“I can’t say for sure. I caught fragments of a female voice that I think was advising him or directing him… but not enough to identify her. No clear visual impressions. She told him Elodie was dangerous.” Cole’s gaze darts to me.
A chill shivers over my skin. I don’t like having his analytical skills aimed at me.
I wrap my arms around myself. “I guess she was making things up so he wouldn’t feel bad about going through with the attacks.”
Or were my doppelganger’s activities threatening someone somehow?
Cole hums and turns back to the corpse. “The only other distinguishing ephemera I’m picking up… Something on his clothes… The enchantment imbued there has a quality I have trouble describing, but it’s… unusual.”
“Well, that’s a big load of uselessness.” Salvatore moves his own hands over Kenneth’s lifeless form. After several seconds, his forehead furrows. “Huh. I think I see what you mean. It’s like… like the ephemera is a little more condensed than usual, maybe?”
I can’t stop myself from bending down by Kenneth’s other side. I extend my hands and test the energies emanating from the fabric.
When I focus, there is something just slightly odd about the vibrations of the collected ephemera. Are they more tightly condensed, like Salvatore suggested? Or… almost heavier? I don’t know how to describe it.
All the same, the sensation isn’t just odd but… oddly familiar. I have the sense that I’ve encountered magic like this before, sometime, without really registering the difference.
Where? In my investigations in this world or back in my own reality?
“Maybe it’s a more advanced technique?” I suggest. “If he had military weapons, he could have arranged to have military-style magic applied to his clothes.”
Cole is still frowning. “Magic is magic. Of course, it’s hard to say when there’s still so much we don’t know about why he did this. He didn’t tell you anything else?”
“Nope. He was very untalkative. Believe me, I tried to ask what the hell had gotten into him.” I straighten up. “We’re not getting anything else out of him unless you thinkwe can break out a Ouija board and commune with his spirit.”
Don’t I wish getting answers could be that simple.
Byron gives a faint cough. “It sounds like… like whoever was pushing Kenneth in this direction, they must be pretty powerful. Why else would a Hearst listen to someone else and even agree to committing a major crime? His family has a ton of sway of their own.”
His uncertainty hangs in the air between us. None of us has any clue who that powerful person might be.
Salvatore draws his imposing frame to its full height, his eyes flashing. “That’s all true. What are we going to do about it?”
“What do you mean?” Asher says.
“How are we handling this?” Salvatore sweeps his arm toward the corpse. “And how are we going to make sure that the powerful snuffer who has it in for Elodie doesn’t send someone else to kill her?”
Two
Elodie
At Salvatore’s very reasonable question, apprehension crawls over my skin. I haven’t had time to think through all the possibilities.
If Kenneth had a shadowy figure egging him on to kill me, he might not be the only puppet in her reach.
Cole frowns at the mafia heir. “We inform the police, of course. They’ll take the necessary steps and unravel Kenneth’s connections.”
Salvatore arches his eyebrows at our Divination professor, turning his switchblade in a slow circle between his bare fingers. “You figure they will? They’ve had a week to solve Elodie’s poisoning, and they’ve come up with shit all. They didn’t stop the prick responsible from coming at her again. What makes you so sure they could stop any other attacks?”
Cole’s tone sharpens. “What the fuck areyousuggesting we do, then?”
Byron steps a little closer, averting his eyes from thebloody corpse on the ground. “We can’t pretend nothing happened. Everyone’s going to want to know how our match sparked. The police will get involved whether we call them or not—and it’ll be worse if we don’t make the call ourselves.”
The thought of all the scrutiny and controversy that’ll come with revealing our bonds sets my heart thudding painfully hard. I never wanted to find myself in this situation again; never wanted to inflict it on these men again.
Asher glances at me. Maybe he reads something on my face, or maybe my behavior before has already made my feelings clear enough.
His right hand, the one that carries his own bond mark under his glove, clenches at his side. “Dowe need to talk about our matching? Couldn’t we just… keep wearing our gloves, not mention it in front of other people, at least until we’ve sorted out the bigger problems we’re dealing with?”
