Hours later, Kyle sat against one of the basement walls drinking tepid soykaf from a plastic cup. The cheery fast-food logo seemed to jeer at him from the side of the container. He watched as Woodhouse, another Eagle Security magician, a young woman who'd arrived with the reinforcements, and some paramedics tried to save a girl, barely out of her teens, from the terrible death that overcame most of the cocooned once they were removed. Physical death came quickly, but the mental anguish seemed to echo long past the body's final spasm.