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would make it difficult to track. In the least, the boys and I escaped with our lives—Marlowe’s men couldn’t claim so much. I crossed myself in memory of the dead.
    I knew three things about the entity:
    One, it had more energy and brighter ghostlight than any spirit I’d seen before.
    Two, it had terrible taste in nursery rhymes. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” what was that, a catechism for serial killers?
    Three—and most frightening—it knew my name. Thanks to the media, a lot of people knew the name Micheline Helsing went with tetro eyes and Sharpie-black hair, just never any dead ones.
    Bourne pulled up to the helipad off Helsing’s Pier 50. A Black Hawk helicopter waited to take me back to Angel Island, its blades spinning the bay fog in whorls. This close to the sea, the air smelled of rot, salt, and exhaust from the ferries that shuttled our vehicles to and from headquarters on the island.
    I trudged after Bourne, cursing when I realized I’d left my monopod at the hospital, ignoring Bourne’s look of watch your mouth, kid. A few members of Helsing’s Port Authority waited by the chopper door, retinal scanners in hand. They greeted Bourne and me with salutes.
    “Evening, Miss Helsing,” one of the guards said. His badge read F. RILEY , and he stepped forward to scan Bourne. “Bounty duty tonight, Lieutenant?”
    Bourne chuckled as the scanner beeped green.
    I pulled off my sunglasses. “Aren’t you the comedian?” Like my father, I wasn’t keen on jokes made at my expense. Assuming anyone had the guts to make jokes about my father, that is. I stood still while Riley set the scanner’s silicone brace on my cheekbone, steadying myself for the scan.
    After Mom’s death, everyone returning to headquarters got scanned—even corps members returning from unofficial capacity or leave. The scanners searched the human eye for polyps of ghostlight, irregularities that appeared minutes after the body contracted a necrotic disease. The infections could metamorphose a healthy man into a fully developed hypernecrotic creature in fourteen days flat. Reanimate zombies took less time to turn—three to four days—which was why the Centers for Disease Control partnered with Helsing to run continual public service announcements with a laundry list of the symptoms.
    The St. Mary’s ghost had done something to me, but I expected the scanner to blink green—disembodied ghosts couldn’t infect a human being with necrosis of any kind.
    The scanner blinked red.
    Riley smacked the device against his palm. “Sorry, Miss Helsing. It’s been misfiring all night.”
    Bourne turned, searching me from head to toe. His gaze rested on my lacerated wrist. I tugged my jacket sleeve down to cover the injury. Living with a father like mine, I had a habit of hiding weaknesses. “Scan her again.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Blood pounded behind my eyes as the scanner’s beams crossed my cornea a second time.
    Red.
    “Call her in,” Bourne said. He hustled me away from the chopper as Riley called in a 1065 to the on-site clinic, which was code for a reaper infected with one of the “big three” necrotic diseases. Dad would go DEFCON when he heard.
    I hadn’t hunted anything necrotic tonight—we’d been on stakeout at the old Potrero Point generating station before Marlowe’s call. As Bourne hurried me toward the clinic, I looked down at the black substance trapped in the coils of my fingerprints. What did that monster do to me?
    The clinic doors slid open, letting us into the minimalist lobby. When the attending nurse looked up and saw me, she leapt from her chair and shouted for the doctor, rushing me into the ER. Nobody wanted to be responsible for the necrosis of Leonard Helsing’s daughter, not after what he’d been through with my mother and brothers.
    In less than a minute, the nurse had me on a gurney in an operating room. Bright lights chewed into my eyes, peeling back my composure. Honestly, did they need