On the mantel, the recorder blinked up at him with its steady red eye. He clicked it off, sliding it into his pocket. From his position by the fireplace, he could see now that the puddle of black extended behind the couch. He followed the trail as it turned from tacky footprints to errant spatters, leading out from the room’s polished crux and into the first stack of shelves.
He came upon Isaac Shaw just around the first corner. The reporter knelt on the floor in a pile of books, his jaw slack, his forearm gouged open. His chest gave a violent hitch as he raked at the laceration.
“It was her,” he cried, digging two gore-flecked fingers down to the yellow fat of his arm. “It washer.”
A sound behind Thomas made him freeze. Slowly, he turned.
Vivienne stood frozen at the mouth of the stacks, her mouth thin and flat, her stare vacant. Something in the way she stood—as limp as a doll, her head lolling to the side—sent an ice-cold shiver down his spine.
“Vivienne,” he said. “Vivienne, hey.”
Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. A horrible awareness stole across her features. Her hands flew over her face and she staggered back, cracking into the nearest shelf hard enough to send several books tumbling to the floor.
Dread pooled in his stomach as understanding took shape.
“Vivienne,” he said, softer than before. “Look at me.”
“It was her,” cried Shaw. “It was her.”
Thomas ignored him, reaching for Vivienne’s wrists and prying her hands from her face. He was met with a fractured stare, eyes clustered with pupils like black honeycomb.
“Holyshit,” he breathed.
She flinched back like a struck animal, tearing herself out of his grasp. And then, just like that, she was running. The swell of her skirt turned her nebulous in the moonlight as she darted out from the shelves, there and then gone before he could catch her.
On the floor, Isaac Shaw continued to claw himself open. “It’s under my skin,” he babbled. “It’s in my head. It’s—it’s scratch—it’s scratching at my skull. You have to get it. You have to help. You have toGET IT OUT.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Thomas. “I have to— I’ll send help.”
He took off running after Vivienne, tailed by the pained keening of the reporter. Skidding to a stop before the door, he tore it open and veered out into the hall. He made it around the first bend before slamming directly into a figure exiting an adjacent room. Reed Connolly reared instinctively back, his expression quizzical.
“Is that …blood?”
“Where is she?” Thomas seethed, snatching him by the shirtfront. “I know you saw her.”
“Hands off the suit, you psychopath.” Reed worked himself free with an elbow. “Jesus, what the hell is your problem?”
“Answer the question.”
“Who are we looking for? Vivienne? Isn’t it, like, your singular job to keep track of her?”
“Don’t screw with me. What the hell are you even doing here?”
“He’s with me” came a third voice. Thomas whipped around to find Hudson Turner propped in the same door Reed had just exited, the buttons undone on his paisley jacket and his tie askew. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Thomas swiped at his brow. His hand left a behind tacky smear. Blood, not his own. He stared down at his hands and found them red and reeking. His stomach turned over.
“Walsh,”snapped Hudson, not for the first time. “Speak.”
“You should call an ambulance,” he said dully. “There’s been an accident in your library.”
“What kind of accident?” demanded Hudson as Reed went visibly pale. Thomas didn’t stick around to explain. He took off down the hall, Hudson’s voice bounding after him as he fell into a jog. “Walsh!What kind of accident?”
He made his way through the crowded warren of the Turner mansion, his unease deepening with each passing minute. Out in the courtyard, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. It dripped off the trees, gathering in the abandoned champagne flutes in shallow pools. He stood under the cover of an overhang and debated his next move.
If he couldn’t find her, then what?
Lightning flickered in the distance, turning the glass polyhedral of the pool house diamond bright. He made his way toward it on a whim, following the winding flagstone of a garden path. The heat had broken during the storm, and the air was substantially cooler. It chilled the sweat against his skin as he passed beneath the bowed heads of ornamental grasses.
