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his broad forehead and clear eyes radiate intelligence, but the heavy brow, square chin, and wide face look more Neanderthal than Nobel Prize winning. The hair’s a long, shaggy brown mane.
    Gretch taps her touchscreen again, and the image comes to life.
    “Hello again, Jace.” The familiar deep rumble of his voice, but sounding a little less self-assured than he usually does. The camera’s in tight on his face, so I can’t really make out much of the background. He looks off camera for a second, then quickly back. He blinks several times in quick succession, a visual clue that he’s reining in his emotions. When he speaks again, his voice is a little flatter in tone.
    “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. And I’m the last person in the world who should care about the welfare of pire children. But I’ve undergone some changes lately, and—” He breaks off, gives his head a little shake. “Never mind. That’s the cry of every reformed criminal alive, isn’t it? I’ve changed, really I have. I know you wouldn’t believe it from the lips of a wife beater—and I’ve done things much worse than that. So I’ll try to stick to the facts, and let you make up your own mind. You will anyway.”
    He pauses. “First of all, I’ve ended my partnership with Ahaseurus. When I realized what he was, what he wanted you for … let’s just say we didn’t part on friendly terms. I don’t know if the NSA has any way to confirm that, though.”
    I glance at Gretch. She pauses the recording and says, “We can’t track Ahaseurus with any deal of accuracy, but we collected a lot of mystic data about his abilities from the Nightshadow incident. Enough to alert us if he tries using similar spells. An NSA satellite got a spike of transdimensional energy out of Africa shortly after that, and nothing since.”
    I frown at her. “Two things. First of all, the NSA has magic satellites? And second—why didn’t anyone tell me The Big A was in Africa?”
    Gretch looks uncomfortable. “Because most likely he isn’t. It’s quite possible he’s no longer in this dimension at all.”
    That’s not—I hope—a euphemism for being dead; it means that Ahaseurus has jumped out of this reality and into a completely different one. And since there are literally an infinite number of these alternate worlds, hunting him down has just gone from difficult to impossible.
    Gretch sees the look on my face. “It’s not as bad as it seems, Jace. He’s been here long enough to become mystically attuned to this world; a great deal of his power is here. He’ll be back.” She turns the recording on again before I can muster a properly indignant reply.
    “The Free Human Resistance comes into contact with many underground groups,” Stoker continues. “That doesn’t mean we endorse all of them, or condone their actions. It just means that we’re all hiding under the same rock, and no one can afford to blow the whistle on anyone else. If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately, right?
    “But I can’t stay quiet about this, Jace. I just can’t.”
    He pauses again, staring just off center of the camera. Collecting his thoughts, or trying to build dramatic tension? I can’t tell.
    “Children are … everything. I don’t mean that to sound sentimental, either; it’s just that without a way to reproduce, a race dies. As monstrous as it was, I understand why the pires did what they did at the end of World War Two. It let their species survive. But that kind of global change, affecting that many people—there’s no way to fully understand the consequences, not until they rise up and hit you in the face.
    “For one thing, nobody thought about the orphans.”
    I glance over at Gretch. She flicks a glance back at me, but that’s all. I know we’re both thinking about Anna.
    “The spell that lets pires have children has its dangers, too; even a pire aging at half speed is more vulnerable than a full immortal. Some of