“So, I’ll ask again. Was there smoke in their lungs? If you can’t answer my question, find someone who can.”
Conway drew in a deep, rage-filled breath. I braced myself.
Victor appeared in the doorway.
“What?” Conway roared at him.
Victor stepped aside, letting a man in a severe black suit into the room.
“Hello, Mr. Fullerton,” I said.
The Scroll representative walked into the room. He was in his forties, trim, neat, with skin tanned by the sun, and dark hair combed back from his face. His eyes were an unexpected, very light shade of blue. They were also the only spot of color. Everything else—the Wolf & Shepherd oxfords, the tailored suit, the crisp shirt, the impeccable tie, and the glasses—was black.
“Ms. Baylor, it’s always a pleasure.” He offered his hand to Runa and she shook it. “Ms. Etterson, my deepest condolences.”
“Who is this?” Conway demanded.
Fullerton looked at him for a full second. “I’m here on behalf of Scroll, Inc., to perform genetic identification at House Etterson’s request.”
Conway’s eyes went glassy and wide. Panic shivered in his brown irises. He took a jerky step back and threw his arms out to his sides, touching each corpse. A wave of revulsion slammed into me, sudden and overwhelming, a terrible feeling that things had just gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The desiccated body on the table next to me lunged up. I saw it coming but my mind had half a second to react, and it refused to accept what it was seeing. The corpse leaped at me. Cold, hard fingers locked on my throat.
Panic slapped me. The air vanished. Pain clamped my throat in a steel vise and squeezed.
Conway sprinted to the door. Fullerton stepped aside, letting Conway pass, his face perfectly calm as if we were at a society lunch. Runa spun, aiming at Conway with her hand. If she poisoned him, whatever he knew would die with him.
I clamped my hands together and drove them up between the corpse’s arms. Its hands fell off my neck and I rammed my heel into its midsection. It stumbled back.
“No!” I croaked.
A burst of green shot from Runa like a striking viper and lashed Conway’s shoulders, just before the other corpse jumped over me and landed on her back. Conway dove through the doorway and vanished from sight.
Crap.
The first corpse righted itself. I sucked in a breath—my throat was on fire—and pulled my knife out. The reanimated bodies didn’t act like zombies; they were simply vessels for the reanimator’s magic, like puppets on invisible strings. Stabbing it in the heart or the head would get me nowhere. I had to disable it.
My magic sparked, pulling me, and I let it guide my strike. My siren talent came from my father, but this I inherited from my mother. It made her a deadly sniper, it allowed Leon to make impossible shots, and it never steered me wrong.
The desiccated husk of a human charged at me with its arms open wide. I caught its right wrist, stabbed my blade into its armpit, and twisted. The seven-inch CPM-3V high-carbon steel sliced through the shriveled gristle of the tendons and cartilage like it was old, dry leather. The arm fell from the shoulder, hanging by a thin strip of flesh.
I let go of its wrist, jerked the blade free, and slashed across the back of the corpse’s neck. Its head rolled off its shoulders. I stabbed my knife into its other shoulder, wrenched the bone out of the socket, cut across the body’s lower back, severing the vertebrae, and hammered a kick to the back of its knee. The corpse collapsed, falling apart. Pieces of the body writhed on the floor, no longer a threat.
The second corpse had sunk its fingers into Runa’s hair, hanging off her. Green mist wrapped around both, turning the body’s charred flesh green.
“Don’t touch!” Runa screamed. “I’ve got this. Go!”
I dashed past Fullerton and out of the room. The hallway on the right lay empty. On the left, Conway staggered forward, bent over and grabbing the wall for support. Yep, she poisoned him.
Never again. Runa Etterson wasn’t coming with me to interrogate any more leads. I had minutes, maybe seconds, to squeeze answers out of him.
I ran.
Conway glanced over his shoulder and sped up. He was nearly to the corner. I had to get to him before her poison finished him off.
He stumbled, clutched at the wall, and pulled himself up. I was almost to him.