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She tried to breathe through it, tried all the techniques she’d read and heard about regarding reining in her dread, that sickening plunging feeling in her stomach. None of them worked.
Angels and Fae and shifters milled about the alley, some on radios or phones.
“A jogger found the remains,” Hunt said as people parted to let him pass. “They think it happened sometime last night.” He added carefully, “The 33rd’s still working on getting an ID, but from the clothes, it looks like an acolyte from Luna’s Temple. Isaiah is already asking the temple priestesses who might be missing.”
All sounds turned into a blaring drone. She didn’t entirely remember the walk over.
Hunt edged around the magi-screen blocking the crime scene from view, took one look at what lay there, and swore. He whirled toward her, as if realizing what he was dragging her back into, but too late.
Blood had splashed across the bricks of the building, pooled on the cracked stones of the alley floor, splattered on the sides of the dumpster. And beside that dumpster, as if someone had chucked them out of a bucket, sat clumps of red pulp. A torn robe lay beside the carnage.
The droning turned into a roar. Her body pulled farther away.
Danika howling with laughter, Connor winking at her, Bronson and Zach and Zelda and Nathalie and Thorne all in hysterics—
Then nothing but red pulp. All of them, all they had been, all she had been with them, became nothing more than piles of red pulp.
Gone, gone, gone—
A hand gripped her shoulder. But not Athalar’s. No, Hunt remained where he was, face now hard as stone.
She flinched as Ruhn said at her ear, “You don’t need to see this.”
This was another murder. Another body. Another year.
A medwitch even knelt before the body, a wand buzzing with firstlight in her hands, trying to piece the corpse—the girl—back together.
Ruhn tugged her away, toward the screen and open air beyond—
The movement shook her loose. Snapped the droning in her ears.
She yanked her body free from his grip, not caring if anyone else saw, not caring that he, as head of the Fae Aux units, had the right to be here. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
Ruhn’s mouth tightened. But he looked over her shoulder to Hunt. “You’re an asshole.”
Hunt’s eyes glittered. “I warned her on the walk over what she’d see.” He added a touch ruefully, “I didn’t realize what a mess it’d be.” He had warned her, hadn’t he? She’d drifted so far away that she’d barely listened to Hunt on the walk. As dazed as if she’d snorted a heap of lightseeker. Hunt added, “She’s a grown woman. She doesn’t need you deciding what she can handle.” He nodded toward the alley exit. “Shouldn’t you be researching? We’ll call you if you’re needed, princeling.”
“Fuck you,” Ruhn shot back, shadows twining through his hair. Others were noticing now. “You don’t think it’s more than a coincidence that an acolyte was killed right after we went to the temple?”
Their words didn’t register. None of it registered.
Bryce turned from the alley, the swarming investigators. Ruhn said, “Bryce—”
“Leave me alone,” she said quietly, and kept walking. She shouldn’t have let Athalar bully her into coming, shouldn’t have seen this, shouldn’t have had to remember.
Once, she might have gone right to the dance studio. Would have danced and moved until the world made sense again. It had always been her haven, her way of puzzling out the world. She’d gone to the studio whenever she’d had a shit day.
It had been two years since she’d set foot in one. She’d thrown out all her dance clothes and shoes. Her bags. The one at the apartment had all been splattered with blood anyway—Danika’s, Connor’s, and Thorne’s on the clothes in the bedroom, and Zelda’s and Bronson’s on her secondary bag, which had been left hanging beside the door. Blood patterns just like—
A rain-kissed scent brushed her nose as Hunt fell into step beside her. And there he was. Another memory from that night.
“Hey,” Hunt said.
Hey, he’d said to her, so long ago. She’d been a wreck, a ghost, and then he’d been there, kneeling beside her, those dark eyes unreadable as he’d said, Hey.
She hadn’t told him—that she remembered that night in the interrogation room. She sure as Hel didn’t feel like telling him now.
If she had to talk to someone, she’d explode. If she had to do anything right now, she’d sink into one of those primal Fae wraths and—
