“Hai.As you wish.”
Rin ushers us out. Poppy is under my arm, her movements robotic. Her stare is on the floor, baby blues dim as dead flower petals. I fear she’s dissociating, possibly spiraling into a panic attack.
But when I drape her jacket over her shoulders, she shrugs me off, grumbling, “Don’t touch me.”
There she is.Breathing a quiet, relieved sigh, I murmur, “I was only trying to help.”
“You have my thanks for that and saying what you did earlier and comforting me in there, but we’re done. No more bargains. No more pretending to be friends. The termination of our partnership is effective immediately.”
Regret seeps into my bones. I shouldn’t have agreed to never seeing her again, but I was pissed at Quinn and pissed at myself for not having guessed her involvement sooner. Most of all, I was pissed at how Poppy and I last left things between us.
“Can we—” I start.
“Done means done, Brontë. Bury your words in a grave where they belong.”
My mouth shuts in surrender, and I cast a final backward glance at Scull. He downs his wine in a single gulp, saluting me with his empty glass. A motion conveying our mutual understanding. I have as much dirt on him as he does on me. Neither of us are interested in orange jumpsuits and silver bracelets for the rest of our lives.
As the library doors close, I spy Alexander and Rin sharing a look of unmistakable, undiluted relief.
Clarity chases the wrath from my veins. They didn’t mean a word they said about their daughter being a failure. They benched her to protect her from what comes next:
Leviathan’s guillotine.
BLACK HOLE
Poppy
There’s a reason I don’t sell mysteries in my café: I’d much rather shoot or slice straight to the answers.
Yet here I am. Trying to solve the biggest mystery of my life while skulking through the woods toward an abandoned cemetery. Carrying Nikolai’s Leviathan mask in one hand, the coordinates from the invitation that came with it loaded on my phone in the other. Jezebel creeps beside me, her big black paws silent on the snow.
Night kisses the sun to sleep, bathing the underbrush in bruised black and blues. Brisk air fills my nostrils with the smell of crisp pine and dead leaves. Above the canopy of tall oaks and towering evergreens, lightning whips the black clouds into a spiraling frenzy. Distant thunder bellows a war cry, threatening to unleash winter’s fury. It feels like a warning, the universe roaring at me to turn around and go back home.
But I can’t.
Iwon’t.
The coordinates on Nik’s invitation to join Leviathan’s ranks are the only lead I have left. Am I a fool for refusing to respect my parents’ wishes for me to keep my distance from Leviathan? Undecided. Their precious detective hasn’t found anything more on Quinn. Brontë reported several run-ins with her at work. Each time, she’s acted asif nothing is amiss. I told him to back off, refrain from showing our hand. As far as I know, he’s listened.
Dread eats at my insides like a parasite, though, as I wait for Brontë to either go missing or get killed. Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, banishing the memory of Fiona’s mangled corpse before my mind can replace her with him.
We trek along an overgrown path, my cell’s flashlight illuminating a wrought iron gate ahead. I halt, reading the rusted script:
ST. AURELIUS’S CEMETERY
The same saint whose academy is stained with Leviathan’s footprint.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I mutter, breath curling in the cold as I dial the only person I have left to call. “What can you find on the surname ‘Aurelius'?”
Emi’s keyboard sings my favorite tune as I push through the gate. Jezebel slinks ahead, sniffing the gravestones. The cemetery is a labyrinth of tombstones and mausoleums guarded by statues of snarling gargoyles and weeping angels with broken wings. I canfeeltheir eyes on me, tracking my every step.
“Aurelius, a Latin-derived surname originating from a noble family in Ancient Rome,” Emi relays. “Felix Aurelius, the founder of St. Aurelius’s Liberal Arts in the late sixteen-hundreds, was born in the only American family with that surname. He was burned for heresy after he was supposedly found spearheading a secret society with a select few students who were mistaken for a coven of satanic witches. They were hung around his pyre after being forced to watch him burn. Felix was later elevated to saint status due to his work at the academy having been one of the first to explore teachings of unorthodox religious doctrines.”
Founder of an academy. Head of a secret society. Professor of unconventional theologies. All during the witch trials.
Was St. Aurelius thefatherof Leviathan?
“Who were the students?”
