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Gemma’s dusty blond eyebrows shot up to her messy hairline. “With what?”

Janice nodded. “Oh dear. I believe I know what comes next.”

I gave her a pointed stare. “Do you? She told me some of it, but she was under the impression that you didn’t know.”

“Oh yes.” Janice smiled, deepening the lines around her eyes and mouth. How old was she, anyway? Her body looked soft and frail, but she had an odd kind of youthfulness in her voice that threw me off. “You’re about to tell me that he’s holding Gemma’s job over Ruth’s head.”

Did this woman know everything? “Rook said he overheard them talking about a friend’s resume Saturday night,” I confirmed with a nod. “And I think it has something to do with Gemma’s job and the lie she told to get Ruth hers.”

Gemma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh.” Realization dawned, and she pivoted a dismayed look toward Janice. “Oh.”

Janice nodded. “Gemma’s job, but Ruth’s resume. Quite a brave infraction to insinuate that your friend’s doctorate is in human relations, nothumanities.”Janice lifted one brow with a gleam in her dark eyes. “Something a batty old ladycouldchalk up to a typo, nevertheless.”

“Oh no,” Gemma moaned. She took a step toward Janice. “I’m so sorry. That was me—all me. Ruth didn’t know about it. I was worried you wouldn’t give her the job, so I maybe… fudged some of the details on her application. And we should have told you, I know that, but Ruth needed a jobsobadly, and I justknewshe would be clever enough to figure this out even without the ‘right’ degree. I mean, she’s not me, but like, she’s the smartest person on the planet, and if anyone could go from carbon dating dusty old monk paper to pairing people together, I guess I figured it would be—”

“Gemma,” Janice puffed out a laugh.

Gemma hadn’t breathed once during her tirade, and she sucked in a lungful of air. “God, I’m so sorry. It was horrible. Inexcusable. I really wouldn’t blame you if you fired me.”

Janice held up a weathered hand, and the bangles around her wrists jingled. “Miss Daise, while I appreciate your, erm,ardentapology, it’s not necessary. I knew very well when I hired Ruth what her degree was in and what she was capable of.” Her eyes held an amused twinkle that sharpened in a way I’d never seen before. “I believe my intuition was right about her after all.”

“Wait, so you knew,” Gemma summarized, squinting her eyes, “and you didn’t fire either of us. Also… Ruth’s ex is blackmailing her into working with him? And he’s using this useless information to do it?”

“That would be my guess,” I said.

“Oh, I’m going to kill her.” Gemma’s mouth tightened into an angry line I was pretty sure I’d seen my old man use whenhe had spanked me as a kid. “She’s so dead. She let herself get fucking kidnapped to protect myjob?” She bobbed a fast look to Janice. “Not that my job isn’t… hyper-important.”

Janice waved that away. “Understood.” Her eyes strayed to the window, and she turned to face it again, bringing her hands together. “What brought you here, Callum? A thought? A song? An image that passed you by?”

“Uh, what?” I checked my phone restlessly, like Ruth might magically pop up with a text telling me she was back home and fully rational again. “I just figured Gemma would know where Ruth was.”

“Yes, buthowdid you think to come here?” Janice insisted quietly.

The wind. But don’t say that, it’s stupid.“Uh,” I cleared my throat, looking up again.Don’t. Just because her office looks like a fortune teller’s tent— “It was the wind.”

Janice nodded thoughtfully. “Not all science is rooted in the empirical. Metaphysical energy is not yet quantifiable or measurable, but as with all scientific discoveries, that does not mean it lacks substance.”

I stared at her, blinking. Slowly, I said, “Right.”

Janice gave me a humor-filled glance over her shoulder. “Aeromancy goes back thousands of years. The divination of wind patterns often changes from viewer to viewer, but I have a strong inkling that if you were to leave this building right now, Ruth would appear before you.”

“Wow,” Gemma breathed, her blue eyes pulled open wide. “You actually do tell fortunes.”

“I notice the little intricacies of life,” Janice replied evenly. “There is nothing fortunetelling about it.”

I wasn’t sure what “intricacy” was leading Janice to believe that Ruth would suddenly appear out of thin air, but what I knew for sure was that Ruth was with a dangerous manipulator that planned to do God only knew what with her, and if I didn’t find her soon, I was going to give myself a coronary. “As interesting as that… could be,” I hedged, trying not to outright dismiss the older woman, “I would like to examine where Vaughn would go with her.”

“Denver,” Gemma said immediately. “That’s where they were when he left last time, and that’s where he’ll need to—” she waved her hand around. “Whatever they do for research teams. Then it would be Italy after that. That isifwhat he said on the phone was true.”

Denver was a big city, but I pulled up the browser on my phone and typed in research facilities and humanities programs to see what it would pull up. “Thanks, Gemma. Try calling that number again and see if he answers. Maybe we can get through to them that way.”

“On it,” she nodded.

I started to leave, but I paused, catching Janice’s warm gaze. Her lips were turned up at the corners faintly, her body relaxed, but her expression pierced right through me. “Take time to breathe, Cal. You’ll find her.”

A peculiar tingle crackled in my chest, and I rubbed it absently,nodding. “Sure.”

Gemma had the phone to her ear, but I didn’t wait for her. As I fast-walked away, I pulled up the humanities division of UC Denver, and then sifted through non-profit organizations I thought could be connected. While I rode the elevator back down to the entrance, I looked up flights from here to Denver. The thought of Ruth silently suffering with a predatory person pulling her strings sent a wave of fury through me, sizzling the edges of my thoughts and fueling my fast pace out of the building.