Verchiel looked up from her desk as her door opened. A black-clad figure strolled across the room and dropped into a chair across from her.

"Do come in," she said dryly.

The Appointed grinned at her without repentance. "Just obeying your summons, oh esteemed one."

"Really, Seth—" Verchiel broke off, realizing the Appointed teased her with his usual irreverence. "Thank you for coming so quickly."

"It's not like I have a lot else to do."

No self-pity lay behind the words, but Verchiel felt a pang at their truth. "Perhaps not yet, but one day—"

"Oh, please." Seth rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Don't you start with that one-day-you'll-fulfill-your-destiny crap. I've heard quite enough of it from Mittron, especially lately."

Verchiel flinched at the Highest's name and interest flared in the Appointed's gaze. He settled back into the chair, resting one ankle atop the opposite knee and waggling his eyebrows.

"Having issues with His High and Mightiness, are we? How intriguing." His gaze narrowed with sharp perception. "What exactly was it you wanted to see me about, anyway?"

Verchiel hesitated, and then got up to close the door. She returned to the desk and took her seat. "A favor. A very quiet favor."

One dark brow ascended. "I see. Am I to take it you'd prefer a certain Seraph didn't know about this favor?"

She nodded.

"Go on."

In a few brief words, Verchiel outlined Aramael's dilemma and her solution. The Appointed remained silent for a long moment when she had finished, appearing to study the toe of his shoe with great interest. At last he looked up.

"There's no way you can keep this from Mittron. You could face exile."

She swallowed. "I know."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you care so much about Aramael? Why are you willing to risk your own existence on this?"

Verchiel's throat went tight. She wanted to look away from the dark intensity of Seth's gaze, but wouldn't let herself. "I was the one who sent Aramael after Caim the first time. I thought their closeness as brothers would give Aramael an advantage, an edge. Let him find Caim faster. I was right, but it was more difficult for him than I had anticipated. It did something to him and he has never been the same."

Black eyes watched her for another few seconds, weighing, considering, seeming to know she hadn't told him the whole truth. That it had been Mittron's idea, not hers, and she had allowed herself to be swayed by something that had no longer existed between them. Then Seth uncoiled from the chair and stood tall again.

"I'll do it on one condition. I take full responsibility."

"I can't let you—"

"Verchiel, he can exile you. But me?" Seth stuck his hands into his pockets and strolled toward the door, tossing a grin over his shoulder. "He has no choice but to put up with me. Let me know when the Guardians have been informed of my arrival."

Verchiel stared after the Appointed for a long moment, and then closed her eyes and massaged the now perpetual ache in her temple, hoping she hadn't made yet another error.

#

Roberts was on the phone when Alex and Trent arrived in the office at the appointed midday hour, but when Alex would have passed by his office, he rapped on the window and motioned her in. She obeyed, only too glad to get away from her partner and drop into one of the chairs across from her staff inspector while he finished his call.

She cradled her wounded arm across her chest, willing the throb to subside and cursing her lack of foresight in not bringing any painkillers. Even with Trent doing the driving, the ache that had settled into the limb put her teeth on edge. Now the headache had returned, too.

Roberts covered the receiver's mouthpiece. "Bad?" he asked.

Alex produced a smile she hoped wasn't as wan as she felt. "I'll live," she said.

Roberts lifted his hand from the mouthpiece. "Yeah, I'm still here. Go on," he said into the phone. He opened his top left hand drawer, rummaged in it, and extracted a plastic bottle. He leaned across and set it in front of Alex. "Keep them," he murmured, then ended his conversation, "Okay, Dave. Thanks for getting back to us so fast on this one. We owe you." He reached over and dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

Alex picked up the bottle and opened it, shaking two caplets into her hand. Her trembling hand. She frowned at the appendage, willing it to be still. The tremor intensified. She slipped the pills into her mouth, forced herself to swallow, and tucked the offending hand into her lap, still clutching the bottle of painkillers. The caplets lodged at the base of her throat.

Roberts regarded her balefully. "You should be at home."

"I'm fine." Alex ignored his snort. "So? What do we have?"

His dark eyebrows ascended. "Other than what I sent you?"

Sent her—? Ah, hell. The envelope. She envisioned it sitting on the table in her entry, still unopened, where she'd set it when she'd gone upstairs to escape the partner who wouldn't go away. She rested her good elbow on the arm of the chair and cradled her cheek in her hand. "I forgot to look at it," she admitted. "Sorry."

"Never mind, it was just the autopsy results. You can look them over later, but in a nutshell, yesterday's body matches the others to a T. Pattern of cuts, weapon, everything. That was the lab on the phone just now." Roberts inclined his head toward the instrument on his desk. "Some of the blood we found on your attacker last night matched the victim's."

Alex felt herself blanch. She hadn't wanted to think about the possibility last night that her attacker might be connected to the murders, and didn't want to hear evidence now that supported the idea.

"Of course," Roberts continued, "that's the good news."

"And the bad news?"

"The knife used on you isn't the murder weapon, and while your blood was in the expected spray pattern on the suspect's shirt, the victim's was smeared."

"So, what, unless our boy went home and changed his shirt halfway through the slicing, we're looking for a second person?"

"Are you surprised?"

Professionally speaking? No. With the number of victims they'd found, more than one killer was entirely within the realm of possibility. If she listened to Trent's certainty about the issue, on the other hand...

She rested her good elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned her chin in her hand. "Did the suspect wake up yet? What did he say? And who is he, anyway?"

"Martin James, age twenty-eight, unemployed. He's done time for break and enter and narcotics possession, but nothing more."

Alex frowned. "He doesn't sound much like he has the makings of a serial killer."

"Neither did Ted Bundy," Roberts pointed out. "Anyway, he did wake up and Bastion and Timmins went by the hospital to talk to him this morning, but he was tanked on sedatives. They've reduced his dosage, so he should be coherent soon. If you're up to it after the meeting, would you like to take a shot at him?"

Alex's stomach recoiled a little at the idea of facing her attacker—and their potential killer. She glanced at her bandaged arm and thought of the damage inflicted on the victims so far. There but for the grace of God...

She shut down the latent possibilities behind the thought and nodded. "Of course."

"Take Trent with you, and let him do the driving."

Well. She supposed now was as good a time as any to tell Roberts she wanted out of the partnership. "About that—"

Roberts's office door opened and Joly stuck his head in. "Channel Six news, Staff. You should see it."

It was a report on their serial killer, now dubbed the Storm Slasher, and the journalist had been busy. She knew about the posing of the bodies, and what she lacked in actual detail beyond that, she'd more than made up for in wild speculation. Silence reigned for a long moment when the report ended and the television went dark.

"Fucking hell," someone murmured behind Alex. "The occult? Where in God's name did she get that from?"

She heard Joly reply, "Maybe she's not that far off. You have to admit this one is about as weird as we've ever had. I mean, come on. A storm every single time the guy hits? We haven't been able to find so much as a flake of skin with usable DNA. He has to at least be some kind of weather psychic or something."

Alex looked over her shoulder at her colleague.

Joly shrugged. "Be honest, Jarvis," he said. "You've felt it, too. There's something about this guy that just isn't natural."

Her gaze swept past him to Trent. Met the watchfulness in his expression. Felt the pull of his presence. The image of a winged man among flames flashed through her brain.

Whack on the head, drugs, stress, lack of sleep, she told herself, repeating the mantra she'd come up with on the ride to the office. The explanation for the last twenty-four hours of her life. An explanation that didn't even begin to fit but was all that stood between her and the alternative.

Either of the alternatives.

"All right, knock it off," Roberts growled. "It's bad enough having the media and the public going off the deep end without us following suit." He fixed a grim look on the group as a whole. "What I want to know is how that reporter knew about the posing of the bodies. If anyone in here has been talking to the press about this case, writing tickets for jaywalking will become the high point of his or her pathetic career, is that clear?"

Nods and shuffling all around.

"Good. Now let's get our heads out of the fantasy world and back into reality. We have a killer to catch."

Alex trudged toward the conference room with the others, careful to keep to the back of the group and well away from Trent. She took up a position near the door, leaning her shoulder against the wall and cradling her injured arm against her side.

Overnight, the task force had tripled in size, now filling the room to overflowing. Many of the people Alex didn't recognize, but assumed were detectives from Toronto's surrounding municipalities where the killer had struck; others were uniformed officers and detectives called in to assist from other sections within the city's own force. On the opposite side, Delaney squeezed in between Bastion and Timmins, looking flushed and uncharacteristically disheveled, rather like her breakfast date had gone better—and longer—than expected.

Alex shifted her arm and turned her attention to her Staff Inspector as his voice boomed through the room.

Despite the number of personnel working the case, the meeting went quickly. Roberts reviewed the attack on Alex, focusing on the possibility they were looking for more than one suspect. With respect to the other victims, there was little to report. Two of the bodies remained unidentified. Apart from a general assumption regarding their killer's sex, age, size, and fitness levels, the psychological profiler was stumped, and the geographic profiler didn't yet have enough data.

"We must have something else," Roberts said. "We have tips coming in by the hundreds. Hasn't anything panned out yet?" Silence met his query and he threw himself back in his chair impatiently. "Come on, people. We're up to nine bodies—"

Alex blinked. "Nine?" she interrupted. Last she'd counted, there were seven including the one tied to her attack.

Across the room, a pencil snapped in two with a muted crack. Alex stared at the two slender pieces of wood in Trent's hands. No one else seemed to notice. She forced herself to look away again.

Roberts spared her a brief look. "We had two come in last night. One in Aurora, the other in Peel." He returned his attention to the group at large. "Well? Nothing else?"

Shit. The claw. She'd forgotten to tell him about the claw.

"The what?"

Alex saw that all attention had riveted on her. She realized she'd spoken aloud, and that Trent's gaze had narrowed to that uncomfortable intensity again. She swallowed.

"The claw," she repeated. "When you sent us to the coroner yesterday, that's what Jason Bartlett wanted to show us. He thinks it may be part of the murder weapon."

Roberts looked as if he didn't know whether he was being fed a line or should have her committed on the spot. He looked to an impassive Trent, then back to Alex.

"What is this, a bad joke?" he asked. "Exactly how hard did you hit your head, anyway?"

Alex glared at him. "Not that hard," she retorted, forgetting that she herself had just used her injury to explain away certain anomalies, "and it's not a joke. Joly and Briggs saw it, too. The coroner found what looks like a claw in victim number four, our Jane Doe. They haven't been able to match the DNA or identify where—or what—the claw is from, but they have an expert on big cats coming in from the zoo today to give them a hand. Bartlett's supposed to call me when he has something."

She considered adding the weird temperature part to her revelation, but given the tension now permeating the room, decided to keep that detail for Roberts alone, especially on the heels of the news report. Judging by Joly's tightened mouth, he was no more eager to share the information than she was.

Roberts ran a hand over his buzz cut. Opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again. Then he rose from his chair and threw down his pen, sending it skittering the length of the conference table. "Fuck it," he said. "I'm going for coffee."