And not so incidentally, to restrain me as I tried to throw myself after the Sorrows adept. She would have killed me then.

I was stronger now.

Shoot her now, goddammit! Shoot her! “I told you. No Sorrows in my city.” My voice cracked, I could barely force out a whisper through my rage-tightened throat.

“You killed my brother.” A swift grimace pulled down the corners of her pretty mouth. “We thought he could stay here unnoticed. In a seminary.”

“Was an utt’huruk in one of his classmates part of the plan?” My voice was ragged. Kill her. Kill her now.

But she had used that word. Brother. It wasn’t like a Sorrow. And he’d said, sister.

They lied, though. It was SOP when dealing with Sorrows: don’t believe a fucking word. Masters of the mindfuck, sometimes they even make Perry look simple.

And this one had taken in my teacher, probably the smartest fucking hunter on the face of the earth. She had done it so easily.

“The Chaser was sent to bring him back. It took you to kill him, hunter.”

Like hell. How did it get in Oscar? By mistake? “He bit his poison tooth.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. The situation began to resolve behind my eyes—maybe the Sorrows boy had been hiding out in the seminary. It was almost likely, and almost logical.

“I don’t blame him. We know how… unkindly you view us.” The sunlight faded, a cloud drifting across the sky. She looked out the window, presenting me with a profile I had only seen before in shadows, through a haze of bloodlust, rage, fear, grief. And a slice of her throat, visible above the Chinese collar. “I am in violation, hunter, and I’ve come here for your help. One of our adepts has escaped us, and is engaging in forbidden acts.”

I felt one eyebrow raise. “I didn’t think there were any acts forbidden to a Sorrows House adept. Except, of course, being a decent fucking human being.” I eased back on the triggers a little, kept the guns pointed at her. Saw Mikhail’s face again, the light dimming in his eyes, the last gurgle as blood pumped free of the gaping razor-made wound in his throat.

And oh, how he had loved her, meeting her in furtive alleys and motels, keeping his relationship with her a secret even from me. Even though I’d been his apprentice, closer to him than anyone else, Mikhail had kept his secrets. A hunter, snared in a Sorrow’s net, Belisa’s plaything in a game still murky to me. After his death the Weres and I had cleared the Sorrows House on Damietta Street.

I had not left a single one of them alive. But Belisa had already stolen Mikhail’s amulet, the Eye of Sekhmet. It was probably in a Sorrows treasure-room right now, a pretty prize that had probably bought her the right to move up a few more ranks in the stifling cloister of priestesses.

True to form, she didn’t even offer an apology. “Both New Blasphemy priests are alive.” She kept looking out the window. “And so is your pet cat. Be grateful.”

Let me take off my cuff and thank you, bitch. “You have twenty seconds before I blast you out that window and into Hell,” I informed her. Calm and steady, Jill. See what she knows, if anything. “You might want to start talking.”

“Her name is Inez Germaine.” She smiled as she dropped this piece of news. “Blood-colored hair, very sleek. From the North House in Alsace-Lorraine.”

I stared at her. Could Robbie have mistaken Chaldean for French?

No way. They don’t even sound similar. “I’m still not convinced.” I thumbed the hammers back slowly, hearing two small clicks. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.

“She is attempting an evocation, hunter. She is fueling it with death and acquiring funding from the sale of bodily—”

Four. Three. I’ll admit it. I lost my temper and fired early.

I pulled both triggers at the same time, the sound was deafening. I kept firing, glass shattering, she was gone in a flurry of blue silk. I leapt to the window ledge, clearing the bed in one swift movement, and almost plunged out, just in time to see her land on the pavement below, roll gracefully, and bolt down Sarcado Avenue. Glass ground under my feet as I crouched on the windowsill, both guns leveled.

Five stories is nothing to a Sorrow, going after her now will just make everything messy. She had an escape route planned. This was the first step in the game. Just like she played with Mikhail.

No getting away this time, bitch. Not on my watch.

I took careful aim with my right-hand gun, closing out everything around me, including Saul bursting through the door and the sudden scramble of sound from the hall. Sighted at her fleeing back, inhaling smoothly; squeezed the trigger.

Roaring sound, smell of cordite. I swear I could almost see the bullet as it leapt from the gun’s barrel, a brief burst of muzzle flash lost in the weak cloudy winter light.

She stumbled, red blossoming as her right shoulderblade shattered. That’s going to hurt as it heals, isn’t it. No matter. I’ll hunt you slowly. And before I’m done, bitch, you’re going to beg. Just like Mikhail did.

Six months I’d spent eating myself alive, wondering if I’d been too late to save my teacher because of jealousy, like any jilted lover. Until Saul and a hunt for a rogue Were had crossed into my city, and Perry’s game to eat up whatever was left of my soul had shown me with stark clarity that I had not been to blame.

I had not killed my teacher. She had.

“Jill? Jill?” Saul. He grabbed my shoulders, dragged me back from the window. “What the fuck?”

“It’s her,” I was saying, in a monotone. “It’s her. The bitch. It’s her.” The beeps of the heart monitor were steady in the background; Father Rosas hadn’t even twitched. He must have been tranked out of his mind.

“Christ, was that really a Sorrow?” He shook me as I heard yells out in the corridor, running feet. “Jill? It reeks in here. Jillian!”

“It’s okay.” I shook my head. I was shaking, and my voice hit the level just a hair under “blood-chilling”: soft, chanting in a singsong, tasting each word. “I’m okay. It’s her. The bitch herself. I’m going to take her apart joint by fucking joint—”

“Come on.” He pulled me under his arm and dragged me toward the door, the peculiar blurring of his Were camouflage beginning just at the corner of my vision. “Jesus Christ, you were only in here for a minute. Can’t I leave you alone for ten seconds without gunfire? This is a hospital.”

Do you really want me to answer that, Saul? I let him pull me along, numbly. It’s her. The bitch. It’s her.

“To hell with dead whores,” I heard myself say. “I’m going to hunt myself a Sorrow.”

Then my left hand came up, I would have clapped it over my mouth if it hadn’t still been full of heavy metal gun. “Christ,” I choked. “I think I’m going to be fucking sick.”

“Hold it for a few seconds,” he replied, practically, palming the door open and dragging me out into the hall. He got me down the hall, neatly avoiding the chaos of security guards and running nurses, and out through a fire door, adding to the general fun. I felt sorry for the poor cardiac patients, fleetingly. And sorry for Father Rosas, though he probably hadn’t heard a damn thing. She’d probably drugged him; poison and chemicals are a Sorrow’s stock-in-trade. And Guillermo would mean less than nothing to her. Belisa’s game right now was with me.

In an alley below I lost breakfast and everything I’d ever thought of eating for lunch. Saul held my hair back as I retched and swore, alternately, hearing the little gurgle of Mikhail’s life bubbling out through his throat and her laughter like tinkling glass.

All in all, for facing down Belisa again, I handled it pretty well.