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humans-only club, remember?”
    Guilt made me turn away, though I had no control over our policies. “Who was the second victim?”
    She hesitated. “I’m sorry, Isaac. They found Ray Walker’s body yesterday night.”
    Pop psychology described five stages of grief. I went through all five in less than a minute as I struggled to accept the death of my friend.
    Walker was no danger to anyone. There was no reason for any vampire to go after him . . . but there was no lie in Lena’s gaze. My body tightened, fists clenched, stomach taut. My mind flipped through its mental catalog, searching for magic that would allow me to bring back my friend. But books with such power were locked, and trying to reverse death would accomplish nothing except to earn my exile from the Porters.
    I sagged into a chair and wiped a fist across my eyes. “How?”
    “Like the others.”
    Ray Walker had brought me into the world of magic. The Porters found me when I was in high school, and arranged for me to attend Michigan State University where I could work with Ray. For four years, I had spent every free night in his bookstore or apartment, reading handwritten texts on magic, examining artifacts, and discussing the possibilities of magic.
    Ray had personally recommended me for a research position in Die Zwelf Portenære. He had given me purpose and a goal. When I screwed that up, he helped to arrange my job here. While he had never said anything, I had no doubt he had argued on my behalf, to keep Pallas from booting me out altogether.
    My cell phone buzzed. I dug it out of my pocket. The caller ID read UNKNOWN. My fingers moved mechanically, accepting the call and bringing the phone to my ear.
    “Isaac? Thank God. Are you all right?”
    I recognized the faint New York accent at once. “Three sparklers tried to kill me this afternoon, and now I find out Ray’s dead? What the
hell
is going on, Deb? Why aren’t the Porters doing something?”
    Deb DeGeorge was a fellow libriomancer and librarian, but whereas I worked for a small public library, she held a position with the Library of Congress in Washington DC. She had a pair of Master’s degrees, spoke and read five languages and could spout obscenities in six more, and worked as a self-described “cataloger of weird shit.”
    “I’m sorry about Ray, hon. I only learned about him a few hours ago. You said you were attacked? The vampires—”
    “Are ash.”
    She gave a disbelieving snort. “Three sparklers? Damn, Isaac.”
    “I had help. Lena Greenwood showed up and did her ass-kicking thing. Deb, I couldn’t get through to Pallas either.”
    “She’s alive,” Deb said quickly. “You’ve heard about Harrison? Whoever killed him found a way to hack the spells he cast protecting our communications. We’re still working to secure everything, and until we do . . .”
    Until then, our murderer could be listening to every word we said. “I understand.”
    “Stay put, Isaac. I’ll be there soon.”
    “But what—”
    “Stay!” The phone went dead before I could respond.
    “What did she say?” asked Lena.
    “Not much, but she sounded nervous.” This was a woman who had faced down a homicidal Chilean mummy and walked away without a scratch.
    Between Smudge, Lena, and my personal library, we should be safe for the moment. I looked out the kitchen window. Trees secluded the houses from one another, and this part of town was quiet enough the neighbors’ kids down the street sometimes played an entire set of tennis in the road without having to move for cars.
    Lena reached over to touch my arm. “What is it?”
    “I’m not a field agent.” Deb and the others would investigate Ray’s death. They would figure out who took Doctor Shah. They would stop whoever had done this, while I . . . filed paperwork and stayed out of the way. “Ray was my friend.”
    We sat in silence for a time. My thoughts were manic and uncontrolled, jumping from the attack at the library to Ray