In the executive lounge a call came through a link to Captain Valda. "Captain," the voice came through clearly, "We've found the boss."

There were more shadows at the boss's second party than the one on the rooftop, and Valda had found some to hide in — in the executive lounge a story below the party where he might be likely to actually find the boss. He let Mars and Rex do their jobs while he neglected his. From his hiding spot, though, he had found his second target again. Accidentally. He watched Nova Dasilva leave with Julian Somnare, his target, and then Calo Gloriam followed them. Keeping to the perimeter but not the shadows, Valda followed them.

"I know," said Valda to Calo Gloriam. He tore into the dark room to find the girl soaking in the pool of her blood.

Calo Gloriam had his hands in the air, and even though Valda knew he was innocent, he looked guilty. "It wasn't me," he said, "there was a man."

He didn't expect Valda to believe him.

"I know," Valda said again.

But there hadn't been a link. The stranger had disappeared. He had been doing it all day under the guardia's noses without lighting up on the star dial downtown either. His illegal magic left no trace for law enforcement. "He disappeared," the chief confirmed with Calo. "He'll need to be executed," he said more to himself if just as out loud, looking down at the woman dead on the floor. She was done bleeding.

Her execution meant Valda really did have to execute Julian Somnare after all.

Outside the blizzard worsened like I had never seen in my life, which consisted of twenty-something Invernali winters I could remember. So much white the night was invisible. Blankets blocked the windows like curtains.

Despite modern heating and the warmth of a hundred guests dancing, the building managed to get cold. Everyone had coats, but some guests started to flee Invernali through links back to warmer climates and everyone who remained began to huddle close to the fires to keep warm.

I warmed my hands at a fire pit. The staff couldn't tell me how the cold was getting inside, so I gave up. Well, first I told them to crank the heat up, as if they hadn't thought of that, but still it was freezing.

From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a flash, and people flocked to the window to get a better look, excited to see lightning in a snow storm as if that wouldn't be the portent of something very unnatural, but I was looking the other way because Captain Roman Valda ran out onto the floor, gun drawn; he was looking for someone, probably to shoot someone from the look on his face.

I customarily would shirk the duties of a host, but I found myself drawn toward Valda as if I didn't have a choice. I had to go ask him what was wrong.

"I need the boss," said Captain Valda. I hadn't seen my father. I told him as Aurelian I was at his service.

"There was a murder, Aurelian. We need to apprehend the perpetrator right now. He slipped through our fingers again. Julian Somnare. Somnare may have helped your father, but he's dangerous and I need your cooperation to capture him."

Cristo, who had he murdered and how could I get him out of trouble? Could I stall the guardia? I'm not the duplicitous one, that's Nova. "Aurelian Dasilva will know how to find Julian Somnare. We have to find her." I walked away before the lying could show all over my face.

"Wait, stop a second, Aurelian," said Valda, and just like that I was caught already, such a bad liar, it was obvious I was hiding something. I slinked back around knowing how guilty I looked. Valda went on, "I'm sorry. I can't put this delicately, there's no time. Nova Dasilva was the murder victim." He looked uncomfortable and said he was sorry a second time. He said he had to hurry a second time. I asked him if he was sure, and he said yes.

"Are you sure it was her?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure it was . . ."

"Somnare, yes."

"Are you going to execute him?"

"Yes," said Valda.

I told him I would help him find Cristo. More lightning flashed and lit up the falling snow, casting shadows through the window onto the floor, but I didn't look, not even when the thunder crashed two point eight seconds later. Instead, I led Captain Valda through a link to my apartment.

Cytheria couldn't find Ilan Potestas; it was as if he were hiding at his own party.

Everyone sprung out of her way as she crossed purposefully back and forth across the bar lounge, completely an act of futility except to warm her bones back from the edge of hypothermia. The security guards had refused to cooperate; she tried asking one to contact Ilan and tell him Exequi Laio Cytheria was going to speak with him whether he liked it or not, but they told her the boss's whereabouts were being kept from the public.

She told them she wasn't the public, she was Laio Cytheria, and they looked very unsure of themselves and failed to argue; the best strategy they seemed to come up with was just to ignore her, which was funny to watch because they turned and squirmed as if trying to get away from her without leaving their posts. Hilarious.

She had no intention of giving up, so she swept the lounge another time, glaring off anyone who tried to start a polite talk with her and conscious at all times of the need to keep Lucian Acario and Candra Satiri and Portia Nero on the other side of the party from her, just so she wouldn't be tempted.

She was resolved to do the right thing. And Marius would kill her daughter for it. And the three Laios would haunt his ass for the rest of eternity, dead or alive.

Anger boiled in her stomach as she put one foot in front of the other; she nurtured it to overwhelm any other pesky emotions, and she couldn't find the boss. People turned and had the audacity to look at her. By the time she finished a third circuit, she was considering releasing her agonizing rage on Ilan as well. She was well within her power to do so with her connection to Constellation even in Invernali.

Just as she was imagining exactly what she wanted to do to him, she saw him — not the boss, but a man who appeared out of nowhere exactly where she had been glaring into nothing.

It was the young man who visited her house this morning, the man who told her her future. He had warned her of this very outcome. Julian Somnare, that's the name the appointment had been made under.

Cytheria wasn't superstitious, but just as some claimed the ability to ask the stars what was about to come, some claimed it was possible to prove the existence of serendipity or fate. It absolutely felt like pieces falling into place, as if in her moment of helpless agony the stars presented her with the man who had visited her house before Tian and Terra went missing.

It became clear just who was responsible.

As if someone else was pulling the strings, calling the shots, Cytheria moved toward Somnare across the party, feeling agile, calm, warm — perhaps warmer than she had felt in a very long time.

The window to her back let the cold through the glass, and behind her back the snow slowed and the dark sky cleared for a minute. A dozen people moved in front of it immediately to see what it looked like out there and whether the sun was rising, but the only light came from the half moon and the illuminated bank of snow on the ground that had risen up the walls of Potestas Tower as if the building were sinking into winter's version of the sea.

Someone put a hand on the freezing glass. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at the stillness until the second a flash blinded them and made a dozen heads look away.

"Was that lightning?" someone asked. No one was sure. The snowstorm pelted down again, not delicate light flakes but torrents of white deluge that hit the ground fast and hard and soundlessly.

Cytheria saw nothing but the future teller as she wondered how Somnare had gotten on the guest list and what the man who knew her children's fates was doing at this party for the upper strata as she put one hand on the firearm in the inside pocket of her huge structured jacket.

She followed him, it felt as if he was trying to get away, he disappeared into a link between two fireplaces looking like prey being stalked more than a man going somewhere in particular on purpose. He looked guilty, someone else was chasing him too, what had he done? How had he gotten himself into trouble?

The almost unwarranted seed of suspicion grew and in her grief she let it. This man had done something bad; and he had something to do with the murder of Terra and Tian.

Cytheria pushed and shoved to get through and waited only a second before she followed. When she stepped out into a Constellation library a part of her brain asked illogically how she had got there between the bookshelves as if she were dreaming and couldn't remember, a second part of her brain felt like sleepwalker numb to thought of any kind and ignoring the logical answer that she came through a link, and a third part wanted Cristo to die, wanted to kill him herself.