“This was Margot’s last post,” Emi says softly. “Uploaded the morning she went missing.”
“Margot didn’t go missing.” Dantë drops the papers with a heavythump.“Sheran.”
Emi closes her laptop and clasps her hands, holding his hellfire glare as if it doesn’t burn. “Why would she run?”
For a full minute, Dantë has nothing to say. Emi looks at me, but I busy myself with brewing a fresh pot of coffee while my brother considers how deep a grave to dig. Then: “Because I didn’t tell her about my”—a darting glance to me—“ourpast until after I proposed. She was…afraid.”
“Of?”
“What we did to survive.”
“Survive what?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“With all due respect,” Dantë growls with zero courtesy, “it’s none of your fucking business.”
This time, Emi falls silent, backing away from the line in the sand. I can already see her forming theories. Theories she’ll undoubtedly share with a certain little devil mercilessly hunting down the Volkovs, two of which have proven to be working with the anonymous saboteur behind the fall of her empire. My brother’s gatekeeping is born of self-preservation, but the last thing we need is to be placed on the suspect list or worse—mistaken for spies.
“Our past is ugly,mon amie,” I say, handing her a steaming mug, “riddled with enough demons to send any topsider like Margot running.”
Emi nods with a level of understanding only another survivor of the underworld’s darkest pits would possess. “There’s another explanation for Margot’s digital absence. You’re not going to like it, though.”
The ensuing silence is a guillotine, the implication slicing through the air.
“No.” Dantë shakes his head in immediate denial. “I’d know if Margot was dead.”
The sun sinks behind the clouds, the shadows growing long. None of us say it, but he wouldn’t know. That gut feeling brought on by the death of a loved one is romanticized in fiction. In reality, there is no such cosmic warning. Margot could’ve been dead all this time, and he would’ve been none the wiser.
Emi sets down her untouched coffee. “I’m sorry, Dantë. I’ve done all I can.”
He doesn’t answer. His stare is frozen on the pile of papers that may as well be a mountain of bones.
“Merci,” I say, escorting Emi out the front door.
When I return, the papers are in the trash, and my brother is sitting on the sand outside, watching dusk roll over the sea like he once didevery night with the woman of his dreams. Without closure, he’ll be staring at that sunset forever.
Never moving on.
Turning from the windows, I pluck the papers from the trash and head downstairs to the studio. Vladimir Volkov’s hide is finally dry and ready to be wrapped around Oscar Wilde’sThe Picture of Dorian Gray.The custom order came in on the same night of his death, and he seemed vain enough to earn the honor of eternally embracing a narcissist’s tale.
There’s a mark on the skin that I must’ve missed during the psychedelic haze of flaying the organ from his bones. My thumb skims over the scar—no,brand.Angling the slab in the dim light, I decipher the raised outline of a demonic skull, horned and fanged.
The memory of a matching symbol flashes behind my eyes in the form of graffiti on the brick building beside Beelzebub’s. With it, fractured pieces of my past skip through my skull like stones tossed over water. I focus on my surroundings, refusing to be lured beneath the surface.
I know this symbol. It still haunts my nightmares.
Dropping the slab, I fish my phone from my pocket and dial Poppy. Her phone must be synced with her bike, which sends an automatic reply saying she’s busy driving.
“Putain,” I hiss, snapping a photo of the symbol and texting it to her before dialing another number.
Emi picks up on the first ring. “Brontë? What’s—”
“Where’s Poppy?”
“Oh, uh…I think she’s on her way to Indigo. It’s a local tattoo parlor that doubles as a bar.”
