But all her mind could do was keep going back to her mother, and that terrible story about Nadya and how her mother had destroyed so many lives in order to keep control of her friend.

“Is my mother still part of INHUP?” Nita asked.

“Yes. She’s one of the few original board members still alive.” His lips curled. “But so many of the board members are younger now. They grew up with INHUP, they aren’t hunters by nature. They’re changing the organization, and she doesn’t like it. She’s losing control, and there’s nothing that enrages her more.”

Nita’s brain clunked sluggishly along. Here, here was the source of INHUP’s corruption, the broken wheel that had started everything. Here were her answers.

“There’s warrants out for my mother’s arrest,” she pointed out, trying desperately to poke holes in his words, to prove them lies.

“Indeed. Warrants for a thirty-year-old woman named Helen. Or a forty-five-year-old woman named Valerie.” His hair caught the light and gleamed like diamonds. “But the board doesn’t know what she is. No one knows that thirty-year-old Helen and eighty-seven-year-old Monica are the same woman.”

Nita wanted to protest, to ask how they couldn’t know, but she didn’t. Because it would be easy. If her mother really was that old, really could heal age . . . Well, Nita had seen her stack of fake passports. She knew how many identities her mother had. Why couldn’t one of them be INHUP’s board member?

She swallowed suddenly, a terrible thought occurring to her.

“How much would my mother have access to in INHUP?” Nita’s breathing became fast and hard. “Could she have expedited a name being put on the Dangerous Unnaturals List?”

“Of course.”

A sick feeling welled up in her chest, as more and more pieces clicked together.

“Could she have gotten someone to install bug software on a refugee’s phone?” Nita asked, the words heavy on her tongue.

“I don’t see why not.”

Nita’s hands were shaking, and she couldn’t seem to stop them. Had Nita’s mother been the one to sell her location on the black market when she was in Toronto?

Nita tried to think back to when her information had gone up. She’d rejected her mother. She’d left the restaurant. And then, right after, her phone’s GPS location had been posted online.

Almost like a response to Nita running away.

She’d thought it had to do with leaving INHUP—that was the safe time for the corrupt INHUP agent who’d bugged her phone to sell her information. But she’d left her mother at the same time. And her mother had tried to use the danger of Nita’s location being revealed to force Nita to come back. To weasel her way in, to make Nita flee to her for protection. To put Nita back in her control.