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“Remind him of that when you tell them that I want access to Pace’s extensive feeds.”

“Fine.”

“Also, notify all three parties that there will be no more excluding me from your little meetings.” He has the decency to look guilty for that. “I want your cooperation with Knight’srequests. I want to knoweverythingabout Stella, and Laura, and every goddamn girl that’s gone missing.”

Sy stands, placing his empty glass on the desk. Then he softly asks, “The girl…the wedding… she’s part of this, isn’t she?”

“That’s a business arrangement, one I made for my son a long time ago.” I shrug. “I’m merely fulfilling an obligation.”

Remington has been released to live his life with the Dukes and Simon Perilini is able to give him what I never could–a real family. Arianette… she’s a means to an end.

Sy’s expression indicates he doesn’t believe me, but that was a battle I lost long ago. It’s not until he’s at the door that he stops and issues a warning, “Be careful, Maddox. You dig deep enough in Forsyth, you might not like what you find.”

I don’t relax until he shuts the door.

He has no fucking idea.

The fire’salready lit when I enter the library. We’re almost to Samhain, meaning the days are getting shorter, ushering in cooler temperatures.

This is my favorite room in the House of Night. Probably my favorite room in all of the properties I hold. The stained glass throws reds and greens across the floor and the leather chairs are buttery soft with age. My desk, the same one every other Baron King has sat behind, stands near the far wall, a heavy black curtain draped behind it, hiding the details of my obsession.

Pushing back the curtain, I reveal the wall.

It’s covered in newspaper clippings, documents, and printed forms. All copies–the originals are stored safely elsewhere–but I prefer to see the crimes laid out like this, the threads of eachstory exposed. People call these setups “murder boards,” and now that one girl’s confirmed dead, the term finally fits.

I pause at Laura’s photo. She looks like any of the thousands of girls who’ve passed through Forsyth. So painfully ordinary no one suspected foul play when she disappeared. Even her friends thought maybe she’d just taken off in search of something better. But why her? What made her stand out? What did they see in her? Why was she the first to die?

And is that even true? Was she the first… or just the first we’ve found?

Next to her is Stella–straight black hair, bright eyes. She’s smiling in every photo. I run my finger along the space between their pictures, stopping at the name that connects them: Eugene Warren. Ballsack.

I understand why the police are circling him. I don’t believe in coincidences either. But this? This feels too neat. Too obvious.

Like I told Sy earlier today: death is my business. And someone is out there meddling.

I don’t involve myself in the small-time greed of the gun trade, or the vulgarity of human trafficking. Lionel Lucia’s obsession with drowning Forsyth in narcotics never interested me, until he created Scratch and started stacking our morgues with bodies. That crossed a line, and thankfully his daughter had the guts to deal with him.

I believe in free will. At Noir Sanctum, there’s no price on desire. In the shadows, there’s no judgment on a deserved death. We tend to the dead. We shepherd their remains from one realm to the next.

But this? This isn’t justice. Whoever’s taking these girls–hurting them–has no reverence for death. And when they took Arianette Hexley, they made it my problem.

I don’t need a picture of Arianette to recall her features. They’re etched into my mind. Her dark eyes, wide with fear upon the altar. Hands bloodied from killing her Baron. But there’s more. She’s soft in all the ways men like women soft. In the mouth and hips. She’s pliable, eager to please, but there’s steel under it. A defiance I suspect she has no idea how to control. That’s why she ended up in the cage. A lesson in self-control.

I have no doubt that defiance is what carried her to the riverbank–what saved her life.

There are moments I wonder if it would’ve been better had she stayed dead on that sandy riverbank. It would have spared her everything that’s coming. Not just the Black Wedding. Not just becoming my bride. But the invasion of her mind I’m going to have to carry out. The ways I’ll have to dismantle her, piece by piece, to get to the truth.

She’s the best lead I’ve got. The only one.

Noise in the hallway alerts me to their arrival. I drag the curtain over the wall, keeping my activities under wraps.

Hunter arrives first, the faint scent of cigarette smoke trailing in after him. Damon follows, darker, quieter, eyes always scanning. He’s still carrying that low-level burn from the Fury. I can see it in the way he stands, coiled and ready.

“DK,” I say, stepping forward, “your win at the Fury was impressive.”

His jaw tics, but he nods.

“You two,” I glance between them, “seem to be working well together. That’s not nothing. It can be hard taking over leadership in a group without prior connections.”