Chapter 273

XENOIS Lake was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was fighting some internal battle about how much to reveal.   Finally, he spoke, his voice flat and clinical in that way he used when discussing traumatic things.     "Andy kept three nightwalkers on staff," he said. "They were her scouts. Her spies. She'd send them out to gather information, to watch targets, to infiltrate places that were supposed to be secure. They're almost impossible to detect unless you know exactly what to look for."   "What do you look for?" I asked, leaning forward.   "Temperature drops," Lake said. "Not huge ones, but enough to notice if you're paying attention. The air gets colder when they're near. And shadows behave wrong----they move independently, or stay still when they should shift, or appear in places where there shouldn't be any shadow at all."   Lumina's expression had gone distant, like she was remembering.   "At the store. The shadows did move wrong. I thought I was imagining it, but