“She said she stole it from Crowley.”
Legend laughs once, a single hard bark of disbelief.“Crowley never let that key out of his sight.She had to get close.Too close.”
“She’s not lying.”
“She’s always lying, Royal!”Legend slams his palm onto the table, maps jumping.“You lock her, and she slips out like a snake.You think that ain’t manipulation?You think she didn’t want you to follow?”
“Maybe she did.”My voice drops.“But what she showed me wasn’t a setup.”
Legend narrows his eyes.“How do you know?What did she show you?”
I reach into my cut pocket and pull out the scrap of fabric, pink, glittery, stiff where dried blood soaked in.I drop it on the table between us.
Legend stares at it.At first he doesn’t move.Then he does.Just one step back, slow, as if giving the cloth room to breathe.
“Where’d you find that?”he says, his eyes wide.
“Basement wall,” I answer.“Behind the shelving.Looked like it got torn off someone when they were dragged.”
Legend’s throat works.“Dragged.”
“Yeah.”
He reaches out, touches the glitter with two fingers, hesitates, then snatches his hand back like it burned him.
“That’s Marlena’s,” he says.
“Thought so.”
His shoulders rise, fall, rise again as he tries to get a breath past the fury expanding in his chest.
He grabs the fabric in a tight fist.“You’re telling me that girl found proof of one of our missing women right where she led you?”
“She didn’t find it,” I shoot back.“She’s been in that basement before.But I found it.”
He growls.“Royal, she’s Crowley’s daughter.She was raised in those goddamn walls.She was groomed to protect his secrets.”
I step toward him.“Or she was groomed to hide her own.”
Legend looks at me like he wants to shake sense into the both of us.
“You should’ve told me the second she got out,” he says.“I could’ve…”
“She was with me,” I cut in.“The whole time.I put her back.”
“That ain’t the point.”
“No,” I agree.“The point is this.Whatever Crowley was doing down there?It wasn’t just sermons and punishment rooms.Girls didn’t disappear into thin air.They were taken.And Becki’s the only reason we even found this shit.”
Legend looks at the glitter like it’s a confession.
“You trust her,” he accuses.
“I don’t trustanyone,” I snap.
He studies me again, quiet now, dangerous.“But you believe her.”
“Yeah,” I say.“I do.About this.”
