Even though he’d never met Isobel, he had to imagine she was staring down from the Fade, glowing with happiness that the two most important people in her life were finding a measure of peace.

After they embraced for a second time, Rochelle looked at Boone. “But there’s more. And this is why I asked to see you.”

Boone got up off the sofa and decided to join the not-so-tea party on the hard floor. It just felt so right to throw convention and standards away and cop a squat here in the archway, broken crap all over the place, secrets being revealed, questions being answered.

Healing beginning.

He picked up the handle of a mug and toyed with it. “Tell us.”

“It goes back to before. When the arrangement was made.”

Rochelle frowned and shook her head. “Shortly after I met you, I started to feel as if I were being watched. Followed. I couldn’t pin it down, but I would be at my parents’ house and I would look out the windows . . . and I would swear that somebody was there. It was so eerie. And then one night, I met up with Isobel at Pyre, and I felt like this male was following me as I went around the club.” She looked at Helania. “We used to go there because we didn’t have to hide our relationship. With all those masks and cloaks, we could be free. But I remember that night—we’d gone in my car because I’d just gotten it and I felt like driving. After we arrived . . . I just had this strange sense I was being trailed.”

“Fucking Syn,” Boone muttered.

“It kept up for quite a while. And then . . . Isobel was killed.” Rochelle closed her eyes. “I didn’t go back to the club after that and it disappeared. The sense . . . went away. I didn’t think about it again until . . .” She looked back and forth. “Until Mai was killed a week ago.”

Boone jerked forward. “Mai? Wait, what? You know about her killing, the second one?”

“She was our friend. Isobel’s and mine. She was the only person who knew about us.”

“She was the other female?” Helania stammered. “That night I came to your house? But wait . . . oh, of course, I didn’t recognize her when I found her because she was wearing the mask. And then in those terrible pictures after she was dead . . . I couldn’t bear to look at them on that wall in the evidence room.”

“Mai was the second death down there.” Rochelle looked at Boone. “And I found out about it from a friend of ours the night—”

“Of my father’s Fade Ceremony,” Boone filled in. “That’s why you were so upset.”

“To lose her as well. It was almost too much.”

Outside the mansion, the storm surged with a gale-force gust, the lights flickering and going out. But just as Boone was thinking about finding a candelabra, the electricity came back on.

Rochelle put her hand over her heart. “When I heard about Mai, I didn’t know what to do. Who to talk to. I didn’t know whether the deaths were connected, although—”

“They were,” Boone said. “And it has to be the same male who was stalking you. There are too many connections.”

“That’s what my intuition tells me. Two deaths, in the same place, so close together? But I hesitated to come forward because I’d kept everything with Isobel a secret. I was stewing over it all when I saw the posting the Brotherhood put out on social media—and that’s when I got your direct message.” After she nodded to Helania, she looked again in Boone’s direction. “I texted you last night to come see you so we could talk it all out and figure out what to do.”

“We were at the training center. I meant to text you back, I’m so sorry.”

“We’re here now, it’s okay. And you tell me they found out who it was?”

Boone nodded. “He’s one of the fighters who works with the Brotherhood. He has a history of stalking and killing females.”

“So he must have found Mai and Isobel through me? But how did he find me, and why am I important?”

“He went to Pyre. Just like you did. He must have started following you because of that.”

“I guess that was the connection. So am I next?”

Before he could answer, she got a distant look on her face, and Boone frowned. “What else?”

“Well, it’s about Mai.” Rochelle took a deep breath and glanced at Helania. “I think she might have had contact with him. By phone.”

“How so?” Boone said.

“After Isobel’s death, Mai moved into my house on Macon Avenue. She said she needed a place to stay, but I think she was just worried about me, and I’d taken to spending a lot of the days there. I mean, I was crying at the drop of the hat, and I couldn’t explain to my parents why, you know? They’re good people, but they’re totally traditional. Anyway, over the last week or two, I could hear Mai arguing with someone on the phone during the day, her voice raised. Whenever I asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t tell me. It was clear, though, that she was very upset. Maybe it was that male.”

“Syn has a cell phone for sure. And with the kind of reach the Brotherhood has? He could have found her contact information through a species database or something.”

“That must be how it happened.” Rochelle looked at Helania. “I go out and visit Isobel at her grave. Do you?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Helania frowned. “And you know, I kept all of her things. Would you like to come to my apartment and see them? Maybe you would like some?”

“You would do that?” Rochelle said in a choked voice. “Give . . . some to me?”

“Yes.” Helania smiled. “I am absolutely sure that that is what she would have wanted.”

“When can we go there?”

Helania glanced at Boone. “We’re headed back to my apartment now. Come with us. And we can update the Brotherhood from there if you like. You’d certainly have more privacy.”

Boone got to his feet and brushed off his leathers. Bending down, he picked up the tray. “We have a plan. I’ve just got to get a change of clothes and some books, and we’re out of here.”

Rochelle’s expression warmed. “Are you two moving in together?”

“Ah, kind of,” Boone said as Helania stayed silent.

“Well, I’m happy for you both.”

“Thanks, friend.” He nodded at the tray. “I’ll be right back.”

As he took his leave, he heard the females start talking about Isobel, and was aware of being sad he’d never meet Helania’s sister . . . and Rochelle’s great love.

She must have been a helluva good person, he thought.

Back in the kitchen, he dumped everything on the tray in the trash and told Thomat to have someone clean up the floor in a little bit—he wanted to give his two females a little more time to themselves. Then he went back through the pantry and paused in the open door to Marquist’s former suite.

Ah, yes. Moving boxes. Just what he needed—

As his phone went off, he took it out, and as soon as he saw it was Butch, he answered. “I was just about to call you. We found Isobel’s . . .” He hesitated, unsure of how much Rochelle wanted to keep quiet. Plus God only knew where Marquist was in the house. “We found the friend who helped bury Isobel, the one Helania was looking for—”

“Syn didn’t do it.”

Boone took his phone away from his ear and stared at the thing.

Then he put it back into place. “What did you say?”

“He lied. Wrath could scent it.” The Brother laughed in a harsh rush. “The great Blind King doubles as one hell of a polygraph test.”

“Wait, this makes no sense. Helania saw him with Mai, with the female he killed.”

“He was with Mai. But he wasn’t the last person to be with her.”

“That’s not possible. Why would he lie?”

“Look, I’m not going to argue or debate why in the hell that fighter would cop to something he didn’t do because I can’t fathom his reasoning about anything at this point. He’s really fucked in the head, to be honest. But be that as it may, he did not kill either of those females or the human one who was found first at the club.”

Boone thought back to that alley, and the human male he’d castrated and tortured . . . that Syn had taken responsibility for.

Before he could bring all that up, Butch continued, “Bottom line, we’ve got no concrete evidence on him anyway. No bloody clothes. No meat hooks hiding under his bed, not that he has one.”

Boone could only shake his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Actually, it makes perfect sense when you remember what I told you about confirmation bias. I’ve been there—fuck it, I am there with this case. I just thought you’d want to know the updates, and Helania needs to be told, too. I think you should both come down here.”

Boone looked over his shoulder. “She’s here with me at my house. We’ve promised the friend that she could go check out some of Isobel’s stuff back at the apartment. But after that we can come in, and I want to bring the friend with us. There’s another angle to everything, but I can’t go into it where I am now.”

“Okay. Just call Fritz. He’s ready to go get you, even in this storm.” As Boone ended the call, he felt like throwing his phone at the wall.

What stopped him was the fact that the fucking killer was still out there somewhere and he might need the goddamn thing.

Stepping over the threshold of Marquist’s former quarters, he headed toward the moving boxes—

The lights went out, this time with no flicker warning. Disoriented in the dark, Boone bumped into a chair, then kicked into something low and heavy, the whatever-it-was toppling over and scattering whatever it held.

Just as he was fumbling with his phone to get the flashlight on, the electricity came back on and he looked down.

What he’d managed to bootlick was a shoe-shine kit, the wooden box on its side, the put-your-foot-here contours of the top popped open. Metal tins of polish and a stained chamois rag, as well as a vial of little sole nails, had spilled like blood and organs from a victim, the impact of his steel-toed shitkicker spreading them out in a fan.