file anyway. If he—or she—is actively hunting EOs, it’s only a matter of time before they strike again. In fact,”

continued Eli, “pull every killing that matches this style of execution over the last . . .”—Eli considered—“three years.”

“Three? That’s an oddly specific number.”

And it was. Three years—that was how long Eli had been at EON.

That was how long he’d been out of work. If there had been another hunter during his tenure, he would have known.

Which meant someone new had taken his place.

XX

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

XXI

LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

ELI arrived at Lockland nearly a week before the start of the spring semester.

He hadn’t picked just any school—if Charlotte’s father was picking up the tab, Eli intended to stretch the bill. Lockland was one of the best-ranked programs in the country. Now, he crossed the intimate campus, savoring the quiet stretches of lawn. It was a solid week before classes were due to start, and the place was luxuriously empty.