The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) by Dot Hutchison (5)

Mum leaves to drive to Denver and her office a little before five, too antsy to stay still. Before she leaves, she hugs me so hard it’ll probably bruise. “Be sure,” she says again, “be smart, be safe.” All in all, not the worst benediction you can give your daughter before she heads off to murder someone.

I stay sprawled in bed, not quite awake, but definitely not asleep, either. Sleep didn’t happen last night; my brain wouldn’t shut off enough to let me rest.

Thoughts of Chavi, chasing me through the sheet maze, swinging me around in a dance, laughing, bled out on the grey stone floor.

Thoughts of Dad, broken and numb and shamed at the hospital, hanging from the banister when I got home from school.

All those other girls, too, their names almost as familiar to me as my own now.

Darla Jean, Zoraida, Leigh, Sasha.

Mandy, Libba, Emily, Carrie.

Laini, Kiersten, Rachel, Chavi.

Natalie, Meaghan, Aimée, Julie.

I could live to be a hundred and ten, and I think I’d forget my name before losing theirs.

If I close my eyes, I can almost feel the weight of Chavi behind me, all those late nights scribbling in our journals side by side, falling asleep to curl around each other. Lazy mornings cuddling under the blankets, until Mum jumped on us. Literally jumped, and started tickling and laughing until we were all breathless. I can remember how it felt when my sister’s hand moved over my hair, tucking it back away from my face or separating out the sections to help Mum re-dye the streaks. I can remember her breath warm against my ear, the way her fingers would draw designs against my hip before she was even awake, the way she never accidentally ate my hair but was constantly spitting out her own.

Eventually I get up and shower, drying my freshly touched-up hair with far more care than I usually give it. A large white rose, the biggest I could find in the tiny floral section at the grocery, goes over my ear. Wearing the full crown from my birthday felt a little too obvious. I don’t usually look in the full mirror when I get ready, preferring to use my compact so I only have to look at whatever I’m working on, but this morning, I put on my makeup with all of me visible. I’m Chavi but softer, not as bright or as bold, my sister’s bone structure and features through different-colored glass. I pull on the tiered white sundress, the royal blue sweater and leggings that I put out last night. A freak weather system that moved in yesterday means there’s snow on the way, on the first of May. Still, with the coat I should be warm enough.

Downstairs, I can hear Sterling and Archer talking, the changing of the guard. When I come down, camera bag slung over one shoulder, Sterling is gone. Archer looks at me, his eyes a little wild. Second thoughts? But he gives me a shaky smile and opens the door, so I guess we’re good. I can’t imagine Sterling would have left if she had had any idea of our plans for the day.

I can still back out. Just tell him or any of the others about Darla Jean’s brother, let them find and arrest him.

But I think of spending the next however long waiting for a court to tell me I have justice, when justice can’t bring anyone back. Be sure, Mum said.

I’m sure.

We stop at Starbucks to get drinks for the road, and then we’re on our way.

It’s a long, quiet ride to Rosemont, both of us sipping at our drinks until they’re gone. Music plays softly from the radio, hard to hear over the whirr and buzz of the heat. Halfway there, it starts to snow, fat, wet flakes that shush against the windshield and melt as soon as they touch the warm glass. Occasionally, Archer’s GPS gives us a change in direction.

My hands won’t stop shaking. I bury them in my gloves, even though they’re starting to sweat. Right now, I think, it might be nice to be a religious person. It would be nice to have something or someone to pray to, with the relative certainty of being listened to. Then again, if I were a properly religious person, I probably wouldn’t be doing this, so. You know.

The snowfall gets heavier as we go. When we drive through the tiny town of Rosemont, a cluster of orange-coated men and women are out with shovels and salt buckets. A trio of plows sits on a side lot by the fire station, ready to make sure folks can actually get out of their homes. Not many people live here in town; according to the articles I read about the chapel, Rosemont exists mostly so the area residents have someplace to market, mail, and educate their children.

Archer frowns at the open curiosity that meets us down the main road. “Is a stranger so shocking?”

“It’s a small town.”

Shiloh Chapel is a few miles outside of town. As small as Rosemont is, it manages to have four proper churches, but the chapel is left over from a wealthy mining family that used to own most of the land hereabouts. It’s popular still for weddings, regardless of denomination. Archer parks the car a ways back, and for a moment I’m so enchanted by the view I almost forget why I’m here.

It’s like standing inside a snow globe. White covers the sloped roof, more than a dusting but not quite thick enough to hide the reddish-pink terra cotta tiles. The walls are white as well, plaster or stucco or whatever it is that leaves thick swirls of texture like an oil painting. The small rosettes on either side of the ox-blood door are shades of blue, and there’s something a little bit perfect about that.

There won’t be enough sun to catch the other windows at their full glory, but there’s magic in this too.

Checking over my camera, I sling the bag over my shoulder and climb out of the car, the camera itself cradled in my hands. My hip catches the door to swing it shut. I lean against the front of the car, where warmth seeps through my coat despite the damp of melting snow, and just take in the view for a bit.

Framing the picture comes later; you can’t see context through the view-screen.

Archer is still in the car when I lift the camera and start taking pictures, the tiny chapel almost blending in with the snow except for its darts of color. I pace in a wide circle around the structure, finding the interesting angles. The east and west walls are, like the Methodist chapel back in Huntington, only as much wall as is needed to support the windows and roof. Even without beams of sunlight, without the way to track the shafts of color against the new snow, the glass is glorious. The western wall shows Jesus walking on the water through the storm, the disciples huddled in a rough boat in one corner.

Josephine was Episcopalian; we went with her to church sometimes out of curiosity, and afterward, Chavi would take the Bible stories and sketch them into windows like this. I haven’t really thought of those stories in years.

The north wall is entirely solid except for a trio of rosettes in warm shades of yellow, amber, and brown. It’s cleverly done, if you believe in a Trinity, each rose predominantly one color but containing all three, bleeding into each other around the inner edges. Maybe it’s clever even if you don’t believe.

I make another circle, stepping in for close-ups this time. A trail of green ovals shows where I’ve been, though fresh snow dusts the grass soon enough.

The east wall is its own sunrise, and I wish I could see it with all its warmth, the colors afire with light. There are colors I would never think to put into a sunrise, bright blues and soft greens blurring out from the indigo and lavender, but it works in a way Chavi could probably understand, if not explain.

When I come back around to the front, Archer is still in the car. “Coming in?” I ask through the closed window.

He shakes his head. “Far too cold for me. Take your time, though.”

Right.

There are no chairs in the chapel, no kneelers, just space, empty even of the hum of electricity. I take my pictures, entranced more than I would have guessed by the simplicity of the northern rosettes, the colors warm and soothing like candlelight. There’s a stillness to the air, the moment before a breath. It isn’t simply silent, it’s muffled.

Solitude, I suppose, when it’s nature rather than choice.

Then I pack away the camera, setting the bag safely in a corner, and peel off my gloves, scarf, and coat. It isn’t anywhere near warm enough, but I know what I look like in this dress, because I know what Chavi looked like in it. It was always one of her favorites, and even though she was an inch or so taller than I am now, an inch or so smaller in the bust, it fits well, sweet and innocent, the ruffled white tiers just a little bit flirty. There isn’t a way for me to look like the too-skinny twelve-year-old I was, but I can look like a pale reflection of Chavi.

The rose is heavy against my ear, the weight fighting the pins holding it in place. It seems heavier than it should be, and I can’t tell if it’s just me, maybe, my body insisting on feeling the weight my mind wants to give it.

With my phone in my hand, I drop the coat in the center of the floor and sit down on top of it. Even with the heavy wool and my fleece-lined leggings, I can feel the cold seep through. Chavi used to sit like this, just captivated by whatever she was trying to draw.

I hear the rumble of the car turning back on and driving away. Of course no one’s going to come if Archer’s right there. So he’ll hide a ways back, watch. Wait. I pull up a contact on my phone and hit “call” and “speaker,” listening to the dull rings fill the small chapel.

“You’re up early for a Saturday, Birthday Girl.”

Something tight and terrible in my chest eases at the sound of Eddison’s voice. I can hear chaos behind him, what would seem to be Vic getting roundly scolded by his ma. “It’s snowing,” I tell him, and he laughs.

“Goddamn Colorado. But you usually wait for me to call you on your birthday. Are you okay?”

Because as much as he’s my friend, he’s also an agent, or maybe more an agent at times, and he’ll always look for patterns and the ways we break them. It’s comforting, a little. Dependable. “I’m Chavi’s age.”

“Shit, Priya.”

“Next year, I’ll be eighteen, and logically, I knew it would happen, but I don’t think I’m prepared to be older than my big sister.”

I’m not fully prepared for a lot of things, but I’m pitching headlong into them anyway.

“Has your mother pinched you yet for being maudlin on your birthday?”

It startles a huff of laughter out of me. “She’s stuck at work till later. Besides, I always get half an hour to be maudlin. It’s a rule.”

Because Dad killed himself on my birthday, and for all Mum refuses to mourn him, she never faults me for occasionally wanting to. She keeps a lot tucked away but has never asked me to live my own life that way.

“Did I ever tell you my mother chaperoned what should have been Faith’s senior prom?” he asks. It’s an offering of sorts, something private and painful, because he very rarely talks about his sister.

“Must have been hard.”

“She was a wreck for weeks. But after that, she was a little better. It helped her accept that even if we got Faith back, we were never going to get those years and those events.”

“So what I’m hearing is that I should have a blow-out party for my eighteenth and drink myself insensible to recover from it?”

“Don’t you dare.” He gives a soft grunt, and then I hear Mercedes’s voice very close to the phone.

“Happy birthday, Priya!” she chirps.

“Thanks, Mercedes.”

“Where are you?” she asks. “It’s echoing.”

“Shiloh Chapel,” I answer. “It’s in Rosemont, which is a pain, but it’s got these amazing windows.”

“If your mother’s at work, are you there alone?” Eddison demands sharply.

“No, Archer drove me down.”

“Can you put him on?” His voice is suddenly far too pleasant, which cannot spell out good things for Archer.

“He’s outside. He said it looked too cold.”

“Ramirez—”

“On it,” she says. “I’ll call you later, Priya.”

“Okay.”

“What the hell is he thinking?” Eddison snaps.

“That I asked nicely for my birthday?”

“A church, Priya. Of all places.”

“I thought it would be safe as long as I wasn’t alone.”

“If he’s outside, you are alone, and that isn’t acceptable. Ramirez is calling him.”

“Who are you talking to, Priya?”

And that is definitely not Archer.

I look up at the doorway. Even knowing what I’m going to find, my heart thumps in my chest. Sudden fear sits heavy, solid in my gut. “Joshua? What are you doing here?”

“Priya!” Eddison sounds pissed, or panicked. Both. “Who’s there?”

“Joshua,” I say numbly. “From the café. The one who poured a drink on Landon that one time.”

“He shouldn’t have been bothering you,” Joshua says, his voice as warm and friendly as ever. He’s in yet another fisherman sweater, sage green and lovely with his eyes, the sad eyes I almost remembered from Boston. At his feet . . .

Please don’t let this be the biggest mistake of my life.

At his feet rests an enormous wicker basket, almost overflowing with white roses.

“You killed Landon?”

“He shouldn’t have been bothering you,” he repeats gently.

“Where’s Agent Archer? What did you do to him?”

He laughs, and terror skitters up my spine. “I didn’t have to do anything. I passed him in town, after he left you here.”

In town? I knew he’d drive away from the chapel, that the idea of using me as bait would be too tempting, but I thought he’d come back along a side road, or through the woods. Why in the hell would he go all the way to town?

A very large part of my plan relied on Archer being close enough to rescue me.

I am so fucked.

“Why do you have roses?” I ask, my voice shaking from more than cold. Through the phone, I can hear Eddison’s muffled swearing, like he’s holding his hand over the mic. The only thing I can hear clearly is his yell for Vic.

“Oh, Priya.” Joshua kneels, still several feet away, and smiles. “They’re gifts, of course. My father taught me that you always bring a girl flowers. It’s only polite. You’re different from the others; you deserve more.”

Carefully, slowly, so he doesn’t panic and lunge at me, I push to my feet, phone clutched in my hand. “What are you doing here, Joshua?”

“I’m here to protect you.” He sounds so sincere. How fucked in the head does he have to be to believe that? “You’re such a good girl, Priya. I knew it back in Boston. And Chavi was such a wonderful sister to you. You were so loved, and so good.”

“Then why did you kill her?” Tears burn in my eyes, form a knot in my throat. “Why did you take her away from me?”

“You don’t know what this world does to good girls.” He stands, and my fingers spasm around the phone. A phone isn’t a weapon, though. He reaches out one hand, fingers tracing the air inches away from my bindi, the stud in my nose. “Chavi was a good girl, too, but she wouldn’t have stayed that way. She was going away to college; the world would have corrupted her, and she would have done the same to you. I had to protect you both.

“And I did. You stayed good. I was worried after Chavi died, that you might act out, but you didn’t. Aimée was exactly what you needed.”

“I needed a friend,” I retort, “and you killed her!”

“She was so sad after you moved away. I didn’t want her to be sad.”

His fingers brush my cheek, and I flinch. “Don’t touch me!”

“I promise it won’t hurt,” he says soothingly. “You won’t even feel it. And then . . .”

I step away, scuttling backward, and smack into the wall. Oh God, this really is a tiny room, so much smaller than I realized before the serial killer stepped in. The serial killer who is much taller and stronger than I am.

Oh, fuck.

Still smiling, Joshua pries the phone from my clutching fingers. A hunting knife gleams in his other hand. “And then, Priya, you will always be good. I’ll always be able to protect you.” He ends the call and tosses the phone against the far wall.

“Please don’t do this,” I whisper.

His smile just grows. “I have to; it’s for your own good. Now you have to hold still, or it’ll hurt.” He adjusts his grip on the knife, still held down by his side.

Taking as deep a breath as I can manage, I lunge into him, one hand at his wrist and the other in his hair, driving my knee into his crotch. As he tries to pull away, I kick and punch and scratch, trying to keep that knife away from my throat.

And I scream, even louder than I did for Chavi.

I scream, praying Archer’s close.

I scream, and I may never stop screaming.

Eddison’s heart stops when the line goes dead. Despite his training, despite the adrenaline screaming through him, all he can do is stare at the phone.

“Archer’s almost back to the chapel,” Ramirez reports, her work cell clamped between ear and shoulder. Her thumb flies over the screen of her personal cell. “He went to town for backup; goddamn asshole was using her as bait.” She ignores the squawk of protest on the other end of the line. “I’ve got Sterling; Finney’s calling the sheriff’s office. Rosemont doesn’t have a police force, so they’re sending a couple of cars from the county seat. Archer has a pair of army vets from Rosemont. Stop talking and drive, you asshole!” she adds into the phone.

Vic also has both phones out, using one to arrange a flight to Colorado, the other to text Yvonne. They’d been going over the florist results when Priya called; Marlene scolded Vic for working at the breakfast table. “Yes, I’m still here. I need three tickets to Denver, and we need to be there as soon as possible.”

Shaking himself out, Eddison grabs for his phone, pulling the Bureau-issued cell from the clip on his belt. He always thought it moronic to have six phones for three agents, but now he’s grateful for it. He calls Priya back; it goes straight to voice mail. With the other phone, he texts Finney directly.

Ramirez pulls the phone from her ear and glares at it. “They got to the chapel and heard Priya screaming, and the asshole hung up!”

“Would you rather he hold the phone or the gun?” Eddison mutters.

“He should’ve kept the call open with the phone in his pocket so we could hear. Asshole.”

Eddison isn’t sure if she means him or Archer with that last one. He isn’t about to ask.

“We need to get to the airport,” Vic tells them. “Are your go bags at the office?”

“We’ve got backups in our cars,” says Ramirez.

“Then let’s go.”

Marlene watches them leave, tight-lipped with worry.

Through some sorcery of too much experience, Vic gets them on a plane in barely an hour. They get an update from Finney just before boarding: Priya and Joshua—Jameson—are both being taken to the nearest hospital to get airlifted to Denver before the weather makes it impossible, and Finney will meet them at the hospital.

Sterling sends a postscript to Ramirez: the snow is turning into a full storm. It’s possible they’ll have to divert to a different hospital.

Eddison hopes the storm stays well west of Denver. Please, for the love of a God he’s had issues with since Faith disappeared, don’t let it fuck with the flights.

Then they’re on the plane, and the phones are off, and Eddison’s pretty sure time has never been so slow. He wishes, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that the Bureau was even half as well financed as shows and movies make it out to be. Then they’d be on a private jet, able to keep in contact with the folks on the ground, not stuck in economy on a relic of a plane that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

There also wouldn’t be the incessantly screaming child kicking the back of his seat for four straight hours.

The taxi up to the gate is endless, and he jumps when he feels a hand on his bouncing knee. It’s Vic’s. Eddison flushes at the understanding in his senior partner’s expression. Rather than a lecture, though, or a pointed comment, both of which he probably deserves for his impatience, Vic just pulls a picture from his workbag and hands it to Eddison. “This is why you’ll find the calm as soon as there’s something more you can do.”

This . . . is a picture he did not know existed. It’s taken from behind, at a bit of a distance, as Eddison and Priya look up at the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. They’re side by side, his arm around her shoulders. Or, sort of; he’s hooked over one shoulder, but then his arm is bent so his hand rests atop her scalp, their heads tilted into each other, his cheek against the back of his hand. Her arm is slung around his hips, fingers curled through his belt loop right next to his gun.

He takes a deep breath and stills his knee.

Vic is right. He usually is when it comes to people.

As soon as there’s something he can do, he’ll be doing it.

But goddamn it, can’t this plane taxi any faster?

They get permission to disembark and he’s got his bags and himself off the plane before most of the other passengers are even standing. Ramirez and Vic are right behind him. Near the baggage claim, there’s a young woman holding up a piece of computer paper with QUANTICO written in messy black letters. She straightens when she sees them bearing down on her.

“SSAIC Hanoverian?” she asks.

Vic nods.

“Agent Sterling,” she tells them. “Priya’s alive, and she’s going to be okay. She’s got some injuries, I don’t know how severe, but they got her to a hospital here in Denver, and I’ll take you to her. Her assailant was airlifted to the same hospital; he’s currently in surgery. Docs gave us an extra blood sample from their workup, it’s at the lab and running with a priority rush on it. Fingerprints just confirmed as Jameson Carmichael. Agent Finnegan is at the hospital with Priya.”

Vic gives another nod, slower this time, approving. “Let’s get to the hospital, then. We’ll check in with the Sravastis and Finney.”

“Yes, sir.” She walks briskly, either from her own sense of purpose or their radiating anxiety. A Bureau-issued dark blue sedan waits outside, defiantly straddling a lane of no-parking hashes. An airport security guard scowls at them.

Eddison scowls back. His is more impressive.

Vic shakes his head and mutters something about pissing on parking signs.

It’s amazing, the sense of relief that Priya’s alive.

Agent Sterling doesn’t use the sirens, but she also doesn’t exercise much respect for traffic laws. Eddison fully approves. She pulls up to the emergency entrance and idles, waiting for them to scramble out of the car. “Huntington cops are at Carmichael’s apartment. I’ll be in the garage here; call me when you’re ready to head out.”

“Thanks,” Vic says absently. His attention is already on the ambulance screaming its way up the loop, and all three Quantico agents hurry onto the sidewalk so Sterling can pull away.

Ramirez shudders. “She nearly clipped a hearse.”

Eddison rolls his eyes. “An empty one.”

“How would you know?”

“No escort.”

Vic ignores them. He frequently does whenever, as he says, they remind him more of his kids than his teammates. A harried-looking receptionist directs them to the second floor. Fortunately, they don’t have to ask which room. At the room closest to the nurses’ station, they can see two men leaning on either side of the door, one in the crisp black uniform of DPD, the other in a crumpled suit and off-kilter tie.

The one in the suit straightens when he sees them. “Hello, Quantico.”

“Finney.” Vic reaches out and the two men clasp forearms.

He nods at Ramirez and Eddison. “She got knocked about a bit. Some bruises, some concern with her ribs, her left wrist. She’s got a gash on her throat that took a few stitches, but it wasn’t too deep. She said it, but a nurse confirmed that she was not raped.”

Vic lets out a slow breath. “That’s physically. How’s she actually doing?”

“Hard to say.” Finney frowns and attempts to straighten his tie, but only succeeds in making the back longer than the front. “Aside from the shakes, she’s fairly steady, but her eyes are a bit wild. She settled a little after her mother arrived.”

“Is Deshani in with her now?”

The officer sneezes. Eddison’s fairly certain it’s a laugh. “Yes, sir, she is. Made two interns and a resident cry, until she put her foot down and demanded someone get a nurse so her daughter could be treated by someone who knew what they were doing. Never knew doctors could look so much like cats.”

“Deshani has that effect,” Ramirez and Vic say together, and both smile at the officer’s surprise.

“Okay to go in?” asks Eddison. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, fighting the urge to bury his hands in his pockets. He’s never understood how Vic can go so still when he’s anxious.

“Yeah, go on. We can figure out a game plan after. Reassure yourselves.”

He doesn’t mention that they’re far too close on this one, that they don’t have the distance they should. He already knows they don’t, and whether it’s loyalty to Vic or just an understanding of how things can get, he hasn’t said anything about it.

Eddison knocks on the door. “I come with Oreos,” he announces.

“Then get the hell in here,” Priya calls back. “I’m starving!”

Vic and Ramirez both start laughing. Eddison just leans his forehead against the door and takes a deep breath. His hand is still shaking. He can feel Vic’s grip on his shoulder and wants to snarl. Knows he could do it, too, and that his partner would understand the temper, the need to vent, and it’s that more than anything else that keeps him from doing it. When the rage and relief are tamped down a little, he opens the door and leads the way in.

Deshani Sravasti rests against the foot of the bed, straight from the office. Her dark grey skirt and blazer are elegant but tailored severely, softened slightly by the dusky rose silk blouse and sheer, brightly patterned cabbage rose scarf around her neck. Her heels sit on the floor against the far wall with her bag, and she looks almost ridiculous with her nylons ending in bright blue hospital-issue ultra-grip socks, but Eddison’s not brave enough to tell her that. He freely gives Deshani the same respect as the gun at his hip, unsure which is more dangerous.

Priya sits tailor-style on the bed, with a pillow on her lap and a bandage wrapped around her throat, and his heart skips at the amount of blood on the clothing bagged at her side. Seeing her faded hospital gown is not something he thinks he can get over anytime soon. She gives him a weak smile, mostly obscured by the fist that hovers in front of her mouth, the thumb tapping an urgent tattoo against the blue crystal nose stud. There are smears of makeup on her cheeks and around her eyes, left over from tears and sweat and, he guesses, blood and quick cleaning.

She looks like her sister. Christ but it’s another punch to the gut to realize how similar their crime scene photos would have looked. Could have looked, if she hadn’t been lucky.

“Blue,” she says, the smile fading. Her hand drops to the pillow, palms and fingers wrapped in gauze and tape, and Inara’s were like that, when he first met her—stop.

He takes a deep breath. “What?”

“The streaks, the jewelry. They’re blue. Still blue. Hers were red.”

He chuckles weakly and scrubs at his jaw, feeling the stubble he didn’t bother to shave off this morning because he didn’t have the energy. “Thank you.” It helps more than it should—again—but not enough. She studies her hands, then looks up at him through her lashes, and he’s moving before he’s aware of it, thighs thumping against the side of the bed as he comes close enough to wrap his arms around her and just hold on.

She leans into him, her hands curling around his arm, and as she releases a great, shuddering sigh, he can feel her shoulders drop, the muscles in her back easing. He hears a click that’s probably Ramirez taking a picture and he can’t bring himself to care. Priya’s alive. She’s here and alive and he’s more certain than he’s been in twenty years that there might be a God out there after all.

“So do you actually have Oreos or was that just a way to get in the door?”

He reaches into the outer left pocket of his coat and pulls out a snack pack of Oreos, tossing it over her head so it lands on the pillow. He picked it up at the airport just in case, while Vic argued with the gate attendant to get them on the first flight out.

She covers it with one hand, but keeps the other on his arm, not moving away from him. “You got here fast.”

“Next flight out. Vic kicked three people to standby so we could take their seats.”

“Is he allowed to do that?”

“I don’t know. Fortunately no one else did, either.”

“Way to go, Vic.”

The senior agent smiles and moves toward Deshani, hand outstretched. The woman takes it, holds it for a moment before letting it drop. Deshani isn’t the type of woman to allow herself much comforting. “I’m glad you’re all right, Priya,” Vic says warmly.

“Aren’t I always?”

“No. And that’s okay.”

She smiles at him, wry and small but there. Reluctantly, Eddison lets her go so she can sit up properly. He doesn’t step away, though. “How are your girls?” she asks Vic.

“Holly’s intent on having a magazine-worthy dorm room, so she and her mother have been plotting and crafting. I learned what a duvet is.” He gives her a crooked grin, surprisingly young on his weathered face. “At least I’m fairly sure a duvet is made of fabric and goes on a bed.”

Ramirez snickers and adjusts the strap of her messenger bag. “Now that I can see you’re okay—or will be—I’m going to go find out what’s going on. I’ll see you both later.”

“Doesn’t Eddison usually do the scene thing?”

“There’s a baby agent in the car; if I let Eddison ride down to the scene with her, she’ll probably leave the Bureau.”

“Sterling’s tougher than she looks; she might ask him out.”

If he was close enough, he’d be shoving Ramirez out the door right now. As it is, she gives him a mocking little finger wave before leaving.

There are exactly two chairs in the room, one a somewhat padded vinyl monstrosity, the other a faux-wood plastic contraption that looks so fiendishly uncomfortable they must use it to limit visiting time. Vic pushes the terrible one to Eddison, then shifts the armchair to the other side of the bed, near the foot. Neither man offers one to Deshani; they both know she’s at the absolute stretch of her tether. The end of the bed is as far as she can make herself go, to give her daughter some space.

Eddison just spent four hours with the very real possibility that deplaning meant hearing of Priya’s death. Space is not really one of his top priorities at the moment.

“They won’t tell me anything about him,” Priya says quietly.

“He’s in surgery,” Vic answers. “That’s all we know so far.”

She nods at that.

Eddison can’t keep himself from cataloguing her injuries. Her left wrist is in an elastic wrap, the material already fraying around the bite of the metal butterfly clasps. He can see the beginnings of bruises on her arms, around her throat, on her face, especially on her jaw and chin. There’s a deep pink scrape and welt between her eyes, and he wonders if the crystal bindi is on the chapel floor, or if it gave up the ghost in the ambulance. Finney mentioned there was worry about her ribs, but he can’t bring himself to ask. Not yet.

Opening the pack of Oreos, Priya pulls one out, separates one cookie from the crème with a deft twist, and hands that one to her mother. Crumbs flake off against the gauze covering her fingers. After a moment’s thought, she uses her thumb to peel the crème off.

“Really?”

She gives Eddison a sidelong glance. “There’s no milk.”

“If I call someone to fix that, will you stop eating it like a heathen?”

She rolls the crème into a neat, almost perfectly round ball and hands him the naked cookie. “There are more important matters on the table, aren’t there?”

He considers that, then shoves the cookie in his mouth. “No.”

“Children, behave,” murmurs Vic, looking pained.

But Priya gives Eddison a small nod, not quite imperceptible, and he relaxes back into the chair. If she needed the Oreos, she wouldn’t be remotely fussy about the way she eats them. She pops the crème ball in her mouth, brushes her fingers against the worn fabric of the hospital gown, and reaches up to push her hair out of her face. A moment later, it flops forward again, a heavy mass of blue-streaked black. “Mum?”

“I suppose the bandages would make it a bit difficult,” Deshani agrees. She moves around the bed and up to her daughter’s side, opposite Eddison, gently gathering Priya’s hair into her hands. Despite the care, Priya winces once or twice. “There’s some blood caked in there,” her mother tells her, the bleakly practical words offset by the slight crack in her voice. “We’ll wash it when we get home.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Finney pokes his head in. “They’re still operating, but they sent out a resident to give an update, if you want to hear firsthand.”

It should be Eddison getting up to go, but instead it’s Vic hauling himself out of the sucking vinyl monstrosity. “Deshani, did you happen to bring any clothes for Priya?”

She shakes her head. “I came straight from the office.”

“While I’m out, I’ll see what the gift shop has to offer, and we’ll get your clothes to the lab.” He walks up the bed to get the sealed bag and drops a hand onto Eddison’s shoulder, not squeezing, not gripping, just there for a moment and gone the next. A gift, in its way.

There are times Eddison knows how lucky he is to have Vic for a partner.

He’s not sure he’s ever felt it so keenly before.

“I’m going to get us some coffee,” Deshani announces. “Eddison? If I promise to have them make it extra barbaric?”

“Some of us are strong enough to drink coffee the way the gods intended,” he tells her, and she snorts.

“You’re bitter enough, like calls to like.” She nods to Vic as he holds the door open for her.

In the quiet of the room, Eddison watches Priya scrape the crème off the rest of the Oreos, tucking the cookies back into the packaging. “What happened, Priya?” he asks finally.

“I didn’t think I was going to be able to get down to the chapel before we left,” she says after a minute. “I’d only just learned about it, but it sounded . . . it sounded like something Chavi would have loved. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help but feel like leaving the country is leaving her behind. We’re taking her ashes with us and everything, but it’s just . . .”

“It’s a big move,” he says neutrally. Waiting.

“Archer agreed to drive me down. When I went inside the chapel, he stayed in the car. Joshua said he saw Archer in town.” She takes a slow, shaky breath, her eyes glassy with shock. “Why would he go to town?”

“We’ll get the full account from him soon, but he went to get help. He thought the killer might follow you, so he left you alone as bait. He was looking for backup so he could get back and protect you.”

“How could he protect me from town?”

He shakes his head. Archer may or may not lose his place in the Bureau—he did technically catch the killer, after all—but he’ll be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Eddison’s going to help make sure of that. “You were alone in the chapel, you called me, and Joshua came in.”

“Joshua, of all people. He’s always been polite. Kind. Charming without being creepy. He felt safe. I just thought—” She sniffs and rubs at the bloody dig between her eyes, blinking away tears. “I thought if I ever saw my sister’s murderer, he would look like a murderer, you know? Like I’d be able to see all the things wrong with him. I never imagined someone like Joshua. Someone so freaking normal.”

“His name isn’t Joshua; it’s Jameson. Jameson Carmichael. The first girl he killed was his sister, Darla Jean.”

“He said Chavi was a good sister.”

“I know.”

“He said Aimée was a good friend.”

Her eyes are still glassier than he’d like.

“What happened after the call dropped?”

She bites her lip, her teeth tearing at a scab, and he steels himself not to cringe at the beads of blood that well up. Her eyes are huge and tear-bright, and when he scoots to the edge of the chair and holds out his hand, she seizes it with a strong grip that makes the week-old bruises and abrasions sting. “He said he had to protect me from the world, had to make sure I stay good.”

“He came at you.”

“He had a knife. Well, obviously. He likes the stabby stabby.”

“More like the slicey slicey.”

“I love you,” she huffs.

He gives her hand a careful squeeze.

“I don’t think he was expecting me to struggle. Maybe his version of a good girl wouldn’t? But I’m stronger than I look, you know?”

“Always have been.” He shakes his head at her doubting look. “Twelve years old, Priya, after the worst days of your life, angry and scared and grieving, you threw a teddy bear at my head and told me not to be such a fucking coward.”

“You were scared to talk to me.”

“Damn straight. But you called me on it.”

She’s got both hands curled around his now, picking at loose curls of skin along his nails, and he doesn’t try to stop her. “We fought over the knife, but he’s a lot bigger. I got it, though, eventually, and I—I stabbed him.” Her voice drops to barely more than a whisper, thick and heavy with pain. “I’m not even sure how many times, I was just so afraid he’d get up and come after me again. He didn’t have a phone, and mine wasn’t working. I think the throw killed it, and it shouldn’t have, because we paid extra for the cases.”

“Priya.”

“I stabbed him,” she says again. “And the knife—one side of it is straight, but the other edge is serrated and it makes this—this tearing sound when it comes out, and I don’t ever want to hear that sound again. I shouldn’t even have been able to hear it, because we were both struggling, and panting, and I might have been screaming, I don’t know, but it was like it was the only thing I could hear.”

“What happened next?”

“Archer ran in, just as Joshua fell. He had two men with him. One of them took me outside, tied his scarf around my neck to help with the bleeding. He said he used to be an army medic. Eddison, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For being so stupid.” Despite her rapid blinking, the tears spill over, and he can feel the warmth when they drip off her chin onto the back of his hand. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t suspect Joshua, I knew someone was after me. I shouldn’t have put it on Archer to protect me without backup. I should have just forgotten the stupid windows and stayed home.”

Fuck distance and professionalism.

He shifts up onto the bed, wrapping his arms around her again and rocking her slightly, and feels her break. She’s almost silent as she sobs, gasping for breath as her body quakes. He doesn’t try to calm her, doesn’t try to tell her it’s okay. He doesn’t try to tell her she’s safe now.

Safe, he’s learned, is a very fragile, relative thing.

Slowly, the storm passes, and he reaches for the box of tissues beside the bed to help her clean her face. What’s left of her makeup is a little terrifying, but he wipes off as much as he can without making it worse. He taps the bloody scrape between her eyes, leans forward to press a kiss just above it.

“Thank you for being alive,” he murmurs.

“Thank you for letting me snot all over you.”

That’s his girl.

Vic and Deshani come back together, Deshani holding a triangle of cups aloft purely by carefully applied pressure, Vic holding his own cup of coffee and a sky-blue-and-white-striped bag with little blue footprints and a repeating It’s a boy!!! banner. He looks so sheepish and exasperated holding it that it makes both Priya and Eddison dissolve into giddy, just-this-side-of-hysterical laughter.

Vic sighs and hands the bag to Priya. “They were out of ‘Congrats, it’s a tumor’ bags,” he says, not quite managing a straight face.

Eddison slides off the bed and over to Vic, while Deshani pulls the curtain around the bed to help Priya change. “Anything from Ramirez?”

“A text. Archer’s still down at Rosemont; Finney’s got a team of senior agents on the way to take over and haul his sorry ass back; Sterling and Ramirez are at Carmichael’s residence. He keeps pictures.”

“Of Priya?” he asks, gut clenching.

“Of all of them. They’re bagging some of the card stock on his desk, pens, handwriting samples. Photos, clearly. It’s fairly safe to say he’ll be charged if he survives.”

“How likely is that?”

“They’re still working, but they don’t seem very hopeful. His lung and ribs are pretty well torn up, some nicks to his heart, some pretty important blood vessels.” His voice is quiet, that not-whisper that’s clear but doesn’t carry an inch farther than he wants it to. “Archer recovered the knife at the scene, so they’ll cast it and test it against the previous murders.”

“But without being willing to put it in writing or swear before a court of law, you’re pretty damn sure our murderer is on an operating table right now.”

“If he could survive long enough to make a confession, that would be lovely.”

“Is Priya going to need to stay here in the hospital?”

Vic shakes his head, crossing his arms against his chest. “Once the pharmacy sorts out the medications they want to send her home with, you can head out with the Sravastis. If they need to make a stop or two along the way for essentials, that’s fine, but only necessary ones. Once you’re at the house with them, stay there.”

Another gift. Normally that’s Vic’s job. Speaking with families, monitoring who comes to visit and what they say. The Eddison from college, from the academy, would be laughing himself shitless, but the man he is now—the agent he is now—knows to be grateful for true friendship wherever it can be found.

“Finney’s got guards outside the operating room and in the scrub room, just in case,” Vic continues before Eddison can decide whether or not a thank-you would be appropriate here. “I’ll wait here with him for more updates and coordinate with Ramirez and the team down in Rosemont.”

The curtain hooks rattle on their metal slide as Deshani pushes the plastic back into place against the wall. Priya settles back onto the bed, clad in fleecy, cheerful yellow pajama pants and a long-sleeve FBI T-shirt. “It’s a very well-supplied gift shop,” she says dryly, wrapping her hands gingerly around her hot chocolate.

“Isn’t it, though?”

There’s barely a second between the knock on the door and the door opening, and a woman in rose-pink scrubs enters. She gives Priya a conspiratorial wink. “I got the drugs, man,” she says, in a bad imitation of a television drug dealer. She waves a trio of white and blue paper bags, the tops folded over and stapled with long blue sheets of instructions.

Deshani pinches the bridge of her nose.

The nurse notices and laughs. “Oh, please let me play. I’m working a double with a doc who can’t ride herd on his interns. I need the venting.”

“That I can understand,” Deshani says. She rolls her head back, stretching until everyone in the room hears a soft crack.

“All right, ladies, here we are.” She launches into a brisk but thorough explanation of each medication and how to treat the wounds, as well as what to look for and when to come back in. Clearly, she’s had a lot of practice. When she finishes, she props her hands on her hips and regards both women. “The important thing, aside from remembering that I’m a nurse and therefore a font of wisdom, is to take care of yourself. You’ve got extra limits for a bit. Any questions?”

Mother and daughter examine the written instructions, then shake their heads in unison.

Both men smile.

“Then, unless these good agents need you to stick around, you are free to go. Would you like me to bring the discharge paperwork?”

Deshani glances at Vic, who nods a go-ahead. “Please.”

The storm that was steadily covering Rosemont in snow is only starting to move into Huntington as Mum drives us back, and despite his being a terrible passenger, Eddison insists I take the front seat. He sprawls and fidgets in the backseat. When we stop at the drug store for wound care supplies, he and I both stay in the car. At the grocery store, however—not the Kroger near the chess island—I unbuckle my seat belt.

“Are you sure?” Mum asks.

“I want something desserty. Something that is not an Oreo.”

“Come on, then.”

So Eddison ends up trailing us through the store with the basket hooked over one arm, and I can’t even imagine how we must appear. Well, no, I can a little, because we are getting the strangest looks. There he is in a Nats shirt and open FBI hoodie under his coat, me in my pajamas and bandages, Mum in her suit, both Mum and me still wearing the hospital grippy socks instead of shoes. But there’s the look on Mum’s face in return, the one that dares anyone to mention a single goddamned thing.

Mum is very, very good at that particular look.

There is nothing resting about that bitch face.

We get subs from the deli because there’s even less chance than usual of things getting cooked at home, and some snacks and breakfast stuff, and we detour through the ice cream aisle so I can find some orange sherbet, which should be easier on my throat than the ice cream Mum and Eddison quibble over until they each pick out their own pint.

The cashier stares at me as he moves our items across the scanner. “What happened to you?”

Eddison bristles but I give the boy a bland smile. “Demon-possessed nail gun,” I answer calmly. “We drew the diagram in the garage—more room, you know?—and did the ritual, and didn’t even realize the power cord had fallen into the circle of summoning.”

He looks about to protest, but Mum pats my shoulder. “Next time you’ll know to double-check before you start chanting. At least you sent it back.”

Eddison turns to fuss with the bags so the kid can’t see his smile.

It’s a terrifying shred of normality in something that is really, really not a normal day.

The couch is covered in a snow of linens, because tomorrow’s task was going to be sorting them into keep, donate, and toss piles. Might still be tomorrow’s task, knowing Mum. It’s not like we can’t do it while talking. What it means for today, however, is that even Eddison is sprawled on the floor with us to eat, and he manages to look not entirely disgruntled by that. We’re almost done eating when he excuses himself to the kitchen to take a phone call from Vic.

Mum decides the timing is perfect, and we go upstairs to wash my hair. And, you know, the rest of me, but the hair is the really problematic part. I get back into the yellow pants and FBI shirt, though, partly because they’re comfortable, mostly because they’re comforting.

Everything aches. Several ribs are cracked—several, the doctor said, and didn’t want to give me a solid number—and the muscles are tight and cramping. I’m not breathless or gasping, but I’m aware of every inhalation in a way I’m usually not. When you don’t have any trouble breathing, it’s really not something you pay attention to. It’s not just in my chest, either, but in the bruises and swelling through my throat.

I didn’t give adrenaline enough credit when I was trying to think my way through things. His, yes, but mine, too, making me stupid and desperate. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for why I would grab for the blade, hold on tight. Not the handle—the blade. My wrapped fingers are stiff and throbbing in time with my heart and they’ll be fairly useless for a while.

If I’m not stupid, though—more stupid—I should recover fully. A few scars, maybe, but if I obey my limits and take care of myself properly, the doctors said I shouldn’t lose any function. Only one doctor checked my ribs, but three of them looked over my hands. I have antibiotics and painkillers and sleep aids, and what I suspect is a rather strongly worded suggestion I get myself to a shrink for some antianxiety meds.

I probably should have been on antianxiety meds for the last five years, but now, for the first time since that terrible night we spent waiting up for Chavi, I think I’m actually okay without them. Mostly okay.

Will be okay.

That might be more disturbing than anything else, really.

Eddison is back in the living room, folding the linens we very purposefully unfolded to inspect. He doesn’t even look sheepish when Mum scolds him for it. “I’m too old to sit on the floor,” he tells her.

“I’m older than you are.”

“You devour souls to stay young.”

“True.” She takes the stack of folded linens from him, shakes them all loose again, and dumps them into a box with everything else on the couch. “What did Victor have to say?”

“Still in surgery. The lab is doing its thing with the blood sample and everything Ramirez and Sterling pulled from the apartment.”

“If he doesn’t make it, do you tell the families?” Gently pushing me onto the couch, Mum flops to the floor and leans back against my legs, absently reaching for the Xbox controller. It’s a way to keep her hands busy while we talk, because stillness is for when things go wrong. As long as she’s moving, nothing can be wrong.

Or something like that, but it’s Mum, and this is how she’s been all my life, and Eddison knows her well enough not to give the stink-eye for it.

“It’ll depend on how firmly the evidence ties him to the other murders. What he said, what we’ve found, is pretty damning, but may not be sufficient for the bosses to be comfortable declaring it. We’ll find out.” Picking up the blue-and-white envelopes for my drugs, Eddison reads through the instructions, then opens two of the bottles. One large pill, two smaller pills, all three of them white. He takes my hand and carefully transfers the pills to my palm. Then he gets up and heads into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of milk. “I know you ate, but sometimes milk gives a better cushion for the drugs.”

“Well acquainted with prescription drugs, Eddison?” asks Mum.

He shifts a little, uncomfortable but trying to hide it. “You get shot a few times, you learn some tricks.”

Mum pauses the game so she can look over her shoulder at him. Whatever she gets from his expression, she doesn’t comment on it. Just turns back to her game.

I take my pills. Drink my milk.

Thunder rumbles overhead, soft and rolling. There’s snow falling outside, clean white flurries skittering in whorls and flips in the wind. It’s the kind of night to stay safely inside, warm and curled up with those you love. I reach for Eddison’s hand so I can pull him to the middle seat.

So I can lean against him.

He puts his arm around my shoulders and leans into me, too, and we sit in silence and watch Mum play. There are questions he should probably be asking.

Probably will ask once he figures out how to phrase them. The thing is, Eddison knows me.

He knows I’m only so many kinds of stupid.

So I think—I’m reasonably sure—he’s waiting to ask until we know whether or not Joshua is going to survive. It changes the shape of things, doesn’t it?

Probably not.

Legally not, in any case.

“What did you do to your hands?” I mumble into his shirt.

“It’s a long story. Please don’t ask Ramirez for her version of it.”

As tired as I am, I can’t help but snicker.

Eventually, the day catches up to us all. Technically, Eddison is here on guard duty just like Sterling was, but it doesn’t feel right to put family on the couch, so we set him up in Mum’s room. It’s slightly less creepy than the idea of him sleeping in mine, and I suspect he feels the same way. Mum helps me get ready for bed, and for a moment, I can close my eyes and think it’s Chavi bumping hips with me in the narrow bathroom, brushing her teeth next to me.

We curl together in my bed, the flickering illumination of the electric tea light casting shadows across Chavi’s picture frame and the wall beyond. The teddy bear Mercedes gave me the first time we met usually lives on my dresser, but now he’s cushioning my aching jaw. Mercedes has a seemingly endless supply of soft bears to give victims and siblings when she goes to a scene or home. It was a comfort then, and a comfort now.

It’s also the bear I threw at Eddison’s head when I first met him, so there’s that.

“That did not go quite as planned,” Mum says eventually, her voice little more than a whisper, and I can’t help but giggle. And then I can’t stop, and it sets her off, and we’re lying there laughing our heads off, because fucking hell, is that ever an understatement. My ribs flare with pain even after we finally get our breath back.

“I knew Archer would leave,” I tell her more seriously. “It honestly never occurred to me that he’d go farther than it took to hide. I thought he’d be out of sight but in range, especially of a scream. I was . . .” I let out a breath, hold the next, let it out. “I was terrified.”

“I’d be very worried if you weren’t.” She stirs, shifts, settles so her cheek rests against mine and her chin digs into my shoulder. “Work was hell. I had to convince myself over and over not to drive down after you. I can’t do that again.”

“I have no more monsters to kill,” I murmur.

“One and done?”

“Thank God.”

“What would you think . . .” She falls silent, which is so unlike her I’d turn to look at her if my ribs wouldn’t protest. Instead, I find her hand and tangle my fingers through hers, resting them on my belly. “For a long time, it’s been me and you against the world,” she continues after a while, “but we have our agents, and you have Inara, and your veterans . . . maybe it’s time we open ourselves up a bit.”

“I’m going to try to make friends in Paris. Not just grudgingly allow it, like with Aimée, but actively try.”

“Good. And what would you think . . .”

Whatever the rest of that thought is, it seems to be impossible.

“Some of your cousins are at universities on the continent, or work there. A handful are even in Paris. Maybe we can start connecting with the outliers, work our way down to the older generations.”

“Work our way up?”

“I said what I meant.” Brushing a kiss against my ear, she matches her breathing to mine. “You could have died today, my love, and it occurred to me: I don’t want to be all alone. I could do it, certainly, but I don’t want to. And I realized, if anything happens to me . . . I know you’d be taken care of. Vic would adopt you in a heartbeat. I just thought . . . Save me, Priya-love, you know I hate leaking emotions.”

Laughing softly, I give Mum’s fingers a squeeze. “Cousins sound like an excellent place to start.”

She’s silent for a long time, her fingertips rubbing little circles against my shirt. “Was he scared?” she asks finally.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Even with the adrenaline crash and the medications and the warm, comforting weight of Mum wrapped around me, I’m a little surprised at how easy it is to drift off, not quite sleeping but definitely not awake.

Then my phone beeps.

Mum props herself up to grab it from the nightstand. The number is Inara’s, but the text is addressed to both me and Eddison. It’s just a picture, no caption, but I can’t make it out from the thumbnail on the lock screen. She hands the phone to me and I thumb it open, pulling up the picture.

Inara stands with another girl, about our age and significantly shorter, with Times Square screaming neon all around them. Both have half-size poster board signs and dangerous smiles. The shorter girl is on the left, her sign yelling FUCK OFF in gold glitter; Inara’s says BAD GUYS in silver.

Across the hall, a muffled thump and curse is followed by a “Christ and goddamn, Bliss!”

Mum and I look at the picture a while longer, then Mum snorts softly. “I’m impressed,” she admits. “Wandering around Times Square with a sign that says fuck off. Lovely.”

“Fuck off, bad guys,” I tell her, aiming for prim but landing somewhere next to a laugh.

“You did your best to drag ours straight to the gates of hell; we’ll see if it sticks.”

I turn the phone to silent and set it back on the table, but as I drift off again, I can hear the buzzing vibrations against the wood that says Eddison and Inara are back-and-forthing. It’s a strangely welcoming sound.

Jameson Carmichael—also known as Joshua Gabriel—dies Thursday, May fifth, at eight forty-seven in the morning, mountain time.

He never woke up.

Eddison can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. A confession, or even a chance to question him, would have helped immensely, but there’s a part of him that’s glad they never had to hear him try to further justify what he did. There’s more analysis to be done before anyone will sign off on informing the other families, but there’s a sense of completion there.

Vic and Finney go down to Texas to talk to Mrs. Eudora Carmichael, and Vic comes back looking a kind of haunted that makes Eddison’s skin crawl. Vic’s daughters take one look at their father and practically nail him to the couch, sitting around him with snacks and a nearly endless stream of animated movies at the ready. It’s what he’s always done for their bad days; his girls are too bright not to realize that it works both ways.

Once the girls are asleep, Vic squirms out from under them, adjusting the blankets so they’re covered, their limbs so they’re not about to fall off the couch, and motions his partners outside. They follow him, but not until Eddison snaps a picture to send to Priya.

After all, she’s been part of that puppy pile in the past.

Outside, they walk down the driveway to a little playground. The benches there have seen any number of impromptu conferences or post-case wind-downs. Vic sits heavily, looking older than he is, while Ramirez perches atop the back and stretches her legs along the length of the bench. They don’t bother leaving room for Eddison; he almost never sits during serious conversation if pacing is an option.

Vic reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Not a word to my wife or ma,” he warns them, and holds it out.

Eddison takes one immediately. Ramirez shakes her head.

“Your gal in Counterterrorism not like the taste?” Eddison asks her.

“She has a name, you know.”

“Now where would the fun be in that?”

She takes a cigarette before Vic can put the pack away.

“Mrs. Carmichael was devastated,” Vic tells them, releasing a long, thin plume of smoke. “The last time she heard from her son was when he drove away a few months after his sister’s death. At first she was in hysterics, but once she calmed down . . .”

“She started to reframe how she saw him,” Ramirez finishes for him.

Vic nods. “He’d always been very protective of Darla Jean, she said. A very attentive older brother. He didn’t like boys paying attention to her, or her paying attention to boys. Didn’t like it when she dressed certain ways, or said certain things. Looking back, Mrs. Carmichael thought he was more physically affectionate than most brothers, but she was so glad they weren’t fighting she didn’t think too much of it.”

“So Darla Jean kissed a boy in a church,” says Ramirez, “a flower on her dress, and her brother saw. Felt betrayed?”

“Rapes her, kills her, runs back home before anyone can find her. Rural Texas, I bet most of the men know how to hunt. Any number of them have knives like his,” Eddison continues.

“He doesn’t run right away, not until the investigation’s stalled. Not until his leaving won’t be suspicious. And it’s a small town, he’s a smart young man, grieving his sister, is it really a surprise that he doesn’t come back?”

“And everyone pities Mrs. Carmichael, to lose both her children so close to each other.” Eddison flicks the ash onto a bare patch of soil, stepping on it just to be sure. “No one thinks twice about Jameson, so he becomes Joshua.”

“He goes somewhere else, can’t settle without Darla Jean, moves on again. He sees Zoraida. Everything a sister should be.”

“He remembers Darla Jean was a ‘good’ sister, a good girl, until that boy, and he resolves to protect Zoraida from the same fate. Kills her to keep her innocent, but treats her gently.”

“But every spring, he remembers Darla Jean, and when he sees the combination of pretty girl, church, and flowers, it triggers him. He stalks them to see if they’re his definition of good or not.”

“I hope you both realize that neither of you is ever getting promoted as long as you finish each other’s thoughts,” Vic points out. He stubs out the remains of his cigarette against the bottom of his shoe, then peels the paper away from the filter and drops both pieces back into the pack.

Ramirez hands him her cigarette to finish. “He learns Priya is in San Diego because of a photo contest; we found the magazine at his apartment. Priya, fifteen, San Diego. He takes it on faith, goes after her.”

“But he finds her just before she leaves, and he has to look for her all over again. It takes him a while, but then Deshani’s profile runs in the Economist, and she mentions that she and Priya are moving to Huntington. He decides to get there first.”

“And the rest is history.”

There’s a question—a thought, maybe, or a possibility—that hangs heavy between them. Eddison remembers that feeling coming back from Denver the first time, that itching sense of something being out of place about the Sravastis’ reactions. He snorts softly. “We’re not saying it, are we?”

“No,” Vic answers immediately. Firmly.

“Should we be?” Ramirez asks.

There isn’t an easy answer to that, and they all know it. There’s the law, their oaths to the FBI. There’s the much murkier territory of right and wrong.

But there’s also Priya, the laughing girl she used to be, and Deshani, too strong to stumble even if it kills her. There are all those other girls.

Eddison’s never been sure what he thinks of the afterlife, if there are lost souls waiting for answers before they can move forward to the light or heaven or whatever. There are too many lost souls still living. But however much he wants to deny it, there’s a part of him that will always tell the dead to rest in peace when they solve a murder. As if the knowing can give them that misty satisfaction and let them move on.

From Darla Jean Carmichael to Julie McCarthy, are those girls able to rest now?

And he thinks of Faith. Always, forever, of Faith. If he ever finds the bastard who took her . . .

“Priya’s more her mother’s daughter than ever,” he says finally.

“Once we get the new round of lab reports, Finney and I are both recommending the case be officially closed,” Vic tells them. “Priya Sravasti is a victim of Bureau ineptitude. An overeager agent charged with her protection used her as bait because the section chief was more concerned with politics than with the facts of the case. Section Chief Ward will face a full internal investigation regarding her actions.”

“And that’s an end to it?” Ramirez asks.

“Are you okay with that?”

She looks off into the stretch of trees that backs the playground, running along in a thick strip between this row of houses and the ones behind them. She hates the woods, and it took almost two years and a night of far too much tequila for her to tell them why. Vic might have already known, actually, if he had access to her background, but he’d never made mention of it if he had. Most of her nightmares were born in the woods, something that may never leave her.

It’s never stopped her from running straight into the trees if there’s a chance in hell the kid they’re looking for is alive in there.

“Yes,” she says eventually, drawing out the word. “I suppose I am.”

Because there’s the law, and there’s justice, and they’re not always the same thing.

The night before Mum and I leave the country, the Hanoverian living room is full of laughter and arguments and noise. So much noise, and it’s amazing, the vitality of it. Vic is thoroughly outnumbered by his mother, wife, and three daughters, and because Inara and Bliss are in the room, Eddison stays on the opposite side of it and doesn’t even try to help his senior partner. Mercedes just teases both men.

It’s home, and family, and all kinds of wonderful things.

Eventually, though, everyone heads to bed, Marlene and Jenny kissing everyone on foreheads or cheeks. They get Eddison’s cheeks at the same time from either side, and doesn’t that just make him squirm?

The picture is wonderful. Inara and Bliss both promptly ask me to text it to them. So do Vic and Mercedes, when Eddison can’t see them.

I have a feeling Mercedes will be putting it on her desk at work at some point, just to fuck with him.

Mum shoos me upstairs, where we’re sharing Brittany’s room, but she stays in the living room with the adults and I know it’ll be a while before she’s up. So I head into Holly’s room with Inara and Bliss.

They came down a few days ago from New York, with a detour to Sharpsburg to check on the youngest Garden survivor. The best part of meeting them may have been watching Eddison try not to crawl out of his skin. He kept hovering in the doorway of whatever room we were in, clearly torn between wanting to run the hell away and wanting to make sure we don’t accidentally take over the world.

I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t be an accident if we did.

Bliss is as prickly as Mum and me, if a bit more aggressive with it. I generally keep my snarls as an answer; she uses them as a challenge. I can’t say I blame her. What happened to her was a lot more public than what was done to me, even when the news took up Chavi and her place in the string of unsolved murders.

Inara is quieter than Bliss, not shy or withdrawn, just . . . more patient, I suppose. Bliss explores a situation by lighting a match and letting it explode. Inara watches first, observes. She waits to speak until she knows what she wants to say and has a healthy guess as to how others will react to it. It’s easy to see why the Hanoverians have taken them in.

“I hear your parents and siblings are in Paris,” I say to Bliss, my fingers buried in Inara’s hair to help her braid it for bed.

Bliss growls, but Inara glances back at me over her shoulder. “Most people would just say family.”

“Your family’s here, and in New York. I may not know you two that well, but that’s clear enough.”

Inara laughs at the fierce blush that lights up Bliss’s pale skin.

“Yes,” Bliss manages after clearing her throat. “They’re in Paris. My father’s teaching.”

“They’ve been bugging you to come visit?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you do . . . we’re going to have a couple of guest rooms. If you want to get together, or if you need to escape for a night. Or if things go south and you need to say fuck it. Safety net’s there. And you wouldn’t have to listen to your parents pout if you bring Inara.”

“They have been bitching about it,” she agrees. Without warning, she pulls off everything but her underwear and rummages through her bag for sleepwear.

“Our apartment is one giant room,” Inara explains. “Even after the Garden, modesty isn’t so much a thing there.”

“Eh. I had a sister.” I tie off Inara’s braid, hand her the brush, and turn around so she can return the favor. Her strokes are smooth and sure, never tugging too hard but letting the bristles scrape gently along my scalp.

“Does it ever stop, do you think?” Bliss asks suddenly.

“Does what?”

“That sense of being a victim.”

It’s a little strange, the way they both focus on me at that. They’re both older than me, if not by very much, but then, my world exploded five years ago. In a sick sort of way, I guess I have seniority. “It changes,” I say finally. “I don’t know that it ends. Sometimes it flares, for no reason at all. The more choices we make, though, the more we live our lives . . . I think that helps.”

“We heard Eddison say you killed the bastard. The one that was after you.”

“I did.” My hands are in my lap, free of heavy-duty bandages but still more Band-Aid than skin. Inara has pale, rippling scars on her hands from burns and gashes. “He came after me, we struggled over his knife, I stabbed him. A lot. Adrenaline, you know?”

“I shot Avery. The Gardener’s older son, the one who liked to maim. I don’t know how many times.”

“Four,” Inara says, her voice soft.

“Sometimes I shoot him and there are no bullets in the gun. Sometimes I shoot and shoot and shoot and never run out of bullets, but he doesn’t stop. He just keeps coming forward.”

“Sometimes I wake up and have to strip down so I can lie naked in the tub, because clothes and bedding feel too much like flower petals,” I reply. “Because in my nightmare, I’m alive but bleeding out, can’t move, and he’s surrounding me with white roses, like the Lady of Shalott’s bier down the river.”

They both laugh, even as Bliss groans. “You like classics?” Inara asks.

“Some of them.”

“Don’t ever get this one started on Poe,” Bliss tells me. “She can quote all of it. And by quote, I mean recite. All of it. Every goddamn word of it.”

The braid thumps against my back as Inara ties it off. “It kept my brain busy.”

“That’s the trick, I think.” I stretch out across the bed. Inara and Bliss aren’t anything like Chavi and Josephine, but the feeling is there. I’m comfortable with both of them in a way I didn’t expect to be right off. “Things don’t just magically get better, but we can make them better.”

“Slowly,” adds Inara.

“So fucking slowly,” sighs Bliss.

“I take pictures of Special Agent Ken and send them to Eddison. When we get to Paris, I’m dressing the doll in mime gear at a café, and I can almost guarantee Eddison’s response will be That’s horrifying or something very similar.” They laugh again, Bliss easing down gently across my back, careful with my battered and wrapped ribs. Her hair is all wild curls, not something you can braid dry, and it spills around her. I can see their wings, or parts of them where the tank tops don’t hide them.

They’re beautiful, and awful, and I get the feeling they see them largely the same way. At least Inara, anyway, but then, I think she’s had more practice than Bliss at reframing perspective.

Inara stretches out beside me, her legs thrown over mine and her cheek against the back of Bliss’s shoulder. “How many times did you stab him, Priya?” she asks softly.

“Seventeen. Once for each girl he killed, and once for me.”

Her slow, satisfied smile is both terrifying and wonderful.

I don’t remember falling asleep that way, but Mum shows me the picture in the morning. Over Marlene’s amazing cinnamon rolls, Eddison teases Bliss about being cuddly. He takes a little too much delight in setting her wrong-footed, at least until Inara hands me a little blue dragon made of clay and tells me to mail it back once Special Agent Ken is done with him.

Seeing Eddison try not to blush is always a good thing.

We say goodbye to the female Hanoverians at the house, laden down with plastic bags of treats from Marlene. She swears there won’t be a problem getting through security with them, and standing safely behind her where she can’t see him, Vic rolls his eyes.

“Victor.”

He freezes, sighs, and shakes his head.

Mum watches him with amusement. “You didn’t really think you’d grow out of that, did you?”

“Did you?”

“It never worked on me to begin with.”

Eddison nudges Vic in the side. “I can believe it. Can you?”

“I absolutely believe it.”

Inara and Bliss ride with us to the airport, sitting in the back with me while Mercedes and Mum sit in the middle row. Suitcases fill the trunk space. Our stuff left Colorado last week, professionals loading it into the shipping container to guarantee even distribution. They were significantly better at their job than the ones who dropped the container off. Still, it’s going to take another two to three weeks before it actually arrives at the new house, so until then we’re living out of suitcases.

There’s an entire suitcase dedicated to Mum’s coffeemaker, the box wrapped in most of the towels we own for extra protection.

Eddison and Vic grab most of the bags between them, save for the carry-ons and the enormous orange-and-yellow knit blanket Hannah gave me when I said goodbye to my vets. She gave me her address, so I can write, and I have a feeling she’ll chivy the men into writing me occasionally. The blanket is warm and soft, eye-smartingly sunny, and she had to yank it away from the unabashedly weeping Happy when he looked ready to blow his nose in it.

Officer Clare was there, his partner watching him closely, to apologize. He’s on suspension until the department psychologist clears him for duty. Some cases hit unexpectedly, especially if your wife leaves you just before. It’s no excuse, but the situation is what it is, and it’s not my problem anymore.

Gunny looked at me for a long time, then gently folded me against him. “Armistice, Miss Priya?” he’d whispered.

Something like.

Then Corgi clapped me gently on the back and announced my smile didn’t make him want to piss himself anymore. So, you know. There’s that.

I’m going to miss them, and it’s weird, kind of, that I find that comforting, but for so long, I haven’t really missed people. I missed my agents, but I was in such close contact with them that it wasn’t really missing them so much as wishing they were nearby. I missed Aimée, but missing her was caught up in everything else about the murders, tangled and complicated and really not fair to her.

We get the bags checked, and thankfully Mum gets to use the company card for the baggage fees because holy shit, and walk in a mass toward the security line. It’s insane, which isn’t surprising for Reagan midmorning.

“All right, you three,” Eddison says, pulling out his phone and using it to point at me, Inara, and Bliss. “Stand together, give me fuel for my nightmares for years to come.”

Snickering, Inara and Bliss lean into me on either side, our arms wrapped around each other, and smile for the camera. Eddison actually shudders.

“Three of the most dangerous human beings on the planet,” he mutters.

“What am I?” asks Mum.

“Their demonic leader.” But he kisses her cheek.

“We’ll write,” Inara tells me. “We’ll definitely let you know when this one’s parents wear her down.”

“Door’s always open.”

“So’s ours,” Bliss says. “You ever want to come on a holiday, we’ve got a bed for you. We’ll take New York by storm.”

“But will it ever recover?” Mercedes asks with a laugh, wrapping me in a hug from behind.

Goodbyes haven’t been this hard since Boston, but I’m grateful. God, I’m so, so grateful to have people who mean this much to me. Mercedes passes me back to Inara and Bliss for hugs, and they hand me off to Vic. He holds me close for a long moment.

“I am so glad you’re safe,” he whispers, “and that you’re starting to be happy again. You’re one of my own girls, Priya, you know that.”

“I do,” I whisper back, giving him a squeeze. “You’re not rid of us that easy.”

Eddison pulls me a little ways away as Mum gives her round of goodbyes. Inara and Bliss are a little in awe of her, I think, less in the you-make-me-speechless way than “I want to be you when I grow up.” When there’s a good bit of distance between us and the group, he pulls me into a hug. “So this thing that I’ve been very carefully not asking,” he says quietly. “Can you live with it?”

I’ve been thinking about that for weeks, even before my birthday. “Yes, I think I can,” I answer. “Not easily, perhaps, but that might be for the best. And you told the rest of the families; no one has to wonder anymore. I can live with that.” I rest my head against his shoulder, smelling the spicy cologne he uses when he can’t be bothered with aftershave. Or shaving. “Mum and I talked it over, and we’re going to spread Chavi’s ashes. We’re thinking a lavender field, with one of the castles and the river in the background? That should appeal to Chavi. We’re going to make this a good move.”

“Okay.”

I look up at him, and his stubbly cheek scrapes against my forehead as he drops a kiss between my eyes, just above the bindi. It’s only in the past week I’ve started wearing it again, the skin fully healed. “I’m going to miss you, you know?”

“Nonsense,” he says gruffly. “I fully expect Special Agent Ken to be giving regular reports. And, ah . . . you know, I keep accumulating a ridiculous amount of paid time off. Maybe I’ll finally dust some of that off one of these days.”

“There’ll be a room. Always.”

He kisses me again, then releases me with a slight push back to the group. Another round of hugs and goodbyes, and then Mum and I are in the security line. I clutch the folded blanket to my chest, and after fighting with myself for a moment, I look back over my shoulder at them. Inara and Bliss are leaning against Vic, comfortable and casual, and Mercedes is poking a blushing Eddison in the shoulder, the girls egging her on and Vic grinning like a loon as he pretends to be the adult.

The line shuffles forward and I follow, and Mum wraps her arm around my shoulders to bring me in for a kiss on the cheek. “Ready for this, my love?”

“Yeah.” I face forward and take a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

Your name was Jameson Carmichael, and Darla Jean was your everything.

You were just waiting for her to grow up, weren’t you? Old enough to leave your tiny Texas town and never come back, go with you somewhere no one knew you were related so you could start your proper life together. You never told her that, of course. You never thought you needed to.

Darla Jean loved you as her brother but that could never be enough for you.

You’ve punished us all for it over the years, for her perceived sins. So many lives you’ve destroyed, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and friends, the pain spiraling out to all those touched by us.

My mother gardens, but then, you know that, don’t you? Because you watched us back then, in Boston, and again in San Diego. She plans her gardens, sketching out the beds so she knows what she wants to plant where, and they’re always balanced. Here are the annuals, planted fresh every year. Here are the perennials, blooming and resting and blooming again. With the proper care, they keep living, keep thriving, as others die around them.

I’ve been alive the last five years, resting or hiding or whatever we want to call it. Grieving. Now, I think, finally, I’ll know what it is to bloom again.

And all it took was your blood, warm and heavy and sticky on my hands.

Do you like that, Joshua? That in your own, special way, you might finally be the thing that helps me heal from what you’ve been doing for so long?

The knife tore and ripped each time I pulled it out of you, and I think I understand why you always sliced and slit, never stabbed. Such a terrible sound, and the feeling of the flesh catching on those points. I hope you felt each one. Your favored ones, your good girls, you studied the body to make their deaths as painless as you could, but anatomy was never really my thing. If it had been, maybe I would have realized how easy it is to slam against ribs, the strength it takes to try to drive a knife through bone. Maybe I would have learned how tough muscle is, but how easily the lung gives way to a blade, with a wet, sucking gasp that announces its weakness. Maybe I would have read somewhere that blood is darker closer to the heart, or maybe it only seems that way.

But strangely—or not—I find myself thinking of the roses. You brought so many with you, filling your car. I didn’t realize until I was outside that you had so many more you hadn’t carried in with you. You would have made me a rose bower inside the chapel.

But the roses didn’t fall around me. I bled, true enough, but not enough to fall, to pool. That was you. It was your life painting the white petals, your own little Wonderland garden, and you never expected that your rules could change, be overthrown.

There were things I wanted to ask you, but even at the end, didn’t dare. You could have woken up, after all, could have said something that made it obvious—more obvious—that I knew who you were.

That’s okay, though, because you know what I realized, Joshua, there in the cold and the falling snow and the blood warm and wet and heavy on my clothes just like that long-ago morning with Chavi?

I realized your answers couldn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter why you did it, why you chose them, chose us, chose me. It doesn’t matter how you justify it, because the answers were never going to make sense to anyone else anyway. They were yours. And they were wrong.

They were always, always wrong.

You were one of the sick, terrible things in the world, Joshua, but no more.

My name is Priya Sravasti, and I am no one’s victim.