Static blared from the blood-streaked screen of her boxy television set, and a fallen lamp cast angled shadows over Sophia's mutilated corpse. Her murderer wasn't human. It was a faceless wooden mannequin with jointed limbs, like a life-sized version of an artist's posing doll. One of its hands ended in a wooden nub, the other in a jagged, rusty knife. The mannequin hunched over her body and plunged the blade into Sophia's stomach over and over again, a murder machine that didn't understand its victim was dead. Meadow Brand stood on the far side of the bloodbath. Her smug smile twisted the scar I'd given her.