Page 181 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

I’ve tested a few of the windows on the first floor of the western wing as surreptitiously as I could, and none of them budged. Short of smashing through the glass, which would have me discovered in an instant, I’m not getting through those.

Now I can take advantage of someone’s lapse of caution.

I flick out my claws and raise my hands to the old bricks. In the past several days, Matteo has pushed me to stretch my speed and strength as well as my scream.

This climb is going to be a piece of cake thanks to the training I’ve gotten from the pricks I’m working against.

With a little leap, I’m scaling the wall, moving my hands swiftly and precisely so my claws make only a faint click of sound each time they dig in.

It takes only a few beats of my heart before I reach the window ledge. I squeeze my hand into the gap beneath the sliding pane and shove it upward.

It rises with a rasp that has me holding my breath. But only stillness follows.

Even with my tiny frame, it’s a tight squeeze wriggling through the open space. With my shoulders hunched inward and then a twist of my hips, I finally squirm into a landing I catch with my spread hands on another tiled floor.

Maybe that’s why they were careless with the window. They assumed none of us would be able to enter through it anyway.

I roll into a crouch and peer around me, rubbing the sore spots on my shoulders where I expect I’ll be bruised tomorrow.

Like the window, the room is small. Maybe ten feet long and wide, a far cry from the grand chambers the rest of the villa boasts.

With my first impression, my spirits deflate. It doesn’t look like an office or workroom or anything I’d expect to find sensitive information about Balthazar’s dealings in.

There’s a twin bed in one corner, the headboard carved with a mountain range like the vista outside. The wood is painted a pale yellow like the dresser on the opposite wall and the bookshelf next to the window.

After that first glance, I move to the door. If this room will give me access to more of the secured part of the villa…

My thoughts are already leaping ahead with a surge of vengeful determination. I could dart through the halls, crash into Balthazar’s room, rake my claws through his vital organs before he’s fully woken up?—

No such luck. My tentative twist of the knob tells me it’s locked—and well. I don’t think I could break the deadbolt without enough noise to alert anyone nearby.

Shit. Well, I might as well see what I can make of what I do have access to.

I slink around the room, confusion tickling up through my steady burn of enraged resolve.

The bed is a little shorter than the one I’ve been sleeping in as well as narrower—a kid’s bed. Underneath it, my exploring hand encounters a box full of trading cards for some game I’ve never played.

The bookcase holds picture books and novels with bright covers and large print. A model boat sits on a shelf next to some of them.

When I move to the dresser, I freeze. In the darkness, I barely made out the rectangular objects poised on top of it until I was right in front of them.

They’re framed photographs.

I pick up the first of the three and angle it so the faint light seeping from the window can illuminate it. Three little boys grin at me, their arms looped over each other’s shoulders, their faces painted like cartoon animals.

The next has the boy from the middle of the first group, recognizable by his light auburn hair and prominent ears, perched on the lap of a man in a Santa suit.

And the third…

The third I stop and stare at as time slips away from me.

The boy is there again, maybe a little older than in the first two pictures but no more than seven or eight as well as I can estimate.

He’s standing between a man and a woman I assume are his parents, their arms crossing each other’s as they both rest a hand affectionately on his shoulders, all three of them beaming at the camera.

The man is Balthazar.

It must be from a while ago, because his hair is all tawny in the picture, no gray showing yet. He’s just as broad and imposing as the man I’ve talked to, but the glint in his eyes doesn’t look quite so feral.

He might actually be… happy.

This guy has a family? He murders kids on a whim and then goes back to his wife and son like it was just another day at the office?

I study the woman next. Her ruddy hair obviously contributed to their son’s auburn.

She’s slim, almost fragile-looking, especially next to Balthazar’s hulking frame. There’s a sweetness to her smile that sends an odd pang through my chest.

I feel like I would want to get to know her. How can she be with such a monster of a man?

Maybe she isn’t anymore. Maybe she figured out what he’s like and left him.

I don’t think the family could be living here , after all, and Balthazar wouldn’t spend weeks on end away from them, right?

But then, I don’t actually know that he has been here himself this whole time. He could be zipping away on trips back to his real home without us catching on.

My mind skims back through all the minor observations my fellow shadowbloods have scrounged together over the past several days. Has anything they’ve seen or overheard related to Balthazar’s home life?

Nothing clicks into place. I scowl and peer at the photo even more intently.

And that’s when I notice there are four figures in the image.

The family is standing in front of a stretch of lush forest, probably a park somewhere. And in the background off to the side, slightly blurred but still recognizable, stands a tall, wiry woman with sleek black hair and a square jaw.

Toni’s hair is a little longer in the picture, down to her shoulders rather than her current chin-length bob, and there’s more youthful softness to her features. But that’s definitely her.

So, she’s been working with him for a while now—at least since whenever this photo was taken. She’s met his family.

I set the picture back on the dresser, the wheels turning in my head. That’s something we didn’t know before.

Now how can I use it to bring Balthazar down?