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T he ice clinked in his glass as took another sip of whiskey, draining it. He sat on the edge of his desk and unbuttoned the collar of his black shirt—it was bloody anyway. The manila folder on his desk stamped with ARIATNE MORROW glared up at him. He’d yet to open it and debated doing so, but the whole thing rather annoyed him.

Reluctantly, he lifted one edge, about to flip it open, when he changed his mind and threw the whole damned thing into the rubbish. If Mariana hadn’t made copies for her records before giving him the file, it was her own fucking fault.

Eyeing the flayed corpse across his lab, he poured himself another glass from the most expensive bottle he had stored at Achilles House. One of three his father had been saving for special occasions he’d never get to see.

, however, did have occasion to celebrate tonight.

That Stage 3 corpse had left him one step closer to proving his hypothesis correct.

After he’d cut apart the sloppily stitched sutures, he’d been greeted by exactly what the pretty girl mentioned last night. There were signs of flowering in the lungs. And the heart.

swirled the amber liquid in his glass and strode over to the body, looking down into the open chest cavity.

In fact, he could tell precisely where the girl had hastily torn out a bit of the flora for herself. She’d failed to take the root, instead ripping off the stalk, like one might carelessly rip a hellebore bloom from a garden. She hadn’t mentioned the heart, and the bud there was so fresh, so new, he suspected it wasn’t there before and half-expected it to grow before his very eyes. If he kept it under the correct conditions, it just might.

Tyres crunched on gravel outside and moved to look out the window, staying hidden so he didn’t have to don his infernal mask. Watching from behind the curtain, he recognised the car. An old 70’s something or other in the exact shade of brown as his favourite shoes. Her face sprang to his mind, unbidden, before she even stepped from the driver’s side in a plaid skirt.

Christ sake . He hated the way he noticed the fit of it over her hips as she walked to the back door of the House and banged with the knocker. He couldn’t see her expression clearly from the second floor, but she sure beat the hell out of that door, the sound meeting him from both outside the window and up through the House. She had a medical bag clutched in one hand. An old style from the 50’s, and he felt a stab of envy for it. A thing of beauty. Presumably, it was filled with the instruments he’d demanded she bring back.

She glanced up suddenly, looking right into his window, and slunk back into the shadows to grab his mask.