“Simon, you need to focus on getting your man released from prison. Nicholas is right, there should be enough evidence with the new body. Use the DKS legal team to get him in front of a judge.” I look to Killian. “You’re going to keep an eye on Ashbyjust in case.We absolutely cannot ignore what we know.”
“And what about you?” Killian asks, his thick arms crossing over his chest. He’s clearly not happy about me giving directions. “What the hell are you going to do?”
“Whoever left that last body was sending a message.”Intentional.“And I’m going to use every resource at my disposal to find out what it meant.”
25
Arianette
“For all ofyou still awake and still with me,” Hunter leans close to the mic like he’s talking to one person instead of thousands. “I know you feel it. Tonight is heavy in Forsyth, and we all know why. We lost another one. Kelsey Livingston. Nineteen.” A pause. Just long enough for the words to settle. “It doesn’t matter what territory she came from. Whoever is doing this crosses lines. South, West, East, North or the lands in between. We are all Forsyth. Especially in times like this.” He takes a drag on his cigarette, holding in the smoke for a moment before he releases it. “There’s a vigil tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. Campus fountain. Bring a candle if you’ve got one. Bring silence if you don’t. We’re not asking for justice tonight. We’re just asking to remember the name, the spirit, of a girl who never got to fully live.” He cues the next track, something with a slow and haunting bass line that feels like it’s crawling under my skin. “This is Royal Noir. Let the music carry what words can’t.”
The red light flicks off. He leans back in the worn leather chair and takes another drag of his cigarette, the cherry glowing bright in the dark. Ares is curled at his feet, and Hunter reaches down absentmindedly and scratches behind the dog’s ears. The dog leans into it, tail thumping once against the floor.
Hunter looks comfortable here. More than I’ve seen him anywhere else except that night at Noir Sanctum. Shoulders loose, eyes half-lidded, cigarette dangling between his fingers like it’s part of him. The radio station is his territory, the way the crypt is for some of the others. It’s private and controlled, a place where he decides what gets heard and what stays silent.
I roam the room while the song plays, feeling restless. Looking for anything to keep my mind off Kelsey, off the way her body was found next to the fountain, knees bent like she’d been praying, or worse, the beetles pouring from her open mouth in a black, skittering wave. I trace the edges of old posters taped to the wall: Sleep Token, Nine Inch Nails, Spiritbox, then trace the brightly lit buttons labelled with cryptic shorthand: “Emergency Kill Switch,” “Dead Air Fader,” “Mic Two Ghost.” There’s a note, scrawled in black marker:NO SMOKING IN THE BOOTH.
I lean back against a counter, hands curled around the edge, the hem of my skirt grazing the top of my thigh. Hunter’s eyes linger there for a long heartbeat, dark and unreadable.
“How did you get into this?” I ask suddenly, needing more than music to push the images from my brain.
“Get into what?”
“Radio.” I tilt my head toward the console. “Being a DJ.”
He sucks on the end of the cigarette, the tip glowing red. “I’d always been interested in the science behind it. The way electromagnetic waves carry sound across miles involves frequency modulation, amplitude, and the physics of propagation. No wires. No physical connection. Just energy moving through the air, invisible until it hits a receiver and turns back into something you can feel.”
He exhales smoke in a slow stream. “I actually built my own radio station in the shed behind my parents’ house when I was in middleschool. Low-power FM transmitter, scavenged parts from old stereos, antenna made out of coat hangers and copper wire. Broadcast to maybe three houses if the wind was right.”
“You did?”
“Worked too, until the FCC came and shut it down.” He takes another drag, then blows the smoke out in a long exhale. His eyes roam over my body again, inch by inch. “They showed up at the door, scaring the fuck out of my parents. That’s when my father started taking me to work with him. I think he thought it would keep me out of trouble.” A small, dry laugh. “Just led me to other things.”
The watching. The hiding. The desire.
A shiver runs down my spine.
The song fades out–echoing guitars trailing into silence. Hunter spins the chair away from me, cues the next track with a quick flick of his wrist, and adjusts a slider. The new song starts. He settles back, cigarette between his fingers, watching me over the console like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.
When the track settles into its groove, he spins the chair around to face me fully. He doesn’t say anything. Just watches. The red “ON AIR” light is off, but the air between us feels alive, humming with the same frequency as the signal he’s sending out into the night.
He’s on edge. We all are. The whole damn city.
“You were lonely,” I say.
He shrugs, exhaling smoke. “I kept busy.”
“I was lonely, too.” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Living in that Manor with nothing but my uncle and ghosts.”
There are no children.
The voice–deep, buried–whispers it again in my head, cold and certain. I shove it down.
“Tell me more about Ares. You said you found him here, last winter?” Tell me anything, I want to say, to keep my mind in the here and now, not lost in the bad things.
He smiles down at his dog, eyes softening. “Back in the alley.”
“You said he was skinny and scared. How did you get him to come to you?”
