Page 138 of Fallen Court

“Like I said, a vampire has confessed—” I stopped myself as my brain finally processed her words. “Five? There were only three murders.”

I shook my head, doing the mental math. I looked to Roark for confirmation, and he nodded like he’d come up with the same number. “Are you trying to tell me there are going to be two more?”

“No.” She tapped the map on the desk with her fuchsia-painted fingernail. “I’m trying to tell you that there have been four murders. You missed one.”

The concern I’d felt a few moments ago returned, burrowing deeper under my skin. Maybe it would never really vanish at all. I straightened, craning to see the map’s faded lines. Willow stabbed her index finger at an inked star in Third Parish. “A rougarou was killed right around the time that the bona fides spell was created.”

Dread sank into my bones. I didn’t bother trying to dismiss it this time.

“I remember that,” I muttered, searching my brain for details and coming up blank.

“His name was Haines,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “Sounds like he was a nice guy. I asked a friend in the pack. Apparently, not a single wolf confessed to biting him.”

I looked at Roark. That was unusual. Alphas didn’t have as much control over their packs as they once did. Now they mostly operated out of respect. Something I understood, but if that respect was compromised… “Who did we hear about this from?”

“It came in through the usual channels. No one thought much about it. A coven is within their rights to put a rougarou down,” he said. But the frown he wore told me that he would be following up with the local leaders to see how this had slipped through the cracks.

But I already knew how we’d missed it—how everyone had missed it.

It was the same thing that had kept the covens at one another’s throats for the last few weeks, or, if I was being honest, centuries. The tension that had always simmered in the city’s melting pot: prejudice. It was always easier to see the ways we were different rather than similar, and different scared a lot of people.

“I missed it at first, too,” she said, as if she might pat my head for being so adorably dense. “Just think about it. If you want to hide that you’re up to something, make people believe you’re doing them a favor.”

She raised a good point. A rougarou, cursed to change without control over their shifting, was the perfect victim. No one would ever look twice.

But connecting it to the other killings was thin reasoning at best. “Why do you think it was related to the other murders?”

“Because of the eclipse,” she said like this was obvious. “The other night, after Étienne was killed, my flowers died. We asked your friend Sirius about them, and he mentioned a siphoning spell, and that got me thinking… There have been a lot of eclipses lately. That’s how I found out about Haines. Witches chart them, so I did some digging.”

And found a dead rougarou. Romy had mentioned the eclipse in New York. She’d heard about it from her sister.

“They found his body a few hours after the first one, but, like I said, no one worried too much about a dead rougarou.” She leaned down and looked directly in my eyes. “But those other eclipses? I might have put it together sooner if you hadn’t covered them up.”

“We know the bona fides spell is affecting the city’s magic,” Roark interjected.

“Only when there’s a murder?” She shot a look over her shoulder that would melt ice. “Give me a break.”

I clenched my jaw to keep myself from making an excuse. She was right.

But Roark wasn’t easily cowed. “There was no eclipse when the human was killed.” Still, he looked shaken. “How is her death connected?”

That earned him another glare. “Magic doesn’t react as strongly to the death of a human, does it?”

There was so little magic in human veins. It would barely register.

I leaned back in my seat, assessing the threat in front of us. Not the marks on the map but the woman who had pieced them together. “And why do you think there’s going to be another murder?”

“Pay attention because I’m not explaining this twice. Haines is murder number one. He was killed here.” She pointed to the spot on the map again. “Then a few days later, Thalia was killed here.” She moved her finger to a spot across town. “She died near the French Quarter, but she was actually in the Second Parish if you look at the territory lines that were drawn when the covens were first establishing boundaries. The only one that doesn’t make sense is the tourist. Her body was found in St. Roch.”

“Why does that matter?” I studied the map.

“You’ll see,” she said grimly. “Étienne died here.” She pointed to Jackson Square, and I felt a stab of sorrow.

“Okay, but I don’t see why that predicts there’s going to be another murder.”

She muttered something under her breath, but all I caught was fae and hopeless. “If you trace a line, you have a big circle.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than a circle,” I said flatly.