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And right at the bottom was the closing salutation: Yours in admiration followed by xx .

Adam fought the urge to haul her close, spread his wings over her, even as his decade-old rage burned ever hotter.

He wasn’t a man given to holding grudges or withholding affection—his sister had nicknamed him Bear for a reason—but Eleri Dias’s betrayal was a barbed thorn in his heart that wouldn’t let him forget.

He focused only on the here and now and the possible threat to his clan. “The coordinates?”

“Led to Vivian’s body. She’d turned seventeen two weeks prior. Kriti, the oldest victim, was still only a bare nineteen, Sarah six months younger.”

Eleri pulled out another letter. “After that initial letter, he began writing to me before each abduction, then after. He’s never given me exact coordinates for the bodies again, says there’ll be no ‘thrill’ in it for me if he makes it too easy—but he gives me just enough that I and my colleagues can figure it out. ”

“Playing a game with you?” Adam said. “So you’ll run yourself ragged trying to stop the abductions?”

“No. He’s been careful not to say anything in those pre-abduction letters that could lead me to him or to his future victim.” Though Eleri’s face was motionless in the shadow of the canyon, Adam wondered if she really was as unmoved as she appeared.

He hadn’t missed the fact that she’d named each victim. Then again, perhaps it was easy for her because she didn’t feel.

No guilt. No grief. No anger for lives stolen.

As Adam unfolded the second letter, Eleri put away the first. “They’re not originals, just copies that I’ve handled until they look like it. The originals are in a forensic lab and have been analyzed both on the level of physical evidence and in terms of what the words might mean.”

“Still a big jump from fantasy to acting it out,” Adam said.

“The first kill wasn’t clean. From the state of her body, we believe Vivian almost escaped.” Eleri looked out at the water that, from here, was no river of blood but a glittering golden thread in the landscape.

“Animals are often the first target,” she added. “That may have been his practice ground.”

Neck rigid with tension, Adam didn’t interrupt.

“This particular pattern of abduction and murder, with the victims kept for what appears to be exactly seventy-two hours before he kills them with a massive telepathic surge that burns out their brains? That began with Vivian Chang.

“There are no other like crimes in any database to which we have access—and that includes the database set up by the Ruling Coalition in which they enter any and all data to do with psychopaths who may have been allowed to commit their crimes by the Council.”

“Who’s the we? Your Enforcement task force?”

“Yes. I also work with a network of Js who share information as we work our personal cases.”

“What does the task force think of your theory?”

A long pause before she said, “That I’m seeing ghosts because I’ve become too personally invested.

They believe the important locations are the abduction and captivity sites, and that the body dumps are opportunistic—it would tie with the theory that he’s an individual with a transient job. Sales. Trucking. Road engineer.

“To date, we’ve only found one place where he held a victim—that was with Vivian Chang. She was kept captive in a warehouse meant to store road construction items; that’s how we found it. The roading crew turned up three weeks after she vanished and found her ID onsite, along with specks of blood.”

Adam narrowed his eyes, seeing where her colleagues were going—especially given that particular site. “What happens if you take the location of the abductions and that warehouse into account?”

“It triangulates to a totally different area.” Eleri put away the second letter. “Nowhere near Raintree.”

“I’m assuming your colleagues aren’t idiots, so why are they focused on the abduction sites and not where the bodies were found?” He watched her, wondering if she’d lie, try to spin things her way.

Instead, she said, “Because the abductions appear to be opportunistic—as if he was just passing by on one of his normal routes when he spotted them. Vivian was walking home from a late band practice, Kriti’s car broke down on a highway, and Sarah went to a party with new friends.

No one remembers when she left or with who—but we know she was at the party, and that she never made it home. ”

Eleri put the trunk liner back on. “The bodies, on the other hand…they’re posed in a way that takes considerable time.

He builds open-sided shelters for them on the spot, then decorates the shelters like his fantasy of a woman’s bedroom.

Silk hangings, vases of flowers, candles.

That takes time, takes materials, takes tools—and the bodies aren’t decomposed enough when I find them. ”

Her tone, Adam realized, hadn’t altered through the entire grim recitation. There was nothing in her eyes, either. As if he was speaking to an automaton.

His senses spiked in a rejection that wasn’t born of rage but of something else altogether, something that he’d succeeded in burying for ten long years.

Oh, you’ve cut your knuckles. Let me get a bandage from the first aid—

No, stay, it will heal up real quick. Changeling skin is tough.

Eleri. I’m Eleri.

Eleri. That’s pretty. My name is Adam.