“Is it someone we know?”
Silence.
“Quinn?”
Crickets.
“I respect your tenacity, but I’m very impatient. Perhaps some incentive will help speed this up.”
I nod to Papa, who downs his drink and disappears into the stacks. A moment later, he drags a chair from the shadows. Scull visibly blanches when he sees who’s in it.
I wasn’t sure before, but I am now; the lion truly has fallen for the lamb.
“Don’t worry, Casanova,” I croon, brandishing my butterfly knife and lightly skimming the blade up and down Quinn’s unmoving arm. “Your Henriette is fine. She took the chloroform like a champ.”
I feel Brontë tensing behind me. This is the second part he didn’t agree with, the first being when I stripped Quinn down and searched for a Leviathan brand that wasn’t there. Unlike him, I don’t take people at their word. Aside from waking up in her lab with a headache and no memory of getting a rag shoved over her face while she’d been working on reports, though, I’ve promised him no harm will come to her.
“Who’s dishing out orders?”
Scull’s bruised and bloody mouth remains shut.
“Let me rephrase.” My knife edges Quinn’s pulse. “Give me a name, or the next case to go cold in this city is a tragic murder-suicide of a corrupt cop and his whore.”
“Don’t,” he snarls, amber eyes blackening. “Don’t call her that.”
I grip Quinn’s curls and tug her head back, exposing her jugular to my blade—
“I don’t know! All right? I don’t fucking know who the orders come from. We’re as blind to each other as you are to us.”
“That’s literally impossible.”
“It’s not,” Brontë says, handing me Scull’s phone. “He’s been sending and receiving encrypted texts from several different numbers.”
“Burners?”
“Could be. Or fake numbers to conceal the real sender.”
“We’ll ping Emi. She’ll know what to do.”
Scull’s chuckle slashes through our whispers. “Good luck with that. I already tried tracking the source. You’re going to find nothing but a steel wall.”
“Forgive me for not trusting a word you say.” I adjust my grip on Quinn, scraping the blade over each delicate ridge of her throat. His glare tracks it the whole way down. “Next order of business: drop the hunt.”
“That’s not up to me.”
“How is it not? You're a Master. You command an entireguildof Acolytes and Magi.”
“They receive their own orders. I merely provide oversight to ensure proper execution.”
“Who are they, then?”
“I told you: I don’t know.”
I dig the knife deeper, breaking the skin as Scull roars—
Brontë grabs my wrist, ignoring my glower. “You invited the Volkovs back to Leviathan. I presume you were also invited to join their ranks at some point. How does that work, exactly? How does one become a member?”
Scull licks his split lip, his unhinged stare stitched to the bead of blood slipping down Quinn’s neck. “Candidates are selected at the discretion of each Master. Invitations must first be approved before sending.”
