“That’s why we ordered you to stay calm,” Warren said, lifting his eyes from the photo. He still looked annoyed with me, but at least the muddy suspicion had cleared from his eyes.

Greta leaned in. “Who is it, anyway?”

Warren rudely snapped the comic shut, photo inside. He rolled it and pointed it at me. “We’ll talk about this later.” Then he too strode from the room, waves of fury left in his wake.

“Well,” I said finally, “can I clear a room or what?”

“Yes, well done,” Greta said primly, and I had to laugh despite myself.

She was a small woman, this Greta, with slim fingers and wrists, and tapering legs and ankles beneath a pencil skirt and lab coat. She wore sensible heels, sensible jewelry, and her chignoned hair had begun to gray at the temples. I’d have put her in the early fifties but for the knowledge hardening her caramel eyes. Greta was older, I decided, and probably tougher than anyone looking at her heart-shaped face could imagine.

“You seem to be healing fine,” she told me, returning to my side. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage beyond the wound on your thigh.”

I touched the back of my thigh where Ajax’s conduit had nicked me as I ran. It had been stitched, and was only mildly sore.

“It’ll leave a mark—all supernatural weapons do—but the cut wasn’t very deep.” She resettled the bedsheets over me. “Your eyes were the more serious concern.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

“What? An injury while trying to enter the sanctuary?” she asked. I nodded. “Not to an agent of Light, no. One time the Ram on the Shadow side tried to enter the sanctuary by force. I heard by the time he reached the bottom of the chute there wasn’t enough left of him to wheel on a rotisserie. That was three years ago, though, before I got here.”

Before she got there? I leaned forward as she studied my eyes. I suppose she liked what she saw because she stopped squinting and smiled. “I thought you had to be raised in the Zodiac in order to be a part of the troop?”

“Oh, no. I came to it late, like you.” She propped a hip on the side of my bed. “My mother was mortal—gifted, sure, but mortal all the same. My father was the Gemini of the star signs. If troop hierarchy were patriarchal, I’d hold that star sign right now. As it is I’m lacking certain…physical gifts. Technically speaking I’m not really a part of the troop.” She smiled wryly but didn’t sound bitter at this twist of fate. “Still, between the two of them, I possess enough insight to contribute in an ancillary form. The other star signs come to me when they’re afraid their emotions—and therefore their pheromones—might get the best of them. And sometimes they just come to talk.”

“So…you’re like a shrink?”

She wrinkled her nose at my word choice. “A supernatural psychologist, if you will.”

“A…an independent?” I asked, remembering the manuals’ distinction between troop members and all others.

She laughed, then whistled from the side of her mouth. “Be careful how you use that word. Some would take great offense to being lumped in with the rogue agents.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean me. Like I said, I’m just an auxiliary member of the troop. My mother left when I was a child. My father died not long after—supernatural causes, of course—and I’ve been on my own ever since. Still, the Taurean Shadow targeted me about two and a half years ago. Apparently he and my father had some longstanding territorial dispute. Gregor found out about it, found me, and thought it his duty to bring me here. Eventually he convinced Warren of the same.”

“That was nice of him,” I murmured, wondering why no one had done it with me. Or Olivia.

“Oh, nice has nothing to do with it. Duty comes above all else for those raised in the Zodiac. Above family, spouse, or anything comprising a normal life. If something’s not good for the organization, then it’s simply not done. If it is, then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” Absently, she toyed with the small pearls circling her neck. “That’s why Warren’s so concerned about you. He’s put a lot of hope into you, you know. He doesn’t trust easily. Not to mention he’s risked a great deal.”

I hadn’t thought of that, actually. I’d been so preoccupied with my own worries and loss I hadn’t even considered what defending me might have cost him. “Like what?” I said, really wanting to know.

She gestured at me, letting the pearls drop. “Well, consider for a moment, what if he’s wrong? Then he’s brought a wolf into our midst. A Shadow among the Light.”

“I’m not a Shadow,” I said irritably.

“But are you Light?”

I didn’t answer. How could I know?

She smiled kindly and laid a hand over my own. “Look, I can only imagine what this has all been like for you, but if Warren seems a bit brusque it’s because his primary concern is keeping this troop safe. He’s looking for reasons his star signs are being killed off. His duty as a leader is to protect them, and so far he’s failing.”

“Tekla said there was a traitor.”

Greta look startled, then relaxed when she realized what I was saying. “You mean in the manual you read? Right before Ajax found you?”

I nodded, and she rose to pour us more tea. “Poor Tekla,” she said as she took my cup from my hand. “She’s not even with the troop anymore.”

“She’s not?”

She began shaking her head, then paused. “Well, she’s here, of course—she’d be a danger to herself and the entire troop were she to be released outside the sanctuary—but Warren’s had her tucked away in the sick ward since shortly after Stryker was killed.”

Something in her tone caught my attention. “You don’t agree with that?”

Greta shrugged, but it wasn’t smooth, and she absently fingered her pearls again. “She rants whenever she sees anyone, of course. And she says the most awful, accusing things. Still…I don’t know. I think she’s in there somewhere, desperate to get out. I’d rather help her than lock her away. Maybe someday I can.”

So there was no traitor. Just a heartsick woman who’d had to watch her son die before her eyes.

She returned to my side, again handing me my cup, sighing to herself as I accepted it. “You seem like a sweet girl, Olivia. But if there’s one piece of advice I would give you, it’s this: nobody’s really what they seem.” She stood motionless as she looked at me hard, willing me to understand. “Take Warren, for example. When he’s out there in the real world he looks and acts and, unfortunately, smells like a career bum. You look at him and see exactly what you’d expect roosting on the corner of Casino Center Drive.

“Meanwhile he’s working day and night to stop the Shadows from injuring or influencing mortal lives and thoughts. If he can’t do that, he works to hide the resulting destruction. Covers it under a veil of confusion or bad luck, so there’s nothing or no one to strike out at—because, you know, that’s what the Shadows ultimately want. For their handiwork—destruction and chaos—to snowball. For human emotion to turn sour so they can feed off that negative energy.”

“But what he does isn’t right either,” I said, frowning because Warren had done the same to me; set me up—or, at least, let me be set up—to take the fall for Olivia’s death. “He tricked me into choosing all this. He played with my life just as much as the Shadows play with others’.”

“Ah,” she said, pulling her sweater tighter across her chest. “Now you’ve hit on the crux of what makes Warren tick. See, he cares more about the whole of humanity than he does about the individual person. To him the universe is a scale that must constantly be kept in balance. Choice, mortals’ and ours, is a secondary consideration.”

I drew back. “But that’s…ruthless.”

“Well, there are things in Warren’s past that make ruthlessness a virtue,” she said, and before I could ask what those things were, held up a hand, shaking her head. “Not my story to tell. Besides, the point is, what else can you be but ruthless when dealing with enemies who toss mortals around like pawns on a chessboard?”