A slow smile curved his lips. Realizing how close our faces were, I swallowed against the flush rising in my cheeks. Hastily looking down, I flipped to the next page to find a white-sand beach with palm trees and an aquamarine ocean.

“Fiji,” I read.

He leaned in. “Is that water, vayanin? The blue?”

“Yes.” Without intending it, I’d ended up squashed against his side, the book half resting on my lap, his warm arm pressed against mine. “It’s the ocean, the same one as here.”

“The color is different. I would like to see this too.” He shifted toward me and I slid into him, catching myself on his chest. “Can we go to all these places?”

My hand was pressed to his warm skin, hard muscle beneath my palm. “I—it—that would take a lifetime,” I stammered. “I thought you wanted to go home.”

He looked down at the tropical vista, his smile gone. He snapped the book shut. “What did you learn about the murder case from Oregon?”

“Uh.” Hastily pushing off him, I settled back on my cushion and tried to remember what I’d been doing. I picked up my laptop and squinted at the screen. “It happened twenty-two years ago. A nineteen-year-old girl, an apprentice sorceress, went missing. This is her.”

I pointed to an ID-style photo of a young woman with a generous sprinkling of freckles over her nose and dark hair lightened with chunky blond streaks.

“The albino man was seen on security footage lurking around her workplace for a couple of weeks before she disappeared. He was named a suspect, but he disappeared before he could be identified or questioned.

“For this photo with Claude, the report says he was the last person the suspect spoke to before he vanished, but no one knew who he was either. There’s only one other piece of evidence: three days before she disappeared, the girl reported to her GM that a demon with wings had followed her from her guild.”

“A demon with wings?”

I nodded. “Seeing as a photo of Claude was taken shortly afterward, we can assume that demon was Nazhivēr.” I skimmed the case details again. “The girl’s guild had just begun to investigate the demon sighting when she went missing. None of the local contractors’ demons had wings, and the guilds’ only suspect dropped off the map the day after those photos were taken. They had no other leads.”

Unable to link the demon sighting with the suspect, the case had been flagged with “Demonica – Contractor” and “Demonica – Summoner,” which must have been why it’d ended up in Tori’s collection of files.

As I scrolled back up the webpage, my gaze caught on a note at the bottom of the case description. “‘Possible link to 97-5881 and 97-5770.’”

I opened two new tabs and pulled up those cases. “Two other missing women, a few months apart in the Portland area,” I muttered as I skimmed the details. “No suspects or demon sightings for these ones, but the circumstances were similar. The girls vanished on their way home from work, and they were Arcana mythics.”

The back of my neck prickled as I studied the women’s photos. Both so young, twenty and twenty-two, one with black hair in a pixie cut and one with brown hair styled into crimped curls. Neither ever seen again.

“No information on the albino man,” I said, an inexplicable bout of nerves tightening my gut. “Who knows if these are related to the first case?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.” Zylas stretched his legs out. “If the pale hh’ainun is īnkavis, he will kill over and over, many times.”

“If he’s what?”

“A killer who likes to give death.”

A serial killer, or the demon equivalent. If the albino sorcerer had killed three young women twenty-two years ago, was he still at it now?

I opened a new archive tab and searched for unsolved missing women cases in the Vancouver area within the last six months. Only a few hits appeared and they didn’t seem related. The women were neither young nor Arcana mythics.

“I’ll have to do more research, I guess,” I said gloomily, the prospect of reading up on murdered women holding little appeal. “But at least we know Claude and this sorcerer were up to no good twenty-two years ago. They must be up to something now too.”

Abandoning my laptop, I rose to my feet, stretched, and headed over to the kitchen, craving a sweet snack. Unfortunately, Zylas had eaten all the cookies ’n’ cream brownies I’d made yesterday—which was a shame, because they’d been delicious.

I investigated the fridge but found nothing appealing. As I closed it, I spotted a box tucked in the corner—chocolates Amalia had picked out for Zora. We’d decided to leave her flowers and a card instead, seeing as she might not be eating solid foods for a while, so the chocolates were fair game.

Feeling vaguely guilty, I ripped the plastic off.

“What is that?”

I jumped. Zylas stood behind me, looking over my shoulder.

“Chocolates,” I told him. “I’m having a snack.”

“Smells good.”

I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t even opened the box yet.”

Squeezing past him—and out of the corner where I couldn’t escape his hickory scent—I set the box on the breakfast bar and slid the lid off. Zylas hovered close as I lifted a card off the top, revealing the small delicacies underneath.

“Hnn.” He leaned over the counter. “So many?”

“They’re all different.” I referenced the card, which had a legend of flavors printed on the back, and selected an oval chocolate with a swirl on top. “This one has strawberry cream filling.”

He took it, eyes gleaming at the prospect of trying new food.

“You have to chew it,” I warned him. “All the flavor is in the middle.”

He popped it in his mouth and bit down. He gave it several chews before swallowing.

I arched my eyebrows. “Good?”

“Sweet. Good. These are all different?”

Giggling at his wondering tone, I checked the legend again. Hmm. Did I dare?

I did dare. Picking out a square one, I offered it to him. “Licorice caramel. Try it.”

He took the chocolate, peered at me suspiciously, then put it in his mouth. He chewed once, chewed again—

“Guh! Why did you give me this?”

I fought back a laugh. “Some people like licorice.”