"No," I said, speaking slowly but firmly. The only way I'd managed to have a conversation with Fiona without him drowning me in ice water was to forbid him to approach me until I signaled I wanted something. He had remained against the wall, ignoring other patrons as he stood poised to race to my side at the merest flick of my finger. "I have to leave in five minutes, but I missed lunch and I'm hungry. Do you think you can find something quickly—"

He was off before I finished the sentence, ice water splashing everywhere as he raced into the hotel.

I turned back to Nora. "You know, I could get used to this amulet."

"Amulet?"

"It's a delivery I have to make." She just looked at me as she ate her fruit, the sunlight glinting off her glasses. I started to explain, but a crash behind me heralded the return of Zaccheo. He skidded to a stop at the table, bumping it hard enough that I grabbed for my water glass and Nora's iced tea to keep them from being knocked over.

"Here is bread and soup and fish and very fine meats and cheese," Zaccheo said, unloading his armful of plates onto the tiny table. "You eat these, yes?"

I looked at the food mounded before me. It looked like he had raided the kitchen's store of conference food, grabbing an uncut baguette, a huge round party plate of cheeses, a similarly large plate of rolled cold cuts bedecked with parsley and olives, and a bowl of a thick, spicy soup. "I will eat one of these. I don't have enough time—or stomach capacity—for all of it."

His face fell.

"I promise that I'll come back and eat more another time," I said, feeling guilty that the amulet could play him so cruelly. "But right now I'll just have this delicious-looking soup. All right?"

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed back his sorrow, but he removed all the extra plates without making me feel any worse.

"How is your search for a mentor going?" Nora asked once the table was cleared and she could put her plate of fruit down again.

"If I say abysmally, would that make you feel sorry enough for me that you'd take me on?" I asked, only half joking.

She smiled and shook her head, chewing a couple of grapes before answering. "It would not. I never make appointments based on pity."

I stifled a sigh with a spoonful of chilled curried seafood soup. "Are you having a good time here? Get lots of applicants for the apprentice spot?"

"I'm having a very nice time. The workshops are very interesting, but I will admit, I'm more intrigued with the non-official events."

"The sightseeing stuff? I wish I had time to take part in some of them. I really want to see the castle, but what with everything going on, I just don't seem to have time. Although I can recommend the Budakeszi Wildlife Park. So long as you don't eat the deer food. Drat, I have to run. It's nice seeing you again, Nora. Good tuck with your apprentice hunt"

"The same to you," she called as I gathered my things and dashed off, stopping only long enough to stuff euros in Zaccheo's hands before running through the inner restaurant to the lobby of the hotel.

I had arranged to meet Theodora Del Arco, a Guardian from Belize, there before we proceeded to her room for the interview. Theodora, a short, elegant woman with waist-length black hair that made me green with envy, told me she preferred a neutral environment to interview applicants, claiming that only in a room that had been cleansed of the imprints of others could she truly judge a person's qualifications.

Ten minutes after our appointment time I asked at the front desk if Theodora had left a message for me. She hadn't. I tried calling her room. There was no answer.

It was the faintest niggle of worry that sent me to the elevators, a niggle that grew steadily in my mind as I walked down the hallway on the seventeenth floor, scanning the room numbers for the one Theodora had mentioned she was in.

"This is ridiculous," I told myself as I turned a corner and headed down another corridor. "What happened to Moa was a fluke. It had nothing to do with me. She died in her sleep, that's what the policewoman said she thought happened. Her heart gave out while she was sleeping, and she died. It was nothing to do with the fact that I've been the one to find bodies before—"

I stopped as I turned another corner. The hallway was filled with people speaking in shocked, hushed voices. A maid's cart had been shoved to the side, a woman in a hotel uniform sitting on a chair in the corner, two of her coworkers crouched around her, offering sympathetic pats on her shoulders while she sobbed into the white hand towel clutched to her mouth. A man in a police uniform stood guard in a doorway, not saying anything to the handful of people gathered, many of whom wore conference badges.

I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them again to count the doors. Yup. It was Theodora's. Sick with fear, I turned, intending to leave before anyone spotted me, only to come face-to-face with a woman who grinned at me with wicked delight.

"Why, Hank, look who's here. It's that Guardian woman. The one the police arrested before, when that other Guardian was killed." Marvabelle's voice scraped along my skin with all the gentleness of poison-tipped barbed wire. "Fancy her being here, too. Right on the scene where yet another Guardian was discovered killed. How very coincidental."

I summoned a weak smile. There really wasn't much else I could do.

Chapter 15

"This is becoming repetitive," Drake said as I emerged from the local police station.

I squinted at where he leaned against the limo, the sun low in the sky behind him, blinding me so that all I could see was his silhouette. "Tell me about it, You're not the one who keeps getting hauled in by the police."

He held the door to the car open for me. I climbed in, relieved to see we were the only occupants in the rear. Pal and Istvan were in the front seat, Pal giving me a cheery smile before turning to face the front.

"Aisling, I like to think of myself as tolerant, but I must remind you that you now bear a certain responsibility for the welfare of the sept, and thus I would appreciate it if you could pass the day without attracting the attention of the police."

I leaned back against the soft leather, closing my eyes and wishing for a tiny little moment that I could roll back time to just before I had agreed to courier an aquamanile to Paris. I would never have been involved in the murders there, never have summoned Jim, never have discovered that I was born to be a Guardian, and never have met Drake.