But there was no flavor to the rips and tears in Gabe's exquisitely careful, beautiful shielding.

Japhrimel ghosted over the gravel walkways of the garden. The house shields were still intact, vibrating with distress of a peculiarly remote kind. I would have thinned my shields to try and reach for Gabe-after all, we shared magick and deeper bonds-but the mark on my shoulder clamped down with fearful pressure and I realized Japhrimel's aura had hardened into a demon-tough shield around me, on top of my regular shielding.

That was something I hadn't expected he could do, and I looked around the weedy garden with my heart in my mouth. Tension brushed my skin with thousands of delicately-scraping pins, and copper filled my mouth.

I felt alive.

We found her around the back of the house, in the garden near the back wall Eddie had used for his more useful but less happy plants-aconite, horehound, belladonna, poison sumac (for repellant spells and treating slagfever), fireweed 12, wormwood, castor, meadow saffron, foxglove, hellebore, you name it. All the datura had been grubbed up, leaving a rain-softened hole in the dirt, and that was puzzling. If Eddie had died ten days ago, why was his garden weedy? And where had the datura gone?

Then Japhrimel turned to me. "Go to the front of the house," he said, but I pushed past him. He caught my left arm, gently. "Dante. You do not wish to see this. Please." I looked; and I saw. It was no use, all the good intentioned wanting to protect me in the world couldn't have stopped me from looking.

Gabe lay tangled in a young hemlock. She bent back as if doing an enthusiastic full-wheel pose for a gymnasia illustration, except for the bloody holes in her dark shirt and jeans. Dead for at least six hours if not more, the Necromance in me thought, tasting the fading tang of what we call foxfire-the false glow of nerves slowly dying. The ground around her was chewed with bullets, white underbark and broken green things glaring through the rainy day. Mist had collected on her face, the angle of her jaw upflung, her hair a hanging skein of gray and black silk.

Her feet were bare and very white.

Her sword, blackened and twisted with her death, spilled out of her right hand. Her eyes were closed, and except for the bloody hole in her left cheek where a bullet had ripped through the flesh and shattered teeth she looked peaceful.

My pulse beat a padded drum in my ears.

The click sounded in my brain. I looked at her feet, down at the gravel path. Glanced back toward the house. She had to have come over the lawn, barefoot and in a hell of a hurry. Why?

The part of me that had seen so many murder scenes jolted into operation, like an old-fashioned gearwheel. It slid into place evenly, and I thought quite clearly, I'm going to feel this soon. Before I do, I need to think. Think Danny. Think.

I examined the angle of the bullets, where they had torn through plants and dug furrows in the wet earth. The smell of death rose with the perfume of fresh green garden, newly-churned dirt. The computer deck inside my head took over, calculated angles and wounds, came up with an answer. I looked over my right shoulder, up over the wall at a point some twenty feet above. There was a rooftop there, just right for a projectile assault rifle.

Why was she still lying here? That much hot lead whizzing through the air-someone should have called the cops. Heard something. Done something, especially in this neighborhood.

Why had Gabe come out here? Her property-line shields were torn and her house shields vibrating, probably with the psychic shock of her death. I was a Necromance, here with a fresh body-but if I went into Death now, I might not come out. I was too tired, too distracted, and too goddamn upset. To top it all off, Japhrimel would have to question Gabe; he might not know the right questions to ask to elicit the underlying logic of what had happened. There were rules to questioning the dead, rules he might not know any more than I knew the arcane rules of demon etiquette.

More than that, something deep and colored a smoking red in me rose in revolt at the thought of using Gabe's body as a focus. She had gone into Death, into the halls she'd walked so often before, and into the clear rational light of What Comes Next. If there was any justice in the world, she was with Eddie now. I wouldn't pull her away from that.

Admit it, Danny. You're afraid of facing her after you've failed her again.

A litany of my life's failures rose before me, all the dead I'd loved. Roanna. Lewis. Doreen. Jace. Eddie. And now a new name to add to that long string. Gabe.

A long, despairing scream rose inside my chest, was locked away by an iron hand descending on my heart and squeezing, I ts bony fingers sinking into warm flesh and spreading the cold of stone. Cold. Like the gray fuzzy chill of shock, only deeper. This was a killing cold, ice to be polished, sharp as my katana and deadly as the demon standing beside me.

Gabriele. The final echo of the promise I'd made her yesterday sounded a brass gong inside my head. Whoever did this I won't just kill. I'm going to erase them. I swear to every god that ever was, I am going to make them pay.

"Dante." Japhrimel's voice, quiet. "I am sorry."

My mouth worked silently for a moment. I considered screaming. Then my jaw shut with a click of teeth snapping together. Harsh dragged-in breath tore at my throat with the smell of fresh dirt. My right hand cramped once, viciously, around the hilt of my katana. Released. I shoved the sword into the loop on my rig. Looked at the statue of Gabe's body.

Gone. The word echoed in my head. Gone. Failed again.

The knife whispered out of its sheath. Japhrimel cast me a measuring look, as if weighing whether I would use it on him. I set it against the flesh of my palm and ripped down in one unsteady movement, dropping the blade now smoking with black demon blood.

I lifted my hand, made a fist. Black blood dripped between my fingers, squeezed so hard I heard my own bones creak. My throat locked around a black well of screaming.

This I swear on my blood. I will find who is responsible for this, Gabe. And I won't just kill them. I will make them pay.

"Dante!" Japhrimel grabbed my hand, a hot pulse of Power sealing the wound even more quickly than welling black demon blood.

I blinked at him. Gods, does he sound frightened? Never heard that before. I finally found my voice. "Don't worry," I rasped. "That was just a promise." Am I in shock? I don't feel like it. I feel like I'm thinking clearly for the first fucking time in a long time.

He studied me. "I am sorry." His eyes measured me. As if he wanted to express more than sorrow, as if there was something else he wanted to say.

I doubted there was anything in all the languages he knew that would suffice.

I pulled my hand away from his. Bent to scoop up my knife, approached her body. The air steamed around me, heat bleeding out from a demon metabolism struggling to cope with the killing cold creeping into my chest.

He said nothing, but the shield of Power around me moved uneasily.

I bent carefully, dug in her right-hand jeans pocket. Almost choked as I leaned over a pool of her blood, diluted by the fine misting rain. Her datband was blinking. Why hadn't aid hovers been dispatched from the central AI well as soon as her datband's pulse monitor figured out her heart wasn't working? A sedayeen with an aid unit might have been able to help her.

No, with that much lead in her-especially in her chest she'd probably bled out in seconds.

Still, why wasn't there a cadre of cops here with a Reader, examining the scene?