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attacked by leech-vine. "The way I figure it, you're already dead, so the leech-vine won't hurt you. It'll probably let go of you in a minute once it realizes there's nothing inside your veins for it to feed on. But it should hold you still long enough for me to tear your head off. If you're dead, you can't be killed, and that means you'll stay conscious even after you're decapitated." She leaned in closer, and her grin widened. "I'm going to take you home and make you my pet. I might get a birdcage for you, or maybe I'll just keep you in a box. Who knows? I might start a whole new trend: pet zombie heads!"
      She reached out with her steel-taloned hands, but before she could take hold of my head, I spoke.
      "You're right: leech-vine can't hurt me, and I can continue to survive as just a head. But you forgot something."
      Maera's thick brow wrinkled in a frown. "What?"
      "My arm." I nodded toward the ground.
      Maera looked down just time to see my arm – which had crawled over to us in the time it had taken the demon to advance – snatch hold of a leech-vine tendril and jam it against it her reptilian foot. The vine, realizing it had something alive to feed on, released me and whipped a dozen tendrils toward Maera. She screamed as the leech-vine covered her body and pulled her tight against the alley wall. The air was filled with soft slurping sounds as the vine began to drain the demon's blood, but I didn't look. Maybe Maera, like Troilus, had deserved what she got, but that didn't mean I had to gloat about it. I understand death better than most, and I know it's never something to celebrate.
      With a sigh, I bent down to retrieve my arm for the second time that day. I tucked the limb under my remaining arm and walked out of the alley, headed back to Papa's.
     
    "So when did you first become suspicious of Maera?" Papa asked. For the second time that day, the voodoo priest worked on reattaching my arm, but with one difference: instead of using a needle and thread to hold the skin together, he employed a hot soldering gun. I wondered what burning zombie flesh smelled like, and I was glad my nose was as dead as the rest of me.
      "When Maera first approached me, she told me she was a customer of Kyra's. But Kyra specializes in living, animated tattoos that move across the wearer's skin – Maera's full-body tattoo didn't move. That didn't mean that Kyra couldn't have done the work, but it started me thinking."
      Papa squinted one eye shut as he worked, and while the smell didn't seem to affect him, I noticed he made sure to breathe through his mouth. "And where did those thoughts lead?" he asked.
      "Maera's story sounded good on the surface, and it's exactly the sort of thing the Dominari does, but that was the problem: it sounded too good. Why would Techwolf and Lobster-Head take both Finn and Maera to their hideout? They could've given her their instructions when they first accosted the two demons on the street. Why waste time forcing Maera to accompany them to their pesthole of a neighborhood? The faster she started turning tricks, the faster the Dominari would get their money back."
      "Maybe the loan sharks didn't want to conduct their business in the public eye." He gave me an embarrassed smile. "If they'd been real, I mean."
      "I'll admit Maera's story wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. The loan sharks might've wanted to make their demands on her in private, and they might've wanted her to see Finn in manacles, just to drive home the point that they were deadly serious. And despite their warning not to seek help from the Sentinels, Maera might've decided to take a chance on the zombie detective that had helped out her friend Kyra. But that was one too many might'ves for me. I decided her story was bogus, and after that, it was just a matter of playing along until I could figure out what her game was."
      "And you nearly ended up as a talking head in a birdcage for your