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Do I? After all these deaths…

It is not on you, Kat said.

I wrapped my arms around Ryden tighter.

“Hold me. Just hold me. Please.”

Before Ryden, I had always been the one holding myself together. I had to worry, plan, and plot all by myself. But not anymore.

I wasn’t alone anymore.

“Always.”

His hands were safe and solid as they tightened around me, drawing me closer with a sigh that sounded almost desperate. As though he wished to bury me deep within his soul, where no one else could ever reach me, where no one could ever hurt me.

I wanted it too—to lose myself entirely in him until he was the only one who could ever find me.

But I couldn’t disappear. Not yet.

As much as I craved that escape, I had to stay right here, in this moment.

Too much remained unfinished. I couldn’t let it end this way.

I ran my hand up his skin, feeling his heart thundering beneath my palm. He was warm, solid, mine. REAL.

It was so easy to forget everything and think only of him when he was with me. It was easy to forget the bloodthirsty side of me—the one that hungered for power and death.

But now was not the time for that.

Maybe one day this need inside me would fade. Or maybe it never would.

It didn’t matter. I had to hold on until we found The Strangler.

He had to pay for every life he had taken.

“Let’s go find the next clue,” Ryden said, taking my hand in his as we walked out of the room and into the hall. I stopped by the door with a sigh, shaking my head at Ryden.

“Put on a shirt, will you? The sisters might faint from… all that heat,” I teased, opening the door. Ryden grinned, grabbing a shirt that had been discarded on the couch.

He pulled it on and walked out, locking the door behind us.

He climbed into the passenger seat as I paused outside, checking my phone one last time.

No new messages.

I typed one for him.

What do you want now?

It sat there, undelivered.

We were silent as we walked into the orphanage. It looked different—I had never been back after I left. This place held good memories, but unfortunately the bad memories overshadowed them.

I moved out as soon as I turned eighteen and never looked back.

“We would like to meet Sister Mary Elizabeth,” Ryden said.

“Mr. Sinclair,” the woman at the desk said with a smile. “Did you write your story?”