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“You know nothing.”

Alcott flinches at his words. There it is a blade of words thrown because no enemy is near enough to bleed. I step between them and Edward shoves me. I let him, he needs something solid to hate.

“Stop,” I say.

“Move.”

“No.”

His broken hand curls.

“You want to hit someone?” I say. “Fine. Hit me. But do it once and then help us find her.”

His chest heaves. Alcott’s eyes shine with fury, the room balances on a knife and then Edward turns away, gripping his hair with both hands.

“I cannot hear her.” The words are so quiet I almost miss them.

Alcott goes still. I do too.

Edward’s shoulders shake. “I always heard her. Even when she was behind a curtain. Even when I did not know her face. I knew where she was in a room and knew when she entered. I knew—” His voice breaks. “I cannot hear her.”

Alcott’s anger visibly dies, he moves toward Edward slowly, as though approaching something wounded enough to bite. Edward does not pull away when Alcott places a hand on his shoulder. That is how I know he is truly afraid. I turn back to the board because witnessing them feels too intimate, and because if I stop moving, I will fall apart in less useful ways.

“Known routes,” I say, forcing my voice steady. “If he left the country, he would not use the main passenger docks. Too visible after the fire. He would use a private vessel or a cargo hold under false manifest.”

Alcott exhales. “South docks, then.”

“Or river first, then transfer.”

Edward turns back, his eyes are red. Face ruined, but he is listening.

Good.

“Who controls the south docks?” he asks.

I pin another name to the board. “Three men. One dead. One missing. One very fond of gambling debts.”

Alcott’s mouth thins. “Useful.”

Edward steps closer to the wall, and I watch his gaze move across the thread. He is trying to become a weapon again, trying to put shape around terror. I understand the feeling. It is what I have been doing for forty-eight hours. I pick up a photograph of Olive from La Sirene, the one Elisa had given to me with shaking hands. Olive stands onstage in black lace, chin lifted, cane in hand, looking every inch the woman foolish men mistake for prey.

I pin it beneath her name and I hear Edward’s breath catch in his throat.

“I am not making her a corpse,” I say before he can speak. My fingers linger on the edge of the photograph. “I am making her impossible to lose.”

No one answers. The fire crackles low in the hearth, rain taps the windows and the old manor seems to listen. I lift another length of red thread and tie it to the pin beneath Olive’s name. Then to The Collector, to the docks, each port where monsters buy silence. The board grows and so does the shape of my obsession. I thought I had been obsessed before, with Delphi, with Jack, and with justice. I had known nothing for this is different. This is a living woman somewhere in the dark, taken because we failed to see the hand at her mouth. This is my Olive, our Olive. Olive, who saw the worst rooms in that manor and wanted to save every innocent soul trapped inside them. Olive, who I lured to a ball because I wanted one evening when she was not hunting a monster and now a monster has her. The thought hollows me out, then fills me with something worse. I press my palm flat against the board.

“We are going to find you,” I whisper.

Edward closes his eyes as Alcott lowers his head and I do not care if they hear me. I speak to her, to the photograph. To whatever gods remain willing to look at men like us.

“We are going to find you, darling Widow.” My voice roughens. “And when we do, I am going to build you a new murder board.”

I smile, but there is nothing pleasant in it. “One with the name of every man who’s touched this web. Every port. Every estate. Every banker. Every lord. Every smiling guest who believed a mask made him untouchable.”

The board blurs. I blink once, hard. “We will give you the world in red string and let you decide where to cut first.”

Edward steps beside me as does Alcott. Three shadows before a wall of names, us three men with no sleep, no mercy, and no woman to keep them from becoming their worst selves. Good. Let us become them. For her. For Olive. For every locked room, every child no one heard, every woman who disappeared between a ledger. I drive one final pin into the board. The sound is small, but the promise is not.