James pulls it free and pockets it, eyeing me with a smirk. “Jealous of my new tricks?”
I open my mouth to tell him no. But I am a little bit jealous, goddamn it.
As quietly as they can, his shadows lift the door for us. It rolls up on its track with a groan of rusted bearings that makes me wince, the sound echoing through the hangar's interior like an announcement.
So much for stealth.
James looks at me, and there’s that grin again, so much darker than it used to be. "After ye, Detective."
I raise my service weapon, a flashlight mounted beneath the barrel, the beam cutting a white cone through the darkness.
I step inside. The hangar is cavernous, with high ceilings, a concrete floor stretching fifty yards in every direction, and support columns at regular intervals casting long shadows in the red glow of an exit light mounted near the far wall.
The red light washes a section of the hangar in crimson, including a folding table positioned twenty yards in. A brighter glow comes from something on the table, but I can’t see what yet. Even with my flashlight, I can’t see much.
James enters behind me and then shuts the door behind him, casting even more darkness over the hangar.
I head toward the table.
And then I see her.
Sera.
Lying on her side with her knees drawn up, her black hair fanned across the concrete like a dark halo.
She's not moving.
I sprint toward her, my heart in my throat.
I fall to my knees by her side and shine my flashlight on her, my fingers seeking any sign of life.
Her breathing is faint and shallow. Her lips are cracked. Her skin is pale. Fresh cuts mark her arms, her shoulders, precise lines that I recognize from every crime scene photo in my files.
And her fingernails are painted red.
The sight of that color on her hands hits me hard, like a blow to the chest that siphons the air from my lungs.
He put his finishing touch on her like she was already done, already his, already a completed work in his gallery of revealed truths.
All that’s left is her death, which can’t be long from now, and then the final pose he arranges all his victims in.
Several feet behind me, James makes a low, guttural sound. The sound a dog makes before it tears out a throat.
I realize then why he’s so far back. I’m kneeling on The Seal of Dissolution, which is carved into the concrete floor in the center of the hangar, smaller than the one in Sera's basement, but unmistakable. At each point are the words I know by heart now. And in the center, her true name.
PENELOPE.
"Sera." I keep my voice low, steady. "Sera, can you hear me?"
Her eyelids flutter. Her lips move without sound.
Then, from everywhere and nowhere, from the shadows pooling in every corner, from the darkness clinging to the ceiling, from the cold air itself, a voice.
A voice full of a fury that makes the concrete vibrate beneath my knees.
"HE’S HERE."
I snap upright and ready my gun.
