Finch wipe the last of the glitter from Em-ma’s skin with a damp cloth and struggled not to think about how many times he’d done the exact same thing. He’d lost count of the times he’d sponged Katie down after an especially nasty spark had left her weak and boneless on the bed in their apartment. The Hollywood glitterati—movie stars famous for sparking in public—got only the best Hamma. The rest of the world’s addicts had to take their chances with claws gathered and ground by people who had no idea how to process them safely. One in every dozen or so batches of Hamma claws was steeped in lye too long, transforming the chemical compound in a way that caused shakes, sweating, vomiting, and occasionally a deadly heart attack or stroke in those unlucky enough to ingest it. In the end, that’s what had killed Katie—a bad bunch of claws had been too much for her emaciated, wasted body to handle. What had started off as a way to stay awake a few extra hours to get in a little more study time before the bar exam had taken her life and destroyed her dreams.
