Page 48 of An Oath at Midnight

“I was hoping you could tell us about the murdered witches, they were brought here, right?”

He crossed his arms. “So it’s true? You’re hunting their murderer?”

“Yeah, and so far, we’re hitting a bunch of dead ends.”

Ren strode to the small desk in the corner, opened up the laptop, and tapped a few keys. “Dad was called to a house in Cicada Drive. He said the place was empty. No one had been living there.”

“This was Clara Hope?”

“Yeah. The witches council had taken her down, but she’d been strung up with wire around her wrists, but only one arm.” He turned to me, and the shutters came down, like something had switched off inside him. “I looked after her when she came in. The other arm had been removed, the cut clean, done with precision. It was odd. Some of the cuts were like that, done with purpose, with control. Like the one down her midsection, when they’d removed her internal organs. Her other injuries…yeah, not so much. Her mouth had been sewn shut as well.”

I took a steadying breath, my stomach churning. “And Margot?”

Ren’s eyes gentled. “The same. She was missing an arm, mouth sewn shut. Her eyes had been taken as well.”

I forced myself to focus on why we were here and not let images of my friend like that overtake me. “Where was she found?”

“Like Clara, Margot was in a vacant house, but this one was a new build in some up-and-coming neighborhood.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. That’s all I’ve got.”

“No, that’s really helpful. Thanks, Ren.” He slid his hands in his pockets, suddenly looking uncomfortable. I hated it, that he still had walls up between us and him.

“How you doing?” Bram asked him.

Ren met his gaze and something passed between them, a knowing. And I felt like crap for not thinking about how much Ren would be suffering with Willow gone, how she would be as well, being parted from him like this, especially after how hard Ren had to fight to find his way back to her.

Ren’s gaze slid away. “Yeah, all good. Wills is safe, that’s all I care about.”

He was in pain, but there was a wall around him so thick and sure, I knew better than to try and comfort him. He didn’t want it. I got the feeling Ren was more at home in his pain now, that the old Ren was buried so deep after what he went through two years ago, there was no pulling him back—that he was gone for good.

* * *

Several hours later, Bram lay on my bed, feet crossed, one hand behind his head, scrolling through Nightscape for any information he could find on the victims. The social media app used mainly by witches and shifters was a good place to start. The victims’ own pages could have information that might be useful.

I’d been searching on my laptop for the last two hours and hadn’t found one fucking thing. No, I wasn’t expecting to find a big red glowing arrow pointing to the killer, but I wasn’t expecting a giant brick wall in front of me either. People were dying, horrifically, and I didn’t know why, or where to even start.

Calvin’s tortured body flashed through my mind, and I gripped the edge of the desk as a shudder moved through me. I’d barely slept last night. I’d been on Nightscape almost constantly since we got home, waiting for Calvin’s death to be mentioned, but there still hadn’t been a report that he’d been found. The comment section of posts about the other three victims, however, was full of speculation and gossip about who did it and the condition of the bodies.

I’d seriously considered sending in an anonymous tip about Calvin, several times, because I couldn’t stand the thought of him there like that, all alone. He was dead, the pain was over, but I didn’t care. If it were someone I loved in that room? I shuddered again.

His family had to be worried.

In the end, I hadn’t, because all fingers would point to Willow and Isaac would leak it to the press making everything worse for her, because that’s the kind of asshole he was. It’d be splashed all over Nightscape within hours.

I forced the images from my mind and looked at Bram again, and the inferno died down to embers. Calm instantly moving through me.

I’d had him home with me almost another full day, and I was too scared to mention it in case I jinxed it. I let my gaze slide over his long, lean body. Though lately he’d filled out. His biceps and thighs were thicker, the skin on his hands rougher. My gaze slid up to the side of his head, to the markings inked there. “Did Rook do the new ink?” Rook was a talented tattoo artist and usually did all the work for their people.

“Yeah,” he said without looking up, but I didn’t miss how his entire body kind of paused at my question.

“Do you ever think you’ll be able to tell me what those lines mean?” I shouldn’t push, but this was my best friend. We shared basically everything, or at least we used to.

He lowered his phone, his obsidian gaze moving over me. “I don’t know.”

Not a definite no. “Are there any circumstances at all, where you would be able to tell me?”