*
ELI watched Victor’s eyes widen, and then empty, his forehead slumping forward against the metal bars of the chair. Dead. It was so strange that Eli of all people had thought Victor was invincible. And he’d been wrong. Eli drew the knife out of Victor’s chest and stood there in the blood-slicked room, waiting for the telltale quiet, the moment of peace. He closed his eyes, and tipped his head back, and waited, and he was still waiting when the cops tore into the room, led by Detective Stell.
“Step away from the body,” ordered Stell, raising his gun.
“It’s okay,” said Eli. He opened his eyes and let his gaze drift down over them. “It’s over.”
“Get your hands on your head!” shouted another cop.
“Put the knife down!” ordered another.
“It’s okay,” said Eli again. “He’s no danger now.”
“Hands up!” demanded Stell.
“I took care of him. He’s dead.” Eli grew indignant as he gestured to the blood-soaked room, and the dead man bound by wire to the chair bars. “Can’t you see that? I’m a hero.”
The men leveled their guns and shouted and looked at Eli as if he were a monster. And then it hit him. There was no glaze in their eyes. No spell.
“Where’s Serena?” he demanded, but the question was swallowed up by the sirens and the shouting cops. “Where is she? She’ll tell you!”
“Put the weapon down,” demanded Stell above the noise.
“She’ll tell you. I’m a hero!” he shouted back, throwing the knife aside. “I saved you all!”
But as the blade hit the floor, the cops rushed forward, and slammed him to the ground. He could see Victor’s dead face from there, and it seemed to be smiling at him.
“Eli Ever, you’re under arrest for the murder of Victor Vale…”
“Wait!” he shouted as they cuffed him. “The body.”
Stell read him his rights as two cops wrenched him to his feet. Another cop hurried to Stell’s side, and said something about a fire out in the lot.
Eli fought their grip. “You have to burn the body!”
Stell gave a signal, and the cops dragged Eli back through the plastic curtains.
“Stell!” shouted Eli again. “You have to burn Vale’s body!”
His words echoed on the concrete as the detective and the blood-soaked room and Victor’s corpse vanished from his view.
XXXVI
TWO NIGHTS LATER
MERIT CEMETERY
SYDNEY readjusted the shovel on her shoulder.
The air was cold but the night was clear, the moon overhead illuminating the broken gravestones and the dips in the grass as she wove through the cemetery, Dol trotting along beside her. It had been harder to bring him back the second time, but he flanked her now, as if his life were truly tied to hers.
Mitch followed close behind, carrying two more shovels. He’d offered to carry hers, too, but Sydney felt it was important she hold her own. Dominic lagged several yards behind them, buzzed on painkillers and whiskey and tripping every few steps on a clump of weeds or a bit of dislodged rock. She didn’t like him this way—useless from all the liquor and mean from all the pain—but she tried not to think of that. She tried not to think of her own pain, either, of the gunshot still burning a hole in her arm as the muscle and skin slowly healed. She hoped it left a scar, the kind she could see, the kind that would remind her of the moment when everything changed.
Not that Sydney thought she’d ever forget.
She readjusted the shovel on her shoulder, and wondered if Eli would live forever, and how much of forever someone could reasonably remember, especially when nothing left a mark.
Eli, incidentally, had been a press field day.
She and Mitch had seen it on the news. The madman who’d murdered two people at the Falcon Price building, all the while claiming to be some monster-slayer, some hero. The press said he’d killed a young woman in the construction lot, and burned her body before torturing and then murdering an ex-con on the ground floor. The woman’s identity hadn’t been made public—they’d have to go by dental records—but Sydney knew it was Serena. She knew even before she made Mitch hack the coroner’s reports. She could feel the absence of her sister, the place in her where the threads had been. What she didn’t know was why Eli would have done it. But she meant to find out.