Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass

waited for her near the lake in a pool of light from a tall wrought-iron lamp. Sanchez was dressed in tailored business trousers with pointed-toed high heels peeking beneath the hems. Maybe not typical attire for a post-midnight garden stroll, but perfectly suitable for the diminutive woman, considering, as Kira knew from experience, Sanchez had the attitude of a driven executive who considered The Art of War her personal bible.
    “Chaser Solomon. My condolences on the loss of your handler.”
    Sanchez said the words politely enough, but they still grated and goaded. Kira bunched her shoulders as the sentiments found their mark, bringing back every brutal moment of loss and betrayal and anger. She bit her tongue against the urge to lash out at the easy target Sanchez presented, something the section chief no doubt wanted her to do. She wouldn’t give Sanchez the satisfaction or the excuse. Giving free rein to her sorrow and rage would have to wait until she was alone.
    Squaring her shoulders, Kira prepared to give the chief an official briefing. “Report. Bernard Comstock, age sixty-seven. Antiques dealer and part-time curator at the
British
Museum
, Magical Artifacts Department. Time of death sometime after nineteen-hundred.”
    “And the cause?”
    “Cause of death: self-inflicted poison, followed by evisceration by a seeker demon.”
    “A seeker?” A breeze filtered through the trees around them, almost a whispered warning. Even Sanchez shivered in her expensive clothes. “Are you sure about this?”
    “I touched his blood, read the scene myself. I’m sure.”
    “A team recovered the body in an alley not far from his hotel,” Sanchez said. “We also found the pieces of your mobile. How did you know to look for him there?”
    Kira frowned. She expected censure, but not the insinuation. What the hell did Sanchez mean by that? Something was off.
    She continued her debrief with a careful mix of words and as little emotion as she could manage. “Comstock and I were supposed to meet for dinner. He said he had something he wanted to show me. He was late. He’s never late. I went looking for him and found the alley near the hotel blocked by Chaos magic. I used my Lightblade to open it and that’s when I found him. I couldn’t find traces of the seeker demon’s trail, so decided to tap various sources for information. End report.”
    Sanchez remained silent for a moment. “Why would someone send a seeker demon after a handler posing as a curator?”
    “He wasn’t posing.” Kira ground out the words. “Dr. Comstock was an expert in pre-Dynastic Egyptian civilizations for the
Petrie
Museum
, a professor at University College London, outstanding in his field, much respected and well-liked. His job was his passion, his life. So you’re asking the wrong question.”
    “Oh? And just what is the right question?”
    “Who in Gilead thought it wise to turn a university professor and museum curator into a handler?”
    Sanchez folded her arms across her chest. “Regardless of what questions you think should or shouldn’t be asked, someone with the ability to control a seeker demon is running around town. Who is it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I sent a team to Comstock’s hotel room, but they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Did you recover anything at the scene?”
    “No.”
    That didn’t make the section chief happy. “What could Comstock have that would be of interest to someone capable of controlling a seeker?”
    Kira mimicked the section chief, folding her arms across her chest. “Shouldn’t Gilead know more about that than I do? I mean, no one even bothered to tell me that I had been assigned a handler after Nico’s death. Obviously I’m not kept in the loop.”
    “So what exactly do you know, Solomon?”
    “About this? Precious damned little.” Her anger flared. “I was in the middle of looking for leads when someone decided to call a meeting.”
    “You were playing tag with a couple