13. Ethan
13
ETHAN
PERSONAL LETTER—NEVER SENT From: Lauren Blake To: Chief Inspector [REDACTED]
Something’s wrong at the port. The organization’s reach goes deeper than anyone suspects. Ethan’s getting close—too close. I fear what they’ll do when they realize what we’ve uncovered.
If anything happens to me, tell him the truth about [rest of letter water damaged and illegible]
Lauren’s photo stares at me from the center of my investigation board, her smile a ghost in the late-night shadows of my apartment. My lips still burn from Lucas’s kiss, and the vial he gave me feels like a lead weight in my pocket. What would she think of me now?
“Well, isn’t this delightful,” I mutter, touching the mysterious bruise forming on my neck. “The righteous FBI agent making out with his possibly criminal friend in a morgue. Really keeping it professional, Blake.”
My hands shake slightly as I pour another bourbon. Lack of sleep? Too much coffee? Or maybe withdrawal from whatever moral high ground I used to stand on.
An anonymous text lights up my phone.
Unknown: Check the obituaries from ten years ago. Sarah Deveraux.
The search pulls up a small article from a local paper. Young woman murdered in the bayou. Sister disappeared shortly after. The attached photo makes my breath catch—not just because of her resemblance to Celeste, but because of what Lucas said earlier: “Sometimes the brightest souls cast the darkest shadows.”
I touch my lips again, remembering the manic gleam in his eyes as he pushed me toward my breaking point. The way he called me Saint with equal parts mockery and desire. The intoxicating freedom of finally letting go…
“You’d hate what I’m becoming,” I tell Lauren’s photo, the bourbon burning less than my shame. “Or maybe...” I pause, Lucas’s words echoing in my head. “Maybe you’d understand better than anyone.”
The vial in my pocket seems to pulse with possibility. Lucas called it evolution in a bottle, but it feels more like permission. Permission to cross lines I’ve been toeing since Lauren died, since I first caught Celeste’s scent, since I let my ghost lead me into shadows.
My superior’s words from our earlier call echo: “You’re too close to this, Blake. Let it go before it becomes another Lauren situation.”
But he doesn’t understand. None of them do. Lauren’s death wasn’t random—I felt it then, just like I feel these connections now. Her case file sits in my bottom drawer, and I pull it out with trembling hands. Crime scene photos I’ve memorized, witness statements that never quite added up, and that one grainy surveillance photo of a figure in the doorway that haunts my dreams.
“I should have protected you,” I whisper to Lauren’s image. “Should have seen it coming. Should have...”
But should is a useless word now, isn’t it? Lucas made that perfectly clear between kisses that tasted like madness and truth.
I grab the Sarah Deveraux file, spreading out crime scene photos next to Lauren’s. Two women, both beautiful, both dead or vanished under mysterious circumstances. Both connected to something bigger than I can prove through legal channels.
My fingers trace the evidence web on my wall, red yarn vibrating like violin strings in my mind. Lauren. Sarah. Celeste. Evangeline. Lucas, with his brilliant chaos and dangerous temptations. All of them dancing around some central truth I can’t quite grasp.
“Ghost,” I whisper my old nickname for Celeste, “what would you think of your hunter now? Compromised. Corrupted. Coming apart at the seams.”
I pull up the security footage from Perkins’ club again. The platinum blonde in emerald moves with deadly grace, and I see it now—really see it. Not just Celeste’s mannerisms, but something darker. Something that calls to the shadows Lucas awakened in me.
The vial feels heavier in my pocket. Whatever’s in it, whatever game Lucas is playing... part of me wants to fall. Wants to understand this intoxicating dance of justice and vengeance that has Lucas so enthralled and my ghost so dangerous.
“I’m losing my mind,” I tell Lauren’s photo. “Or maybe...” I touch my bruised lips again, “maybe I’m finally finding my truth.”
My laptop pings with an email from the lab. DNA analysis from a strand of hair found at Perkins’ club. No match in the system, but when I compare it to the partial sample from the Magnolia Diner...
“Got you.”
The evidence is circumstantial, but it’s enough. Enough to bring her in officially. Enough to end this game.
But I don’t reach for my phone. Don’t call it in. Instead, I find myself pulling out the vial Lucas gave me, watching the iridescent liquid catch the lamplight.
“What do you think, Lauren?” I ask the silence. “Is this how you felt at the end? Like you were on the edge of understanding something bigger than justice?”
Only shadows answer, but they seem to whisper with Lucas’s voice: Even saints can fall, saint. Often in the most spectacular ways.
I set the vial next to Lauren’s photo, a silent offering to whatever ghost of righteousness still haunts me. The bourbon’s mostly gone, but I can still taste Lucas on my lips. Chemicals and chaos and something darkly freeing.
“You know what’s funny, Lauren?” I lean back in my chair, the room spinning slightly. “I used to think Celeste—my ghost—was everything you weren’t. Wild where you were controlled, dangerous where you were righteous.” I laugh, the sound hollow in my empty apartment. “But now I’m not so sure. There were things about you I never understood. Phone calls you wouldn’t explain. Meetings that ran late...”
I pull out my old case notes on Lauren’s death, the ones I keep separate from the official file. “Random crossfire,” they said. Wrong place, wrong time. But Lauren was never random about anything.
“What weren’t you telling me?” I ask her smiling photo. “What secrets did you take to your grave?”
The vial catches the light again, demanding attention. Lucas’s voice echoes in my head: “Sometimes the most ethical choice is to break every rule you’ve ever followed.”
My phone buzzes.
Lucas: How’s my Saint holding up? Still clinging to those tedious moral absolutes?
I stare at the message, at the evidence wall, at Lauren’s photo. Everything I thought I knew feels like it’s shifting, realigning into a pattern I’m afraid to recognize.
“I should arrest him,” I tell Lauren’s ghost. “Should bring them all in—Lucas, Evangeline, every player in this twisted game.” My fingers trace the bruise on my neck. “Instead, I let him kiss me. Let him push me toward something I can’t take back.”
Another text.
Lucas: The vial’s just chemistry, saint. The real catalyst is your own darkness.
He’s right. Of course he’s right. The vial isn’t what’s breaking me—it’s just a symbol of what’s already broken. Every rule bent in Lauren’s name, every line crossed chasing my ghost, every compromise made in the name of justice...
“Would you understand?” I ask Lauren’s photo as I reach for the vial. “Or would you be ashamed of what I’m becoming?”
Only shadows answer, but they whisper with possibilities. Of justice without constraints. Of truth without bureaucracy. Of a world where monsters face consequences, regardless of legal loopholes.
The kind of world Lucas lives in. The world my ghost moves through like smoke.
The vial feels warm in my palm now, almost alive. One drink and there’s no going back. One choice and Saint Ethan falls forever.
“I’m sorry, Lauren,” I whisper, uncapping the vial. “But maybe this is what justice really looks like.”
The liquid burns going down, tasting of midnight and madness and Lucas’s laugh.
And somewhere in the darkness, I swear I hear Lauren whisper: Finally .
The world shifts sideways as the liquid hits my system. Colors sharpen, shadows deepen, and every string on my evidence wall seems to pulse with new meaning. Lucas’s chemical catalyst doing its work, or just my last threads of sanity finally snapping?
“You see it now, don’t you?” Lucas’s voice comes from my phone, and when did I call him? “The patterns, the connections, the beautiful chaos of it all.”
“What did you give me?” My voice sounds distant, strange.
His laugh crackles through the speaker. “Clarity, my falling Saint. Just a little push toward your true nature.”
I stumble to my evidence wall, Lauren’s photo seeming to watch me with new eyes. The red strings between photos vibrate like live wires, and suddenly I’m seeing connections I missed before. Dates, locations, patterns within patterns...
“The club where Lauren died,” I hear myself say, “it was owned by the same company that just bought the Gardenia.”
“Fascinating observation.” Lucas sounds delighted. Is he here? “What else do you see, my saint?”
My fingers trace a path across the photos, leaving smears of what might be bourbon or blood. “The investigating officer for Sarah Deveraux’s murder... he worked Lauren’s case too. Said both were random acts. Both times evidence went missing.”
Reeves.
“The system protects its own,” Lucas purrs in my ear. “Rather ugly, isn’t it? All that corruption hiding behind badges and bureaucracy.”
I spin and he’s there, swimming in my vision.
I didn’t let him in. How did he get in?
“Stop it.” But my voice lacks conviction. “I’m not like you. I’m not?—”
“A monster?” He laughs again. “Oh, my Saint, you’re something far more interesting. You’re a righteous man who’s finally seeing the truth about justice. Tell me that doesn’t feel like freedom.”
My knees give out and I slide to the floor, surrounded by photos of the dead and missing. Lauren. Sarah. All the victims I couldn’t save playing by the rules.
“I can’t—” My voice breaks. “If I cross this line...”
“You already have, darling. The moment you let me kiss you. The moment you took that vial. The moment you first looked at our Chimera and saw something beautiful in her darkness.”
Our Chimera. Evangeline. Celeste. The ghost I’ve been chasing who might understand this madness better than anyone.
“She kills people,” I whisper, but it sounds weak even to my ears.
“She delivers justice,” Lucas corrects kneeling before me. “Just like you want to. Just like Lauren might have, if she’d lived...”
That pulls me up short. “What do you know about Lauren?”
“Only what the molecules tell me, darling. And they whisper such fascinating stories about your dead fiancée.”
The room spins again, harder this time. Lauren’s photo seems to smirk now, holding secrets I never saw when she was alive.
“I need...” My voice trails off as black spots dance at the edges of my vision.
“Rest, my Saint,” Lucas soothes. “Let the chemistry do its work. When you wake up, everything will be so much clearer.”
“You’re finally seeing it, aren’t you?” Lauren’s voice, so clear it makes my heart stop. She steps out of her photo—or maybe I’m stepping into my memories. “All those things I tried to tell you, but you weren’t ready to hear.”
“Lauren?” The room tilts dangerously. “You... you knew about this? About all of it?”
Her laugh echoes strangely, mixing with Lucas’s voice. “Oh, Ethan. My righteous, beautiful Ethan. I knew so much more than that.”
She moves through my evidence wall like a ghost, trailing fingers along the red strings. “You’re so close to understanding. To becoming what you were always meant to be.”
“And what’s that?” I manage, sliding further down the wall as reality fractures around me.
“A wolf instead of a sheep dog,” she whispers, her form shimmering like heat waves. “A monster who hunts other monsters. Just like I was becoming before...”
“Before what?” But she’s fading, or I am. The shadows crawl across my vision like living things.
“Sleep, my Saint,” Lucas’s voice mingles with Lauren’s ghost. “When you wake up, you’ll be ready to fall properly.”
“We’ll all catch you,” Lauren promises, her smile the last thing I see before consciousness slips away. “The shadows are waiting...”
I surrender to the darkness, Lauren’s secrets and Lucas’s chaos dancing behind my eyes. In my dreams, I run with the monsters instead of hunting them.
Some angels don’t just fall from grace.
They dive.