Chapter 27 · The Original

"Don't touch it."

Mina slapped her palm over the incinerator switch. The corpse on the gurney had my face, my scar, and the same crooked line through my left eyebrow.

I stepped between her and the machine. "Move."

"No."

"That's my face."

"That's why it burns first."

Her fingers tightened over the switch. She didn't look at me. "We torch it now, or it wakes up and tells everyone what you are."

"What I am?"

"Don't make me spell it out."

"You mean what I was."

"Jace."

"Five minutes. That's all I'm asking."

"Five minutes is plenty of time for a dead thing to put a knife in your ribs."

The body lay under the hard white lights. Its chest didn't move. Its skin had the waxy color of a corpse pulled from the canal, but its lips were still pink. Its fingernails weren't black.

I pointed at its throat. "It's breathing."

"It isn't."

"There's a pulse."

Mina finally looked. The muscle in her jaw jumped. "Residual current. The lines are still in the tissue."

"You're lying."

"I'm keeping you alive. There's a difference.