He blinked out of existence and then, in the span of a breath, reappeared with Merri’s hairbrush and a pair of lace panties.
Without a word, I snatched the panties from him and shoved them into my pocket. “You’re not giving these to Christian.”
“Dude. Finders keepers. By rights, those should be in my pocket.”
“You wanna try and take them from me?” It might have been a playful challenge, if not for the tremor that shook the floor hard enough to crack the marble beneath us.
Sin held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Brush it is.”
“You’re going to fucking pay to repair that,” Malice growled at me.
“Put it on my tab.”
We filed out of the door, our current goal giving us purpose and, frankly, a sense of control I knew we desperately needed. If we had a next step, it meant there was still a chance of finding her. Of getting her back.
The part that worried me, though I refused to admit it aloud, was what happened when we ran out of steps. The horsemen with a purpose were terrifying. But when all hope was gone? When there was nothing left to lose? I didn’t think anyone wanted to be around if that eventuality came to pass.
In moments that felt like years, we found ourselves standing outside the groundskeeper’s modest cottage. I’d never darkened his doorstep for a multitude of reasons. Chief among them, I had no need to interact with him beyond what was unavoidable. I wasn’t what you’d call a people person.
“Why isn’t he answering?” I grumbled.
Malice frowned. “He was in his garden a while ago.”
“Maybe he’s taking a shit,” Sin offered.
We all glared at him.
“What? Humans do that. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“So was the shower,” I muttered.
“Wrong,” Sin said with a smile that made me want to punch him. “We’d hear the water running. Unless he was destroying the toilet, a shit would be mostly silent.”
“Your brain is an exhausting place to exist, isn’t it?” Mal asked.
“Nope. It’s very exciting. Just ask—” The light dimmed in Sin’s expression as he swallowed back the rest of what he was going to say.
Merri.
For a second, everything felt normal, but just that fast, we all remembered what we were doing here.
“Fuck this,” Grim said, shoulder-checking the door and stepping inside.
His body stiffened not two feet past the threshold, the shift in his energy filling the small space. I knew what I’d find before Grim stepped to the side simply based on his countenance.
He confirmed it not even a second later. “He’s dead.”
Yes. Dead was the only explanation for the husk on the floor in the middle of the small living room. Christian’s face was locked in a scream of horror, eyes bulging, cheeks sunken, mouth opened impossibly wide due to the way his lips had receded.
“What the fuck happened to him?” Mal asked, approaching the corpse slowly. “I just spoke to him less than an hour ago.”
“Well, it’s safe to say he didn’t die of natural causes.” Sin nudged what was left of Christian with the toe of his boot. “He had every ounce of his life force sucked out of him.”
I moved closer and crouched down, recognition dawning as Sin’s earlier words landed. “It was Merri.”
“No. She wouldn’t do that,” Sin protested.
“Who the fuck else can suck souls out of bodies? We already established that no one else entered the wards, so that leaves you and Merri. That’s it. Didyoukill him?”
