Chapter 11 #2
She tightened her grip on the teacup. “There’s nothing to talk about. It’s a closed case.”
“It always was, wasn’t it?” I kept my voice carefully neutral, though I had to lean slightly against the doorframe to keep my balance. “My father was his partner. Detective Eamon Rowan.”
Her eyes widened fractionally, a spark caught. “Eamon. I remember him. He was… kind. For a while.” She paused, her gaze drifting over my shoulder to the street. “Came round a lot after Daniel. Then he just… stopped.”
“He never stopped, Ms Thorne.” The words came unbidden, a rare slip into candour. “He just stopped calling. Stopped talking about it. But he never got over it. He’s not over it now.”
She looked at me then, truly looked. She saw the pallor of my skin, the fine tremor in my jaw.
“What do you want?” she asked, a sigh escaping her lips. “More questions everyone already asked? More blank stares?”
“My partner nearly died this week.” I watched her face for a reaction. Nothing. She was guarded, a fortress of old grief. “He was investigating something. Something he thought connected to your brother’s case. A new murder, Ms Thorne. A Calysteri, just like the ones Daniel was looking into.”
She flinched at the words. Her gaze hardened, and her mouth set in a grim line. “I don’t know anything about that. Daniel just… he just got obsessed. Everyone told him to leave it alone. The force. The other detectives. Even me. He just wouldn’t. And look what happened.”
“What was he trying to find?” I pushed, gently, though I felt lightheaded. “What answers was he chasing? Because my partner, Dane… he was looking for the same thing. And now he’s in a coma. Who doesn’t want these questions asked?”
My own flesh throbbed with a phantom burn of magic, a reminder of the Umbrakynn attack, the raw power that had erupted from me. I winced, involuntarily bringing a hand up to touch the spot.
Mandy’s stare locked onto the scar, a piercing intensity in her eyes. I automatically clenched, tugging the jumper tighter, but the damage was done. She’d seen something. She saw the shadow of pain, the residue of panic.
She took a shaky breath, then another, slower. “Come in, and…” She paused. “Call me Mandy,” the words barely a whisper.
She opened the door wider, stepping back to let me pass.
The air inside smelled of dust, old books, and something indefinable, like time itself.
The small living room was cluttered but neat, filled with mismatched furniture and photographs in tarnished silver frames.
Most depicted a younger Mandy and a laughing man who shared her dark hair. Daniel. A life before the shadow.
She gestured to an armchair draped with a crocheted blanket. “Sit, before you fall down, love.”
I sank into the chair, grateful for the support. The springs creaked in protest. Mandy remained standing, clutching her teacup with white knuckles.
“I’d offer you a cup,” she said, glancing at my hands, which were gripping the armrests to hide their shaking, “but you look like you’d struggle to hold it.”
It stung, but she was right. “I’m fine,” I said out of pure, stubborn habit.
“He told me to stop asking questions,” she began, ignoring my bravado, her voice softer, less defensive. “Said it was dangerous. But I don’t think he ever stopped asking them himself.”
Mandy strode to another room and quickly returned, a dusty, worn cardboard box in her hands. She placed it on the small coffee table, the box bearing the weight of secrets long kept.
“He kept this hidden. Before… before he left for good.” Her voice shook. “He never showed anyone these.” She hesitated, then slowly peeled back the tape, her movements deliberate; each action seemed to cost her.
Inside was a jumble of papers, aged and brittle. Hand-written notes on lined paper, cross-referenced with symbols only Daniel would understand. A printout, clearly from an old dot-matrix printer, crinkled as she nudged it. Coroner’s Report, D. Thorne.
I stared at the header, the paper trembling in my hands. This was Daniel’s findings report on one of the victims from twenty years ago.
I reached in, carefully. My coordination was off; I fumbled the paper before grasping it. It felt thin, fragile. I skimmed the typed notes, then my gaze snagged on a crudely drawn map.
It was Ravenholt, but sections were circled and annotated. One area stood out, repeatedly underlined and scribbled over. Highspire District.
“He spent so much time there,” Mandy murmured, watching me. “Going through archives. Looking for forgotten things. They didn’t like it.”
My eyes traced the map. Highspire, the shining, sterile heart of bureaucracy and power. A district where the wards tracked every spark, choked by the grip of the ACD.
Beneath the printout, a separate sheet. A sketch. Rough, unrefined, but instantly recognisable. Three intersecting slashes forming a crude triad. The same symbol burned onto Talia Merrin’s arm. The same sigil that had radiated malevolent magic from the Umbrakynn in the workshop.
Daniel had drawn it. Twenty years ago.
“He said the bodies were only the beginning,” Mandy said, her voice barely audible. “Said there was something else. Something… drawing them in.”
I barely heard her. My fingers shook as I moved aside the sketch. More notes. Lists of dates. Names.
And one name, scrawled multiple times, almost obsessively, in the margins. Korenth Vhail.
The name landed heavy in the silence of the room. Of course. Korenth Vhail. The untouchable architect of Highspire.
And Riven Ashborne’s handler.
Ashborne hadn’t been in the Archives by coincidence; he was there on Vhail’s orders. The man with the ice-blue eyes was more than a consultant—he was a weapon in the hands of the people who ran this city.
Daniel Thorne found the sigil. He found the truth about Highspire. He found Korenth. And then he ended up dead.
My father carried that guilt for two decades. Now the sigil reappeared. New Calysteri victims, and dozens missing. Dane almost dead, fighting an Umbrakynn marked with the same symbol.
It was far more than a coincidence; it was a pattern. A deliberate, long-game play. Daniel Thorne wasn’t just obsessed; he was ahead of everyone. He saw the threads, the dark design, long before anyone else. And he paid for it.
The unsettling heat of magic began to build in my scar, hot and tight. Grief had hardened into urgency. Cold resolve solidified in my chest, narrowing my focus even as my body dragged.
I looked up at Mandy. She was watching me, her face pale, understanding dawning in her eyes. The pain, the years of unspoken sorrow, finally found a voice.
“He was right, wasn’t he?” she whispered. “He really was right.”
I nodded, unable to speak, my throat tight.
Mandy looked down at the jumble of papers—the map, the sigil, the obsessive notes. She reached out, her hand hovering over them for a moment before she pushed the box across the table towards me.
“Take it,” she said. Her voice was steady now. “He hid it to keep us safe. But safety didn’t save him. Maybe the truth will save someone else.”
“I’ll bring it back,” I promised.
“Just make it count, Detective.”
“I will.”
I gathered the papers, carefully returning them to the box. I stood up, the springs of the armchair groaning again. I had to grab the back of the chair for a moment as the room spun, waiting for the floor to settle.
“Thank you, Mandy.”
She just nodded, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. “Be careful.”
I lifted the box. It was just paper and secrets, it shouldn’t have been a burden. But right now, in my depleted state, it felt like I was lifting lead. Muscles burned, a tremor running through my forearms.
I left the house, the sun now fully risen. The busy street still throbbed with human life, but it felt different now. Charged. The Highspire District, with its gleaming towers and political power, seemed less distant. Menacing. Korenth Vhail’s name echoed in my mind, a dark refrain.
I hailed a taxi on the main road, collapsing into the backseat with the box clutched to my chest. I gave the driver the address for the garage first. My car was ready, and I needed it. I needed the familiar scent of old leather and the illusion of control it gave me.
But more than that, I needed sleep.
My reflection in the rear-view mirror was a disaster—pale skin, dark-ringed eyes, a tremor in my hands that I couldn’t hide. If I walked into the MCIU like this, Hale would have me committed. I couldn’t fight a war when I could barely stand.
I picked up the car, the engine purring to life with a reassuring growl, and drove the rest of the way home on autopilot.
Back in the flat, I shoved the box of evidence under the loose floorboard in the bedroom closet—my own little dead drop. Then I collapsed onto the bed, fully clothed.
The game had changed. And tomorrow morning, I had to be ready to play it.