For a moment, I couldn’t speak. My heart, my breath, every small tic, twitch, and tremor in my entire body just stopped, shocked into stillness by the sickening sight before me.
Then, in the next instant, movement, breath, and sensation all rushed back into my body, and I could feel my eyes slowly growing wider and wider, until it seemed like those two spider runes filled my entire field of vision.
The longer I stared at them, the more the symbols actually seemed to move, to quiver, to pulse, as though the bloody circles were connected to my own heart, frantically pounding in my chest. All I could do was stare and stare at those two spider runes—my runes—peering up at me like evil eyes and mocking me from a dead woman’s hands.
“Are those runes . . . were they made with . . . her blood?” I asked, my voice as shocked and breathless as I still felt.
“Actually, they were drawn with lipstick,” Ryan said. “But yes, those are definitely spider runes. I told Bria and Xavier the second I saw them.”
“But how—who—why—” The words sputtered out of my mouth, but I couldn’t get them to form a coherent sentence. Just like I couldn’t form a coherent thought right now.
No, that wasn’t true. Too many thoughts flashed through my mind one after another, all of them lightning strikes scorching my heart to ash. What connection, if any, could I possibly have to this woman? And why draw my spider runes on her palms? Was it a warning that I was next? That the killer wanted to make me as bloody, broken, and dead as this poor girl?
The questions just kept coming and coming, with no answers in sight. I felt like I was standing in a dark tunnel, and all I could see were the bright lights of the oncoming train, about to mow me down.
Bria shook her head, making her hair fly out around her shoulders again, as if she were trying to rattle this horrible sight right out of her mind the same way that I was. She laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Gin, are you sure that you don’t know this woman? Take another look at her.”
Ironically enough, she was treating me the same way I had treated Jade a few minutes ago, trying to soften the stinging, sickening blow of something that could never, ever be softened. Anger roared through me that my own sister was trying to handle me like I was some sort of victim.
I started to snap at Bria that of course I didn’t know this girl, but I forced myself to rein in my rage. None of this was Bria’s fault, and lashing out at her wouldn’t help anything, especially not the dead girl. So I forced myself to bend down and take another look at her, just as my sister had asked.
I carefully examined the girl, once again trying to look past the beating, bruises, and swelling and see her as she had been in life—her eyes, her nose, her smile. But her features remained as strange to me as before. I didn’t know this girl. I had never seen her before. I was sure of it.
So I moved on to what I did know: my spider runes.
My stomach squeezed, but I ignored the hot, bitter bile rising in my throat, bent down, and peered at the runes. Now that I was looking more closely at them, I could see that they’d been drawn with bright red lipstick, not blood, just like Ryan had said.
And I noticed something else odd. The rest of her was a bruised, battered mess, but her palms were absolutely pristine, with no blood, dirt, grime, or anything else marring the surface of her skin there, except for the two symbols. And it wasn’t just that she had my spider runes drawn on her palms; it was how clear, precise, and neat they were, each one essentially a carbon copy of the other.
Someone had taken his slow, sweet time marking her up.
My own hands snapped into tight fists, my knuckles cracking from the sudden, intense pressure, and the spider rune scars embedded deep in my own palms started itching and burning, almost as if someone was tracing over them with a tube of lipstick. The scars pounded in time with my heart, until I thought that blood was going to come bursting out of the marks, forced out by my own rage, disgust, horror, and shock.
Slowly, I forced myself to relax my fists, unclenching them one finger at a time, and my right hand crept up to the spider rune pendant hanging around my neck. It had been a present from Owen, one that I’d always loved wearing, along with the matching ring on my finger, a gift from Bria.
Until this moment.
Now the pendant felt as heavy as an anchor, dragging me down, down, down, and the ring was a circle of rot around my finger, spreading out to infect and destroy every single part of me. Just feeling the pendant and the ring touching my body, along with my Ice and Stone magic rippling through the surface of the silverstone jewelry, made me sick to my stomach again.
The spider rune pendant slipped through my cold, numb fingers and thumped against my chest, as hard as a sledgehammer beating against my heart, and I had to clench my hands into fists again to keep from ripping off the jewelry and trying to tear the scars out of my own palms.
“Gin?” Bria asked in a soft voice, cutting into my turbulent emotions. “Do you know her?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve never seen her before. I’m sure of it. But the spider runes . . .” My voice trailed off, and it took me a moment to finish my thought. “They’re exactly like mine.”
Even though it was the very last thing that I wanted to do, I forced myself to uncurl my fists again and held out my hands, palms up, so that Bria and Ryan could see my scars. They both bent down, comparing the marks on the dead girl’s hands to the ones branded into my palms. I made myself keep my hands open, even though I felt completely exposed, as if I had been stripped naked and staked out in a public square for everyone to gawk at.
After about a minute, Ryan straightened up and cleared his throat. “It would seem that whoever drew the runes on the girl is familiar with your actual scars. Or at the very least your pendant. You wear that necklace quite a bit, don’t you?”
“All the time now,” I muttered. “All the damn time now. Out in the open where everyone can see it. What a fucking fool I am.”
Ever since Owen had given it to me, I’d always been so proud of the pendant, since it was something from my childhood that I’d thought was lost forever. Even more than that, ever since I’d become head of the underworld, a small part of me had liked people knowing my symbol—and especially fearing it. I just never thought that someone would take my spider rune and do something so horribly sick and disgusting with it.