“Still a potential hazard. Or someone who needs help.”

“My thoughts precisely. In that order, as well.” She left the office, still talking, expecting me to follow. “Is your sensing spell working, Savannah?”

“Let me give it a shot.”

I cast. It clicked on the first try. I could pick up the people in the reception area. No one else here, though—the spell doesn’t work on those without a heartbeat, like Cass. But there did seem to be something in the other direction. Faint, like she said.

I started walking that way. Cassandra swept in front of me. Halfway down the hall, she stopped and tilted her head. Then she pivoted toward a half-open door.

It was dark inside. She went first. I brought up the rear. As I stepped through, a figure lunged out behind Cass, appearing from the darkness. It stopped abruptly.

“Savannah,” a soft voice breathed. “Thank God, you’re here.”

Roni took one teetering step toward me, then collapsed on the floor.

THIRTY-SEVEN

We stayed with Roni as the Cabal medical team arrived and got busy, sedating the wounded and carrying them down to a waiting van. We brought Roni with us straight to the airport where the backup jet was now waiting. We’d been in touch with Lucas. The situation in Dallas was under control, so he wanted us to take these victims back to Miami.

We loaded the wounded and the dead into the cargo area. All except Roni.

As far as the medic could tell, she wasn’t showing any signs of infection. It looked as if the infected woman had started making a meal of her then got distracted, maybe by the tactical team bursting in. Roni was in rough shape. Really rough shape. She’d lost a lot of blood—and a fair bit of flesh—in the attack. For now, all the medic could do was staunch the bleeding, load her up on drugs, and hope she made it back to Miami.

One problem with pain meds is that they have a tendency to put you to sleep. It might have been more humane to let her drift off into drugged oblivion, but we didn’t have time for humane. We needed her awake, which meant the medic had to give her a shot to keep her lucid.

“What happened in there?” I said as soon as she was conscious.

Her gaze went from me to Adam, whom she’d met, then to Cassandra and Aaron. She stared at them, then whispered, “You’re the vampires, aren’t you?”

Aaron nodded.

Roni squeezed her eyes shut. Tears brimmed along her lashes. “I wish I’d never heard of vampires. I wish I’d never heard of any of it. Vampires, werewolves, demons.” She opened her eyes and met mine. “And witches. I especially wish I’d never heard of witches.”

How different her attitude had been a week ago. Then she’d been a witch hunter who dreamed of being a witch. A human, who dreamed of being superhuman. She’d been getting blood transfusions that Giles promised would grant her that dream, as she was taught tiny spells to “prove” it worked.

“What happened?” I said again, firmer now.

Her eyes closed, tears squeezing out. “I thought he was going to make everything better. Make the world better. That’s what he said and he made it sound so real that we all believed him. We followed him. We did everything he asked us to.” She opened her eyes. “Did you find out who he really is?”

“Gilles de Rais,” I said. “Slaughtered dozens of children in thirteenth-century France.”

“He said that wasn’t true. He said he found the secret to immortality and when he wouldn’t give it to his enemies, they told those lies about him. They had him executed. Except he didn’t die, because he’d found immortality through his research.”

“Or through bargains with demons,” I said. “That’s part of the legend, too.”

Her gaze dropped. “He told us he’d found it through research, by accident, and only now perfected it. Everyone believed him. Some believed him so much that they volunteered to be test subjects. Others waited, but then they got tired of waiting. Like Dave.”

“Dave?”

She looked toward the back of the jet, where the rest of the wounded were in quarantine.

“The young guy who got infected?” I said. “He did that to himself? How?”

“The water. In the office.”

“You poisoned the water cooler?” Adam got to his feet. “That means there will be more employees infected. I need to warn—”

“There aren’t any more,” Roni said. “That was the idea—put the stuff in after the office closed. Only Mr. Jordan stayed late with two staff. I wanted to wait until they left, but Dave called Giles. I knew what Giles would say.”

“Get in there and dose the water.”

She nodded. “Dave did it. He pretended—” Her face convulsed with sudden pain.

“Forget how he did it,” I said. “So it was just those three, then Jordan left.”

“There was another woman from down the hall. She stopped by to talk.”

Adam stayed standing. “I’ll call the Houston cleanup team and get that water gone.”

“So Dave decided to help himself to it,” I said to Roni.

She shivered. Aaron pulled the blankets up around her and she whispered her thanks, then said, “That’s who’s left. The ones who are as crazy as Giles. And some who just keep hoping. Keep telling themselves Giles isn’t crazy, he’s just …”

“Devoted to the cause. Really, really devoted.”

She nodded. “It all went wrong so fast that most of us were …”

“Blindsided,” Aaron said.

She nodded again. “First we heard about the Cabals getting involved, and that made people nervous. Some had worked for the Cabals. They spread stories. Then they disappeared and we told ourselves they’d just left but …”

She swallowed. “When the lab blew up, Giles tried to keep it a secret, which was a bad idea because when people found out, they figured he had a reason for hiding it from them, that it meant the whole plan was derailed, the virus gone, Althea dead.”

“Althea” was Anita Barrington, a renowned immortality quester and Giles’s partner. She’d died escaping the blast.

Roni continued. “Then we heard about the subway and the wedding, and Giles said it was a sign that we needed to act faster. But hearing about people dying because of supernaturals made some members think the opposite.”