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My stomach lurches again but I swallow down the bile, focusing on the scene like I would do if I was a Homicide detective.

Whoever killed them didn’t leave much of a mess. There are no signs of a struggle, no broken plates, no haphazard furniture. Also, no footprints leading up to the door meaning they were clean, someone who isn’t around much dust.

Both Daniel and Trist must have known them, or they must not have seen whoever it was coming.

I rush to the sink, opening the faucet and washing Trist’s blood off my hands, careful to keep the hot water running for a few seconds to make sure it washes down the drain. I look into the living room once more, Daniel and Trist’s bodies still completely lifeless. Another wave of nausea comes over me and that’s my signal to get out.

Staying here puts me in more danger.

I step into the passageway, grateful for the gust of icy wind that rushes past and fills my lungs, replacing the sweet smell of rot. My eyes scan the corners of the passage but there are no cameras. No witnesses to tell us who did this, but it’s pretty obvious. They killed Daniel and Trist because we were getting close

My pulse races, but I keep my focus, rushing down the stairs and crossing the small yard to my car. When I slide into the driver’s seat, I pull out my phone to call the police operator.

“Hello. What’s your emergency?” a male voice answers the line in that practiced cadence.

“I heard gunshots coming from my neighbour’s house. Could you please come and check on it,” I say. “The address is C121 Craven Street, Harrow.”

I cut the line, not giving the operator enough time to trace my call and lean back in my seat, letting out a deep breath.

My mind spins, but my fingers are working before I can stop them. I need to find Avni. I search for her social media page, but it’s gone. My stomach falls. There is no sign of her anywhere and I don’t have another way to reach her.

For a second, I’m tempted to go back upstairs and look for Trist’s phone, but that would be stupid. The police will be here any minute and I can’t be here when they get here.

Another wave of bile rises up in my throat. What if she’s dead?

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, pulling out of the parking lot, my tyres squealing on the gravel. I race away from Daniel’s apartment, my hands still shaking at the memory of both their faces, frozen in fear, blood pooled around them.

It shouldn’t bother me. I’ve been around death all my life and yet, seeing them like that, knowing what happened to them and why has me terrified.

This is no longer just about kids dying from an unstable drug. Whoever this is won’t stop at Daniel and Trist. They know Rowan is close, which means they know about me, too.

When I’m far away from Harrow, I pull into a grocery store parking lot and call Rowan, my heart still beating too quickly.

He answers on the first ring. “Alex?”

And in a second, the tension in my body eases. “We have a problem.” I swallow. “Daniel is dead. So is Trist. Someone shot them in Daniel’s apartment. No signs of a struggle, so they must have known who it was. I’m guessing it’s whoever is behind Haze.”

“Jesus,” he mutters.

“Yeah.”

“Why would they get rid of them?”

“Only reason I can think of is because they know we’re onto them and they are taking out anyone who might talk,” I tell him.

“This is bad,” Rowan mutters.

“It means it must be one of The Keepers, right?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says. “But there’s something else. Trist is dead which means someone in The Snake broke the treaty. If Moreau finds out, we’re fucked.”

Shit. The treaty. The fragile peace agreement between the clans has held up for years without problems. The one and only rule: no one from one clan kills a member of another. Breaking it means war.

“Can’t you tell him you didn’t sanction this?” I ask. “Get ahead of it before someone else does.”

One dead Raven at the hands of someone in The Snake is all it takes to set the city ablaze.

“I don’t want to set off alarm bells yet,” he says. “We don’t know what Moreau knows.”