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“You do not want to see what is in that room.”
    I froze. “Oh, God. Why not?”
    “She is dead. I saw you land on the roof and followed you here when you did not return. I thought you could handle him long enough that I could get her out, so I went in.” He cleared his throat. “I found her body.”
    My stomach rolled, but I tried to stay professional. “I’ve seen dead bodies before.” A sad but true fact in this business.
    “A child?”
    Well…
I shook my head no, trying to keep from crying.
    “Then trust me, you would rather not see it. It is always worse to see a child.”
    We hadn’t been able to save a six-year-old kid. It wasn’t fair! I felt tears run down my cheek and angrily swiped them away. “I’m sorry. It’s not professional to go to pieces like this.”
    “Do not apologize. I rather appreciate that it affects you still. It means you are not so jaded that you are incapable of empathy for those we are trying to save.”
    “It’s just that not being able to save an adult is sad, but not being able to save a child is devastating. At least to me.”
    “I would agree,” he said.
    “We need to call the EHJ.” I swiped the remainder of tears away and took a calming breath.
    “They are all on a mission to outer space.” He handed me a handkerchief with monogrammed initials on it. Who still carried handkerchiefs?
    “Seriously?” I wiped my eyes, twisting the handkerchief in my hands. “God, why don’t they do some actual work in this country or on this planet for a change?”
    He smiled. “That is what we are here for.”
    “What are we going to do with him, then?” I pointed to Syn without looking.
I know what I’d like to do with him, lousy child-murderer
.
    “See you in hell, bitch!”
    What?!
We both whirled in time to see Syn, who had gone from passed out on the floor to alert and mobile in the space of a second. I had a fraction of a second to react as he came at me with a wicked-looking blade.
    “
Arresto!
” Elliot ordered, and the madman froze on the spot. “I cannot keep doing this all night. The magic is taxing me to my limits. He should not have been able to recover that fast.”
    “Tell
him
that,” I growled. “So, what are we going to do?” I took a deep breath, trying to pretend I wasn’t shaking.
    “Give him to the authorities, I suppose. I will call a man I know on the police department. Someone needs to collect the…” He cleared his throat. “The body.”
    Our eyes met and I saw my pain echoed in his. So the child’s death really was affecting him. I wasn’t sure if this surprised me.
    “We have to hold him until the police arrive?”
    He nodded.
    “Alright.” I walked over to where Syn still stood frozen, and punched him. He hit the wall hard and went down, unconscious.
    Elliot nodded. “Good thinking.”
    I kicked the knife away, out of Syn’s grasp, but didn’t touch it. Elliot dialed a number on a cell phone and spoke with someone. He sounded angry as he hung up.
    “Pendergast is not working to night, so they are sending Deburt.”
    “Deburt on the take or something?” I half laughed.
    “No, he has issues with our kind and does not like me personally. He will make this more difficult than it needs to be. I am sorry your first night on the job has turned out to be so rough.”
    I shrugged. “I’m used to it. Nothing ever goes smoothly for me. I would be more worried if everything went according to plan.”
    “Still, we came expecting a missing persons case and you ended up getting a chunk taken out of your soul.”
    “I’ll live.” Then, alarmed, I asked, “Won’t I?”
    “He took just a bit, like a fingernail.”
    “So it’s survivable.”
    “Lots of things are survivable.”
    I didn’t like the tone of that. “Is there any way to fix it? I feel a little weird, walking around with a fingernail-sized hole in my soul.”
    He looked me over for a long moment. I felt like his gaze was shooting through to my essence and inspecting