“I imagine. I... Do you want me to stay with you tonight? You don’t have to stay here. Or I could stay here. If you—”
“Sorina,” Nicoleta shouts. She whips around, and her eyes are bloodshot and puffy. Unlike the last time I saw her this way, I don’t make a move toward her. I’m frozen. Last time she cried, we learned Blister was dead. Rather than my heart pounding and urging me forward, I feel as if it’s stopped.
As Nicoleta runs for us, Luca squeezes my arms, as if bracing me for what I might hear.
Nicoleta throws her arms around me. “You’re back. We’re waiting on the others. The guard and I have already sent some men to find—”
“What happened?” Luca asks for me. My voice is gone. I’m petrified, shaking.
“You need to sit down. Sorina, look at me. You’re trembling. Sorina—no! Don’t go in there!”
But I’m already running to our tent. I don’t want to hear Nicoleta tell me that another member of our family is dead. I need to see it myself. I need to make sure this isn’t some terrible dream repeating itself over and over until everyone I care about has been taken from me.
I halt as soon as I cross the threshold.
The throat of the body on our living room floor is slit, blood staining her black-and-white-striped clothes and pooling around her on the floor. She appears untouched, except for her neck. There’s no evidence of her backing away or of a fight. It seems the killer attacked her from behind, and she crumpled to the floor, the shock rigid on her face.
I wail at the sight of her and grasp Luca’s forearm for support once he and Nicoleta enter. “Sorina,” he says, trying to pull me toward him, away from Venera’s body, out of the tent, but I squirm away and rush to her side.
There’s no point checking her pulse. No person could survive that amount of blood loss. But I do it anyway. I check on her neck. On her wrists. I press my ear to her chest and listen to nothing within it.
Unlike with Gill’s or Blister’s death, there is no shock. Maybe because I’ve been afraid this would happen for weeks now, bracing myself for another loved one to be ripped away. The pain of it seems to tear me in two.
My best friend. My sister.
The anger, the grief and the suddenness feel as if a screwdriver is jutting out of my chest and turning, twisting my insides together.
“I found her like this,” Nicoleta says, sobbing. Even though she’s standing, her posture makes it seem like she’s trying to be as small as possible, to sink into herself. “The guard outside didn’t see anything, but someone could’ve snuck in when his back was turned. He wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t realize Venera was here.” She hugs her arms to her chest. “Why would someone do this?”
I don’t have an answer for her. After a month of working with Luca to protect my family, we’ve come up with nothing, and I’ve failed them again.
“Luca, can you stand outside the tent and make sure no one comes in?” Nicoleta asks. “Let me know if someone comes. Sorina and I are going to clean her up. I... I couldn’t do it on my own.”
Luca opens his mouth as if to speak but says nothing. I doubt he is used to obeying someone else’s commands. He nods and moves to go outside.
Venera. And the Up-Mountain princess. Their two beautiful faces blur together in my mind, and I’m overwhelmed with the horror of it all. Two identical deaths.
Suddenly, it all clicks together in my mind.
Venera and the princess.
Blister and the baby prince.
Gill and the duke.
“We need to talk to Villiam,” I breathe. I grab Luca’s hand and pull him toward the tent’s exit.
“Where are you going? How can you leave right now?” Nicoleta asks, her voice high and squeaky. She tears a strip of fabric off of her tunic and ties it around Venera’s neck, just below the cut. This is not the first body she has cleaned.
“I’ve thought of something,” I say.
“The guard has already gone to notify Villiam.” She grabs a handful of white towels and lays them on the puddle of blood, sobbing silently as they stain red.
“They’re connected,” I say, and my voice speeds up in panic. “The princess from the wedding was in the Downhill today. She died the same way as Venera and around the same time. Then there was Blister and the baby prince in Cartona. Gill and the duke in Frice.”
“That doesn’t make sense. How could they have been linked to those people?” Nicoleta says. Beside me, Luca keeps a straight face, thinking.
I remember my visit to Agatha’s tent a few days ago. “Have you ever heard of a charm doll?” I ask.
“Yes,” Luca says, just as Nicoleta says, “No.”
“It’s a doll that is linked to a person,” Luca says. “Through charm-work. Whatever happens to the doll, happens to the real person.”
“But you’re not a charm-worker,” Nicoleta says. “Or...do you mean the killer is?”
“Either is possible.” It’s just like I guessed before. I must have two types of jynx-work: illusion-work and charm-work. Because I’m missing my eyes the same way Tuyet is missing a heart and that man is missing an arm. Never mind that I don’t know the first thing about charm-work. It fits.
But I never knew the princess existed until three weeks ago. I’d never heard of the Cartonian baby or the Frician duke. How could I have linked them? It doesn’t make sense.
There is the possibility, like Nicoleta said, that the killer is a charm-worker. There are at least a thousand of them in Gomorrah. But the similarity in the “phantom” body parts is too difficult to ignore.
The tent flaps open, and Unu and Du poke their heads inside. Their four eyes wildly scan the room, hopping from Nicoleta to me, to Luca, and then, lastly, to Venera on the floor. “W-what happened?” Unu asks.
“Outside, outside,” Nicoleta says. She lunges toward them, rests her hand on Unu’s shoulder and leads them away. It’s quiet except for the sound of them wailing.
“I’m so sorry, Sorina,” Luca says. He stands three feet away, the way someone would from a stranger. His face, as always, remains expressionless. I wish he would show emotion. I wish he would scream or cry or, at the very least, frown. To make it seem like he cares about the world and about me.
Then he turns around and kicks the leg of our table so hard that coins and kettle corn spill off of it.
When he faces me again, I see the failure in his eyes. The anger. Moments ago, I didn’t want to be touched, but now I run to him and bury my face in his chest. I squeeze my nails into his shoulder.
“She was my best friend,” I choke out.
“I know,” he whispers. He rubs his hand down my hair.
“She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I lift my gaze to his, suddenly determined. “We need to find out why.”
*