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The group of them stared at her in eerie silence, their forms rippling like candle flames caught in a stuttering breeze.
Help them, one of the unmoving mouths told her. They need you to help them.
Damn it, she did not have time for this now. She wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with any of this right now.
But something prickled within her, something that told her she had to listen.
She had to do something.
He won't stop hurting them, said another ghostly voice. He won't stop the killing.
Dylan grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen and started writing down what she was hearing. Maybe Rio and the Order could help make sense of it, if she couldn't.
They're underground.
In darkness.
Screaming.
Dying.
Dylan heard the pain and fear in the mingled whispers as the dead Breedmates tried to communicate with her. She felt a kinship to each one of them, and to the ones they said were still alive but in terrible danger.
"Tell me who," she said quietly, hoping she couldn't be heard outside the door. "I can't help you if you don't give me something more than this. Please, hear me. Tell me who's hurting the others like us."
Dragos.
She didn't know which one of them said it, or even if - or how - she might have been heard through the barrier that separated the living from the dead. But the word branded into her mind in an instant.
It was a name.
Dragos.
"Where is he?" Dylan asked, trying for more. "Can you tell me anything else?"
But the group of them were already fading. One by one, they dissipated...vanished into nothingness.
"I almost forgot to give you these, honey." Janet's singsong voice in the doorway startled a gasp out of Dylan. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay." Dylan shook her head, still dazed by the other encounter. "What do you have?"
"A couple of pictures I took from the river cruise Mr. Fasso hosted earlier this week. I think your mom would like to have them." Janet came in and put a couple of color prints on the desk. "Doesn't she look nice in that blue dress? Those girls at the table with her are a few of the ones she was mentoring. Oh - and there's Mr. Fasso way in the back of the room. You can hardly make him out, but that's the side of his face. Isn't he handsome?"
He was, actually. And younger than she imagined him. He had to be about twenty years younger than her mother - in his late forties at most, and probably not even that old.
"Will you take these to your mom for me, honey?"
"Sure." Dylan smiled, hoping she didn't look as rattled as she felt.
It wasn't until Janet had toddled off again that Dylan took a good look at the pictures. A really good look.
"Jesus Christ."
One of the girls seated at the table with her mom on that river cruise a few short days ago was among the group of dead Breedmates she'd just seen in the office.
She grabbed a stack of older photographs from the box she'd packed them into and sifted through the images. Her heart sank. There was another young woman's face that she'd just seen in spectral form a minute ago.
"Oh, God."
