But none of my wonderings have prepared me for the man sitting behind the metal table, his wrists clad in cuffs secured to the floor, his white T-shirt tight against his well-sculpted upper body, tattoos clawing their way from underneath each sleeve and around his collar. And if the canvas of his body isn’t enough to grab my attention, then the startling blue of his eyes against his sleek dark hair is enough to command my gaze.
All my well-rehearsed composure has taken flight along with the flock of ravens tattooed down his left arm and hand.
A tremor runs through my body, and I hear a whooshing sound in my ears as I recall the day Valdemar Montresor shattered my life.
Had it been hours, minutes, or seconds before the news reached the media? I can’t remember, but I can still taste the bile that burned the back of my throat, the dread that threaded its way up my spine and wrapped its tendrils around my trachea. And then there was the pain—the blinding hot pain between my eyes that I blamed on a migraine as I stumbled around the newsroom of theAmontillado Gazette.
“This just in. The notorious Valdemar Montresor, head of the organisation the Raven Hands, has been arrested this evening on a suspected murder charge,” the well-groomed reporter announced on the flat-screen TV as behind her, the flashing lights of police cars and paparazzi cameras went off like a disco.
I was the gofer, covering the garbage they called news, like local man Johan Hermann trying to marry his dog or when The Gold Bug Coffee Shop started offering oat milk, and I was still trying to earn my wings as a serious reporter.
“Hold the fucking headline!” Captain hollered as he flew out of his office, a plume of cigar smoke following him despite the smoking restrictions in the building.
As he was our highly-strung editor-in-chief, who never appeared to leave the building, no one ever dared to challenge him on any accounts, such as the way he barked orders at us or the fact that he expected us to understand everything he said the first time he said it.
“What are we standing around for, people? Dupin, get your arse down there!” Captain glared at Dupin, his best reporter,who’d been halfway out the door, about to head home for the evening.
Dupin stared at the screen. “Where? Where the hell is this going down?”
We all glared at the lovely news reporter, urging her to tell us where she was reporting from.
My voice was faint at first, the stabbing pain between my eyes almost blinding me.
“It’s at the casino,” I said, my throat dry, my eyes burning.
“What did you say?” Dupin asked.
“Fortunato Casino. That’s where she is, where it’s happening.”
“How do you know?” Captain asked, his cigar wobbling between his lips.
If I said, “Because I felt the bullet, heard the shot, and sensed the terror,” they would look at me as if I were a madwoman, so instead, I replied, “Because my brother works there.”
Like all twins, we had a connection, an unwavering bond. And I’d known the exact minute he’d stopped breathing because I had stopped breathing as well.
Tearing my thoughts from the past, I challenge myself to look directly at the man who murdered my brother.
It’s so much worse than I imagined.
Searing, jarring pain rips through my heart, leaving me unable to move.
And if he, Valdemar Montresor, isn’t enough to stop the flow of oxygen around my body, I notice that he isn’t alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Seeingthe dead isn’t something you would wish for.
When I was younger, I didn’t think of it as anything more than my imagination or the norm; surely everyone sees them, right? But then I got older and quickly realised itwasn’tthe norm, that talking to your dead mother isn’t considered part of daily life. And there was a time when I wished I couldn’t see her. I just wanted to be like everyone else.
But then my brother died, and I lost someone who had never missed a single beat of a single day with me; after that, seeing the dead became all I desired.
It’s difficult to pinpoint when I began to see my mother. She died in childbirth; my brother and I took the very last air she breathed. Knowing that my first feat on this earth was to murder my own mother is something that haunts me still. I’ve always felt that it tarnished us and set us up on the path of things to come.
We didn’t miss her; it’s hard to miss someone you never knew.
I don’t remember the specific day I started seeing her. She was always appearing in her glimmering halo of light—but I do recall the first time I mentioned it to my father.
“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” my dad cooed from the corner of the sitting room as I twirled around in my new satin dress bought especially for Christmas Day.
