My loss, I thought, staring at the suit of yet another man smiling placatingly in front of me. I’d arrived at Xavier’s compound directly from the warehouse, and had to push aside the thoughts of my relationships with Hunter and my ability to use his conduit as if it were my own, for the time being. But the fact was, all my thoughts seemed to be sluggish right now, and I finally gave up on trying to remember this man’s name—or even care—and simply nodded. This pattern repeated itself as I moved on through the sitting room, the family room, the living room…all the misnamed rooms in Xavier Archer’s house, while I avoided the sympathetic gazes of the strangers around me and thought about my loss. The man who’d despised me practically since birth was dead. The man who blamed me for my mother’s abandonment was dead. The man who treated people as usable objects, and siphoned his soul to the Tulpa in return for unlimited power and money was, finally, dead.
