Page 86 of Villains Never Die

“What’s that?” I said to no one in particular.

Rook crouched down to look at it and swiped some of it up on his fingertip.

“Don’t touch it!”

He rolled his eyes and brought it to his nose. “Some kind of accelerant and…a weird smell. I don’t know what it is.” He extended the finger to me, like I was supposed to sniff the mystery residue from the floor.

“I’ll take your word for it.” I motioned over someone from security and pointed to the residue as Rook wiped it on his wet pants. “Take a sample of that and find out what it is,” I said.

“We should get out of here.” Rook turned to me, his face grave.

“I can’t. I have to make sure this mess gets cleaned up.” Something else Gray would have done. The weight of all the ways he helped me was almost as heavy as his death, and suddenly I felt much more alone than I had five minutes ago.

“They’ll clean up the mess. That’s what you pay them for.” He touched my elbow, just briefly enough to get me to look at him. “Go home and get cleaned up. I’ll text you tomorrow.”

I nodded, and after a few minutes of instructing my staff, I did as he asked. When we were outside, he pulled me into the shadows and kissed me. “Be careful. Please. I don’t care that you’re borderline invincible. It won’t stop the killer from taking another one of those lives, and I…don’t like the idea of you dying. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

His tongue slid along my lower lip, then danced with mine before he shoved me back into the light to meet my driver. He didn’t say goodbye, and being alone in the penthouse that night was agony.

I sat by myself in bed, reading the email report on the warehouse from Owen. The fire had swallowed the building quickly, aided by magic that consumed three of the four walls in minutes. Gray must have been trapped. The report also included that he’d died from smoke inhalation, but I knew that already from kneeling next to his unburned body. The damage to my inventory was worse than I imagined—two thirds wasdestroyed, utterly unusable. Books and dark artifacts, expensive jewelry and taboo trinkets. All gone. The hit my business would take financially made my stomach turn in front of my computer screen.

That’s why the masked man was in my club tonight. He wanted to rub it in my face that he’d destroyed a large part of my livelihood. He wanted me to know how easy it was to take from me.

I wished Rook were here to tell me not to freak out about it, to help me breathe through the rage, disappointment, and despair. But there was no one with a level head to help me process it all, no one to hold me so that I would sleep in spite of it.

A sleepless night meant today turned into tomorrow with no rest in between, no pause to get my bearings, and tomorrow there were so many things to do.

Chapter Thirty-One

The morning started with a text to Wesley Lake, full of exhaustion-induced typos the first time, until I went back and revised it.

I hope you are safe after the incident last night.

Wesley: I am. Thank you for checking in. Is there much damage at Avalon?

Nothing my men can’t clean up in a day.

Wesley: Good. There’s another Council meeting coming up. I’d like to invite you to attend. Graves and I will be talking about his counter legislation to combat the killings.

I’ll be there.

The killings. I scoffed as I reread his text message. I supposed speaking about them in front of an audience made fewer people realize he was the one committing them. He seemed more than willing to murder his way into a position on the Council; I was sure of it now.

At noon, another email from Owen appeared in my inbox.

The accelerant at the gala was methanol. It was mixed with copper chloride, which was what made the flames so blue. Someone was going for drama.

Of course he was. He wanted me to notice him. I cursed the involuntary shudder that licked my spine. I would not be made to fear Wesley. He’d killed Gray, and he would soon learn just how fearless I was.

No text message came from Rook. I checked my phone a hundred times to make sure I hadn’t missed it, and considered texting him first half that many. Last night he’d toasted to surprises, which I was certain meant me—meantus—and now he was avoiding me. Perhaps what I’d told him in his bedroom had less luster without the buzz of champagne.

Love was a distraction for those with no ambition.

Perhaps he had more ambition than I thought.

***