No, Jo tried to force her mind to begin to work again, to shake off the grief and start moving forward anew.Dismantled properly. . .Do you think I’m different than any of you?She’d phrased the latter as a question, not a statement. And the former . . . the former was an idea all its own. Pan was hiding something: she so clearly knew more about the Society than she was letting on. But opportunities to talk one-on-one with Pan in any productive way seemed about one in a million. Still, Jo filed away the knowledge.
And of course, Pan had no idea when to stop. “Really, my power is boring too. Just—” Pan snapped her fingers “ —poof! One of you is dead! Snow has magic and problem solved!” She sank back into her chair with a huff. “That’s no fun to watch.”
Maybe Pan was one of them, maybe not, the jury was still out. But even if she was, Jo would most certainly still hate her. She’d sort through everything else when her emotions weren’t making every attempt to get the better of her. She leveled her eyes with the ice-cream haired woman. “Don’t speak about us like we’re cattle.”
“Then act smarter than cattle, and work on this next wish, so none of you have to die.” Pan smiled.You, notus, Jo noted; Pan didn’t see herself at any risk. “Or you can just break everything and see how that turns out. It’s not like I really carethatmuch.”
“All right, enough.” Snow finally joined in, far too late. “That’s enough,” he said, quieter. The man shook his head and straightened. He’d been hunched over, chin nearly against his chest.
Though his gaze seemed to hold far less intimidation and power than usual, he looked each one of them in the eyes. At Eslar who now sat under the arm Samson had slung around his shoulders. At Wayne, who seemed ready to blow his top in anger, or collapse into tears. At Takako, who out of all of them, still met their leader with a searching, almost trusting expression, as though she were still waiting for orders.
And then, finally, at Jo.
“I don’t care if you all get along.” She didn’t know why he seemed to be speaking only to her. “But this changes nothing. You must still grant wishes. Our focus should be on that, and that alone.” He pressed his fingers into the table and it rippled to light with magic. Images began to float, taking shape from the ether, but Jo focused solely on Snow.
Live as a slave to wishes, or die for them—that was his message. Jo’s hand balled into a fist. She refused to believe their eternity was perpetually linked to such an unforgivable ultimatum; there had to be a third way out. And she wasn’t going to let them see the end of this wish before she found it. She didn’t care if—How did Pan put it?She had todismantle everythingto get to it.
Chapter 3
The Bone Carver
The next couple of minutes seemed to drift by at half speed.
Jo watched in a sort of numb daze as Snow continued to bring to life an array of images. His motions were disjointed, robotic. Jo tilted her head, trying to make sense of them, though he seemed to be having as hard of a time as she was. It was as if he were moving on autopilot or, perhaps more aptly, like a puppet with invisible strings.
He finally stilled and, for a long moment, he didn’t speak. Then, as if steeling himself, he took a breath and sifted through the images until one illuminated and expanded, taking up the majority of the space in front of their faces.
The image was of a human bone, that much was obvious by its size and shape—likely a femur, Jo thought—and Snow’s demeanor. But the unnerving quality of the stark photograph wasn’t so much in its subject matter. It wasn’t in the way the bone was bleached and cleaned so completely that it no longer looked like it belonged to a body it all.
No, what made this unique was the jagged lines carved deep—so deep that delicate pinkish marrow was visible in their grooves. Upon closer inspection, it became obvious that they were numbers which, at first glance, appeared random.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Wayne mumbled. “Some kind of code?”
You could call it that.Jo kept her thoughts to herself for now. It was asortof code, she supposed, one of the oldest: binary.
“A string of murders have been plaguing United North America,” Snow began.
Jo studied not the bone and its odd markings, butaroundit for the first time. The bone glistened with moisture, no doubt deposited from the snow that had been pushed aside and piled around the rocky cement where the bone lay. Snow—real snow, not the man standing at the head of the table—inches thick and perfectly white. She’d seen pictures of the harsh winters in the UNA, heard the gloating from Texans about never having to worry about anything so brisk, but she’d never experienced it herself.
“Just a nickel minute here, big cheese,” Wayne interrupted. “You’re telling us that this . . . this is . . .” He’d started off strong, but the words faded into nothingness. A truth they had all figured out, but did not want to recognize.
“This is the work of what’s being identified as a serial killer. They’re calling him the Bone Carver.” Snow’s voice was as icy as his namesake. “This is his calling card.”
Jo felt herself leaning forward in her seat, despite the way her hand settled with her fingertips pressing indents into her lips in a shaky line. By all logic, it was grotesque and horrific, yet her brain seemed to short-circuit when it came to thinking of anything logically. It was beyond terrible. It was as if it were too wretched for her to comprehend. Here was a bone—a human bone—cleaned, bleached, and neatly prepared by some murderer. It was grotesque and horrific and Jo didn’t quite know how to process it. The effect was so disjointing that it was as if someone else was looking at it, not her.
When Jo could tear her eyes away, she could tell by just one look at everyone’s faces that she wasn’t alone. Even Snow seemed at a momentary loss. Whatever he had to say next would be even worse; it was better to rip it off all at once, get it done with, like a bandage.
“The Bone Carver has an appreciation for binary.” She finally shared her observation with the room, an addition that seemed to spur Snow back to life.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat with a soft cough. “The methodology has been consistent enough that law enforcement and government agencies have deemed it the work of a bona fide serial killer rather than a string of unconnected or copycat events.” As he talked, Snow sifted through image upon image, dragging up medical reports and news broadcasts of the crime scenes, the arrest that failed to meet criteria for conviction, thevictims. Jo’s stomach dropped, the atmosphere settling into something too grim for their already wounded attitudes to handle.
These weren’t the sort of images the news played. These were the sort of images you found circulating in the dark web and then promptly wished you hadn’t. They were tagged neatly with file numbers and evidence serials. A few lines of clerical information written on a photograph had never contained so much.
Still, Snow went on, enlarging one of the still-running videos.
A newscaster spoke directly into the cameras. “Law enforcement officials now believe that the killer has connections to the Artificial Care Act movement. The latest calling card left by the Bone Carver contains the coordinates to one of N.A.I.S., Inc—”
“What’s N.A.I.S., Inc?” Takako interjected. The video paused magically the second she spoke.
