Rook

reluctantly and looked down.
She has the same hands as me,
she thought giddily.
Christ, and I didn’t even take off my gloves when I held her hand!
She winced. “You can come to my house, and we’ll learn about each other,” she said in a rush. Even as she spoke, though, she was already aware of the hundreds of complications spooling out from this development.
    They traded details and made arrangements for that evening. Myfanwy said that she would call later to set a time. There was an awkward good-bye, and she let Shantay lead her into the Rookery.
    “Well,” said Shantay, once they were in the elevator, “that kind of came out of left field.”
    “Yeah.” Myfanwy sniffed. Shantay handed her a tissue. “I didn’t take off my gloves when I took her hand,” fretted Myfanwy. “I was so gob-smacked, I didn’t even
think
of it.”
    “Thank God!” exclaimed Shantay. “Girl, if that woman had tried to swoop in for a kiss, or
any
skin-to-skin contact, I would’ve beat her skull in right there on the sidewalk.”
    “What?”
    “Are you serious? Some girl comes up to you on the street, you don’t know
what
she is! Hell, she could be a Grafter agent!”
    “I know that I have a sister, and this woman looks exactly like me—well, bits of her do,” amended Myfanwy, thinking of those long legs.
    “Oh, please, you know what the Grafters can do,” said Shantay. “Sure, she looks a lot like you, but we’re tussling with people who are pretty much the gods of plastic surgery and weird biologicalweapons. Shit, forget touching you—if she’d looked like she was gonna even
breathe
on you, I’d have moved in.”
    “Shantay,” said Myfanwy, “if this woman was going to kill me, she didn’t need to use some Grafter weapon. That guy in the B and B had a gun.” She felt a sinking feeling at the thought.
    “True!” realized Shantay. “That girl is lucky she isn’t a headless corpse on the street right now.”
    “Well, that might have caused a few problems,” said Myfanwy. “But you’re right about this chick. I don’t know anything about her. I’ll need to have her vetted before I let her in my house. I’ll need dossiers on Bronwyn Thomas, including photos, personal history, travel history, where she’s living. The real Bronwyn Thomas could be in Australia now…”
    “You okay?” asked Shantay. “I’ll help you with the background check. We can tear through it.”
    “Yeah, I just… I hope it really is her, and that there are no problems. It would be nice to have a sister.”
    “Maybe she really is your sister,” said Shantay. “We’ll check everything, and if it all works out, then you’ll be having drinks with her tonight. In which case, you’ve got a whole bunch of other problems.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like where you’re gonna tell her you’ve been all her life.”
    M yfanwy sat on one end of her couch at home, her bare feet propped up on a footstool, her head leaning back. Despite a brimming glass of brandy in her hand and the placid presence of Wolfgang on her lap, she was still feeling nauseated about the prospect of Bronwyn’s arrival.
    She and Shantay had spent the afternoon in a frenzy of security vetting. Myfanwy hadn’t liked the idea of anyone—not even Ingrid—knowing that she was researching her birth sister. Questions would have been asked, and the Checquy might have said there was no wayMyfanwy would be permitted to see her. If this Bronwyn really
was
her sister, then Myfanwy was determined to know her.
    And if she wasn’t, well, then something would have to be done.
    So Myfanwy had had Ingrid scrub all afternoon appointments from her schedule, and she and Shantay had gone into her office and shut the door behind them. Then they’d set about learning everything they could about Bronwyn Laura Thomas. Being Rook meant that she had practically unlimited access to government information about its citizens, and her predecessor’s focus on research and preparation meant that she could do most of it from her office.
    Bronwyn Laura Thomas did not live in Australia. She was living in London, in a flat near Marble Arch. She was enrolled at the University of the Arts London. No criminal record. She’d never left the country to go anywhere, let alone Belgium. Her Internet use was orthodox—almost painfully so. No e-mails to anyone in Belgium, or anyone dubious. There wasn’t time for them to check every person she’d e-mailed in the past six months, but a random