Nero nodded, waving his hand to dismiss the fireman. It was just the four of us now. Nero had commanded the police to leave half an hour ago, and the firefighters were all in and around the building. Nero looked at us, saying nothing. The silence dragged on.

“Someone poisoned a building full of vampires,” I said, unable to take the silence any longer. “Then they torched this building to wipe out all evidence. They didn’t want anyone to find out what had happened here.”

“Yes,” Nero said, his voice hard and low. “But we do have evidence. If I’m right, the residue you have in that bag is from the poison that killed the residents of this building. And we’re going to track that poison back to the guilty party.”

4

Immortal Hearts

By the time we got back to the Legion, it was our dinner hour. In fact, dinner was nearly over. Nero dismissed Jace and Mina. As they hurried off to the canteen, Nero turned his cold eyes on me. Was he getting ready for a lecture? I’d behaved myself today. Well, except for maybe giving him an irked look when he’d told me to stay put outside of the Brick Palace…and I’d spoken without permission a few—ok, a bunch of times. I was so bad at this. I smiled at him anyway. There was no situation a smile couldn’t turn around, right?

Nero clearly disagreed with the sentiment. He met my smile with a disapproving slant to his mouth.

Well, excuse me for being nice. How horribly inappropriate of me.

“Take the residue sample to Dr. Harding in Lab One,” he said. “As you wait for the results, I want you to watch how she runs the tests. Have her explain everything she does to you. When it’s done, bring the results to me in my office.”

My stomach growled in protest—and I almost did too. The tests would take hours, and I was starving now. I thought the cruel and unusual punishment was saved for the Legion’s prisoners, not their soldiers.

Who are you kidding? my inner cynic said. They’ve been torturing you for months. And you’re just sitting back and taking it.

I nodded to Nero and rushed down the hall before my dark side got me into trouble. Mouthing off to him would feel good while it lasted, but that feeling would be short-lived. I was too tired and hungry to argue with an angel, and I certainly didn’t have the energy to spend the rest of the night enduring whatever punishment he came up with in response to my disobedience.

I ran up the stairs to the next floor, where all the labs were located. Maybe this wouldn’t take hours. If I hurried, I might be able to swing by the canteen and snag some leftovers before they cleared everything away. With that ray of hope beaming inside of my mind, I burst through the door into Lab One.

“Where’s the fire?” a woman in a lab coat asked, smirking at me. The name on her coat said Dr. Harding. Bingo.

“No fire.” I sashayed over to the table she was standing behind, dropping the plastic bag containing the residue onto it. “We found this residue at the Brick Palace.”

Her dark brows drew together. “The vampire house?”

“Yes, every vampire inside died by inhaling poison pumped through the cooling system.”

“Lovely way to die,” she said, frowning.

“We need to figure out what substance killed them.”

Dr. Harding picked up the bag and peered through the plastic window at the residue. “You didn’t bring me very much of it. And how about some bodies?”

I didn’t think she was trying to be morbid. She simply wanted to see how the people had died. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help her with that.

“A few minutes after we got to the Brick Palace, explosions went off all over the building,” I told her. “All the bodies burned up. The rest of the evidence too. We barely got out of there before we became the next victims.”

She sighed. “I’ll try to make do with what you brought me.” She opened the bag, but when I didn’t leave, her dark brown eyes darted up at me. “Why are you being a fly on the wall of my lab?”

Believe me, I wish I could leave. But I just said, “Nero ordered me to be a fly on the wall of your lab. I’m supposed to watch you and learn.”

“Nero, you say?” she asked, her mouth curling in a combination of amusement and surprise. “Well, if the good Colonel is making you stand here and watch, by all means come closer. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

I closed up next to her at the table. “What does that do?” I asked, pointing at the Magitech machine she’d just flipped open. It looked like a simple glass box, but I knew that couldn’t be all it was.

“It’s going to analyze the magic in this residue.”

She poured a pinch of the residue into a shallow bowl, then set the bowl into the machine. As soon as she closed the door, the whole thing lit up. She flipped on the glowing box, and it began to hum softly. A grid of red lights flickered rapidly all across the glassy surface. Slowly, light by light, the grid began to turn orange.

As it did its thing, I looked around the lab. My gaze snagged on a bowl of chocolate chip cookies sitting on the desk across the room, and my stomach let out a low, desperate roar.

“By all means, take as many as you want,” Dr. Harding said, smiling.

I wasn’t sure if she felt sorry for me or was just amused by me, but I found I didn’t care as long as I got those cookies.

As many as I want? Why, I don’t mind if I do.

It turned out there were only two cookies in that bowl, and I took them both. Before the lights on the machine had turned yellow, those cookies were gone, and my stomach was begging for more food. A quick survey of the lab’s contents let me know that unless I wanted to sample the mysterious objects floating in jars on the bookshelves, then my stomach was out of luck until I could get out of here.