Page 50 of Nico

Inside the envelope sat a small orc pin from Shadowfall merchandise. “That pin’s limited edition, expensive,” Nico commented, sounding unhappy.

I looked at Logan. "This must be for you. At least, it doesn’t seem tampered with.”

Nico was strangely silent, and I was a little alarmed by how pale he suddenly looked.

"Nico? You good?” I asked. “Feeling unwell?”

I reached out, touching his forehead, but he grabbed my arm and shook his head.

"No, this isn’t good at all.”

"What do you mean?" I asked

"The stalker always refers to Logan as Ailwyn, the Elf King,” Nico explained.

Nico pulled out his phone, and showed Logan and I screenshots, forum posts, and comments. Nico was right.

The stalker always connected Logan to the Elf King. He looked back at the card in my hand.

"My hero, the orc king,” Nico murmured. “That’s Ailwyn’s nemesis.”

I frowned, processing what Nico had just said.

“So what does this mean?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out," Nico reassured me.

11

NICO

There was a note on the windshield of Isaac's truck addressed to the Orc King again.

With it was a single long-stemmed daisy, tucked beneath the windshield wiper, the stem carefully folded around the edge so it wouldn't blow away.

I took them to the Pecan Pines police station and had the note analyzed alongside the previous letters Logan had received.

And just like before, there was nothing conclusive.

I went back to digging through the forums and blogs. This time, I paid particular attention to the photographs people had been leaking from the set. Earlier, the pictures had almost always focused on Logan.

Lately, though, that had changed. Isaac was appearing in more and more of the photographs.

Sometimes he was in the background, standing beside Logan. Other times, it was obvious the photographer had made an effort to include him in the frame.

I started going through the posts and tracing the accounts that had uploaded them. The usernames themselves didn't tell me much.

Most were variations of elf character names, which wasn't unusual given how popular the elf class was in the game.

On the surface, the accounts looked completely unrelated. Their posting histories were different, and there was nothing obvious connecting them.

But when I dug into the files themselves, I found that the photographs all carried the same digital fingerprint, something most people would never notice and most fans wouldn't think to hide. Different accounts, different posts, different character names, but the same underlying data.

I checked the older posts I'd investigated weeks ago when I'd first started looking into the fan accounts surrounding Logan. The obsessive fan had used a different username back then, but when I compared the files, the same technical fingerprint was there.

It was the same person.

At least, I was as close to convinced as I could be without having their computer sitting in front of me.