“Shadowborn,” I said as it came back to me once again. “He said I was Shadowborn, and you didn't question it. Why?”
The plate clattered to the floor, toast overboard.
“Fuck,” Ronan said. “Sorry about that."
I shrugged. “It was burnt anyway.”
“I wasn't paying attention.”
“You've always been a shitty cook."
Ronan tried to smile, but it was forced and sad, nothing like the mischievous grin I loved so much. It felt like a knife twisting in my heart, and it was that moment—not discovering her body, not the police in Sophie's bedroom, or Alvarez's questions, or the stretcher on the front porch waiting to wheel her out, but Ronan’s broken, half-assed smile and the blackened toast on the floor—that made me realize nothing would ever be the same again.
Pain crushed me all at once. Everything inside me liquefied, and I slid from the chair onto the floor, unable to move, unable to cry, unable to breathe.
Ronan sat down next to me and gathered me in his arms, holding me against his chest. His heartbeat was the only true thing I knew.
By the time Detective Alvarez poked his head into the kitchen to check on us, my legs had fallen asleep and my neck was stiff.
He pulled out a chair and gestured for us to join him at the kitchen table. Sophie had left her Tarot cards there, but I couldn’t bring myself to move them.
The Death card was still on top.
“Here's what we know,” Detective Alvarez said. There was compassion behind his steely professional gaze, but more than that, I appreciated his efficiency. The sooner he wrapped it up, the sooner they’d all leave. “We haven’t uncovered a weapon, and there’s no sign of forced entry. We—”
“The door and windows,” I blurted out, remembering suddenly. “When I got home, the front door was unlocked, and her bedroom windows and screens were wide open.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “The lock sticks—it always takes a few tries. Tonight I put my key in, but I never turned it. Ronan and I got this weird feeling that something was wrong, and we ran inside. I don’t even know where my keys ended up.”
“Here,” Ronan confirmed, patting his pocket. “I grabbed them when the police arrived. They were still stuck in the door lock. I didn’t think of it before, but yeah, Gray’s right—the house was definitely unlocked.”
“I know I locked it when I left for Darius’s place earlier,” I said. “I always do.”
“Does anyone else have a key?”
“Just Ronan,” I said, “but he was with me at Black Ruby. We walked home together.”
“What about the windows?” Alvarez asked, pulling out his pad to take a few more notes. “They were closed when we arrived.”
I glanced at Ronan, then looked down at my hands.
Oh, that? Just Death popping by for a visit, no big deal.
“I… closed them,” I finally said. “It was cold.”
Detective Alvarez wrote all that in his notebook. “So there’s a chance if someone showed up here, Sophie invited him inside. Maybe she knew him?”
“Or her,” I said.
“Or her.” Alvarez nodded. “Alternatively, maybe they came in through the windows and left out the front door. Hopefully we’ll know more when we get the prints back.”
“You said you couldn’t find a weapon,” I said. “But you think it’s a homicide? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Right now I’m working off a hunch.” His eyes softened, and he reached out and touched my hand, his fingers warm. “But I can tell you that Sophie likely died peacefully.”
It was cold comfort.
