Yet the terror in my victim’s eyes just now makes me realize I am the thing she branded me, a sinister shadow of myth and nightmare.
Reaper.
I cast one last glance at the basin, ensuring the staged scene looks convincing. Along with the trail of evidence I’ve strategically left in place, the scene has to tell a specific narrative. Seems this was always Eugene’s academic doom, such an insignificant death, barely an afterthought. Fitting, really. Just like his uninspired research.
Which is why he lashed out at Leo during the symposium, then attacked him in a resentful rage. Furious over being dismissed, easily replaced. His hack research stripped of funding.
I mean, someone has to serve as the scapegoat. Take the fall for the murder—quite literally, in Prescott’s case. Might as well be my research-stealing rival. Besides, I’m fairly certain he was the one feeding information to the Feds. He always did show a bit too much interest in my work, hovering too close, a little too skittish around me. But I’ll get confirmation on that soon enough.
I pick up my discarded astrolabe from the gritty earth, brushing away the sand. Lifting it to the clear sky, I align the sighting vane to that veiled pattern of stars—the hidden thirteenth constellation.
An ache burrows deep, and I instinctively touch my chest in mimicry of my little Serpent Bearer. Carrying her scar stitched of pain, just as the mythic healer bears the weight of a starry serpent, holding poison and remedy in eternal balance.
It’s an intriguing story, one I’m looking forward to sharing with her. Intimately.
I warned her one taste would never enough.
Now there’s something hungrier stirring with me, something darker that’s emerged.
And it’s insatiable.
Out of habit, my thumb sweeps the rule, its presence resonating like a familiar tune. Maybe Collins was right about how I made such a careless mistake, leaving the rule at a scene. Maybe it was cognitive decline, or maybe?—
Sometimes, you have to lose something important to find it again.
And you have to be willing to risk losing it forever.
Ninety-nine percent science, one percent magical thinking. Like wishing on a star—or an entire fucking ocean of them, all scattered like grains of sand across the cosmos. An infinite sea of possibilities, each collapsing until only one inevitable outcome remains.
I slip the astrolabe into my pocket next to the queen, a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. It’s the knight that takes the leap, the mate inevitable, to deliver the final blow.
My firefly called checkmate too soon. This is far from over.
With my course set, I start back toward the university.
A heavy silence infuses the facility as I ascend the spiral staircase. Before I reach the observatory dome, the distinct trace of Collins’s scent tightens my chest. A current of futile hope sparks, extinguished the moment I enter to see everything the same.
If she’d just stumbled in here before she left me bound to my bed with my own damn belt, things might’ve ended differently.
I look down, halting a few feet away from the gagged FBI agent shackled to my telescope pier. After a dismissive shrug, I sink my hand into my pocket and retrieve the capsule of smelling salts. Cracking it open, I wave it beneath his nose.
“But probably not,” I say, speaking my thoughts aloud as I toss the empty capsule aside. I rip the tape away from his mouth, then smack his cheek to further rouse him. “She seemed highly determined.”
He blinks a few times, his gaze slowly focusing on my face. “Where is she?” he demands, jerking weakly against the cuffs. “If you’ve hurt her?—”
“So you did come here for her.” I tilt my head, studying his dark eyes as I assess the truth there.
When I returned to the dark-sky preserve the next day to find the bodies removed, the entire site cleared of any trace of evidence, I questioned my goddamn sanity. It’s possible I cleaned up afterward in my spiraled state out of compulsive habit. Or even more alarming—that I’d never been there at all.
“How did you recognize me?” the agent asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Cops are pretty obvious to spot,” I say, resting my forearm over my knee.
During my speech at the symposium—the one I was giving in order to keep away from the woman bound in my observatory—I noticed this guy skulking through the crowd.
I left mid-speech, shadowing him to the observatory, my thoughts turning violent the closer he got to Collins. And when I found her missing…that violence erupted. After I slammed his head against the window, I dragged him to the pier. Making sure to check him—thoroughly this time—for anything capable of picking a lock before I gagged him, then sedated him heavily for good measure.
And then, when I retrieved his phone near the window, that’s where I watched it all play out between Collins and Leo. A perfect symmetry of violence and inevitability, her light dimming out.
