“Jane, if I'd had any inclination you were such a genius, I would have gone right ahead and kidnapped you the first day we met.”

I blushed and then thought about what he'd just said. “Wait, what did you think of me the first time you met me?”

He laughed. “Honestly? I thought, ‘Nice rack,' and then, ‘Really nice rack.' In that exact order.”

I can live with that, I thought, perversely pleased that he hadn't been thinking about the essence in my blood. Him having a moment of mammary elation seemed more… satisfying than him thinking of me in terms of feeding.

“Seriously, though, you are amazing. We would never have thought to look for this connection.”

“Well, you don't do human science,” I said. “Why would you think to look for what happened to the bodies?”

“It's so obvious, but so outside of our frame of reference,” Ryu acknowledged.

What Ryu and the others had failed to notice was that every single one of Jimmu's victims had their bodies donated to science. And none of them had been signed up to do so, until right before they were murdered.

“Here's my scenario,” I said, pulling out the piece of paper I'd been working on since we had gotten back to Ryu's and I'd seen “body donated to science” at the bottom of the first and second victims' autopsies. “We think, from what Morrigan said to me at the Compound, that someone floated to them the idea of using human science to figure out their fertility issues. It has to be someone close to the ruling pair, and who's closer than Jarl?”

“Jane—”

“Ryu, please just hear me out. You don't have to agree with everything I say, but hear me out.” After a few moments, he nodded. But he still looked unhappy.

“The next thing we know, we're discovering that Jarl's own second, Jimmu, has been murdering the halflings that Peter Jakes was sent out to catalog. Did you ever get an official reason for why Jakes was sent out?”

Ryu shrugged. “Orin and Morrigan don't answer to me, obviously. They did tell me that they were cataloging halflings to try to understand just how many there were in the Territory, how powerful they were, and why they hadn't been brought into the fold, so to speak.”

I thought hard, chewing on a hangnail as I stared at my jumbled notes.

“Well, what if they didn't really have a point to sending out Jakes? What if they did it just to placate Jarl? ” As I said it, it made sense. “Maybe they promised to act depending on what they found.”

Ryu nodded slowly. I knew he didn't like where I was heading, but I also knew Ryu loved a challenge, loved figuring out the games his brethren played with one another. He might not entirely believe what I was saying, but he might be willing to join in the fun of speculation.

“I'm not saying I believe you, yet, but if Jarl was the sponsor of that lab, he might even have given our monarchs the idea of using Jakes so that Jarl could take advantage of the situation. He'd have Jakes wandering around the country, cataloging halflings who weren't integrated into the community—which means they'd be weak, vulnerable, and off our radar.”

I nodded. “So Jimmu follows Jakes about until he leaves, and then Jimmu shows up and convinces the halflings to donate their bodies to science using his mojo. Once they've agreed, he later kills them. The bodies are funneled to a special laboratory. Either one Jarl's set up, or one that has some of his people on staff. Everything goes smoothly until Jakes realizes his catalog has become one of death, sees Jimmu hanging about, and puts two and two together. That's when Jimmu kills him.”

“How does Conleth fit in?”

I thought about that. “I don't see how he could be directly involved… except,” I said, getting excited again, “as an inspiration. Like I said, what if Jarl caught wind of some halfling rotting away in a human laboratory? He gets involved by taking over the lab. Later, he decides to expand operations.”

“Now you're just shooting yourself in the foot. If Conleth is the inspiration for Jarl, then why is he killing the halflings and using their bodies? Why not kidnap them and experiment on them like he's doing with Conleth?”

I frowned. That was a good point. But good points are like pencils; they wear down eventually.

“Well,” I replied, “let's think this through. First of all, Jarl already has a live halfling in his clutches. There are tons of experiments you can do only on living beings, presumably, but there also have to be tons of experiments you can do only on dead ones. Plus, look at all the resources it took to keep Con prisoner. There was, like, a full roster of employees running that lab, which must have been really expensive. Granted, Conleth is really powerful, but still. It's gotta be a pain in the ass to kidnap and hold people, right? Plus, most victims have friends or family or coworkers who notice when they go missing. But nobody notices a body funneled to a laboratory. They're already dead; you don't have to feed or guard them. As long as you don't get caught doing the murders—which you won't if you're a super-ninja magical snake-man trained to sneak and kill—it's sort of a perfect way to get test subjects, isn't it?”

“I've thought of something else,” Ryu said, after a second. I could tell he was nervous about voicing too much support of my idea, but, again, he liked playing the game. “We only know of the murders because Jimmu got sloppy and was caught by Jakes. If he hadn't murdered Jakes, we would never have known what the nagas were doing. What if there have been other kidnappings, or deaths, but they've not been discovered or connected?”

I shuddered, horrified at that thought. And yet, at the same time, part of me was excited at everything we'd speculated on. It wasn't nice, or pretty, but I'd always thought there was more to Jimmu's murders. So we might not have every detail correct, but what we'd talked about made a lot of sense, on a lot of levels. That said, I could tell Ryu was about to try to throw down the old kibosh.

“It's a good theory,” he said, using his “but” voice. “But we've only got proof of Jimmu's involvement. And it all could still be a really freakish coincidence. I admit, what you're theorizing does have some… merit. But we

would need real, concrete, irrefutable proof before accusing Jarl of anything.”

“I know,” I said, employing my own “but” voice. “But at least it's something. A connection. Even if we can't prove anything, we need to know who the real enemy is.”

What I left unsaid was my belief that the real enemy was Jarl. And what Ryu left unsaid was that he was unconvinced I was right. So we were at another impasse.

“If you are right, then the question is, Are there other laboratories? And where?” Ryu asked gently. My stomach dropped as he continued. “And what are they working on now if they're no longer getting bodies from Jimmu?”

“Shit,” I murmured as I realized the implications of Ryu's words. If Jarl had lost Con, been foiled in his use of halfling cadavers for experiments, and he wasn't the type to give up, I didn't want to ponder the evils to which he'd graduated.

“Yup.”

“Not good.”

“No.”

I was beginning to realize that this investigation was bigger than Conleth—and probably bigger than anything Ryu and I could imagine.

And I so did not want to get caught up in it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Anyan, Daoud, Camille, and Julian trooped in, Ryu got right down to business. He explained to everyone what we'd just found, but he didn't yet go into what we'd hypothesized. He probably wanted to see what conclusions they came up with on their own.

That's when I noticed the business-card holder. Supes didn't have last names; they just went by their factions, and so I was curious what Ryu used in his human incarnation. My eyes bulged when I read it.

“Ryu T. Tootie?” I demanded, but Ryu ignored me.

“Ryu T. Tootie?” I repeated, walking over to poke him in the stomach. “Are you serious? Tell me these are a joke.”

Ryu glowered at Daoud. “I lost a bet. For the next twenty years, I have to go by Ryu T. Tootie.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I eyeballed Daoud, appraisingly. “That was a good bet,” I said.

Daoud inclined his dark head toward me, his dimples winking as he grinned. “Thank you. It was fairly inspired.”

“Ryu, this says you're a ‘private consultant.’”

“Yeah,” Ryu responded. “I always use ‘consultant.' It's perfect: vaguely meaningless, yet redolent of money.”

“I tried to get him to put ‘privates consultant,' plural, but it wasn't in the parameters of the original bet,” Daoud informed me, his voice serious, until we met each other's eyes and burst out laughing.

“Shit, is he gonna start charging me?” I started to joke with Daoud, but I was cut off by Anyan clearing his throat from where he was leaning against the doorway. He clearly wanted to put us back to the task at hand, but he also looked really grossed out by our banter.