Chapter 16
SEMANTIC SATIATION
Bronte
There’s a term for when you’ve read or repeated something so many times it loses its meaning: semantic satiation. A fancy way of saying the brain has grown so tired it temporarily forfeits any attempt at connecting the dots between what it sees and what it knows.
That’s where I am with these goddamn papers.
Sighing a white cloud in the morgue’s chill, I ignore the cadaver lying beside me and sift through Margot’s life now chronologically organized in a binder.
Since Emi reported her lack of findings, I’ve been searching for anything she may have missed.
As always, though, I land on the very last page with blurry vision and a kink in my neck.
I’ve read over this the most: Margot’s resignation letter. It’s framed with such cookie-cutter prose, it’s perfect—too perfect.
Which was Margot’s entire personality.
Setting the binder aside, I boot up my office laptop and scour medical records of the city’s victims of crime.
Since making the initial deal with Poppy, I’ve been searching every shift.
Now that we know the face of her saboteur, I’m looking for anything potentially leading to the cult sweeping through her empire and destroying her future like a god’s almighty hand.
Leviathan may be a faceless entity, but it’s composed of humans. Humans make mistakes. No one is truly flawless.
Poppy once mentioned casualties during her family’s turf war with the Volkovs. Her grandfather had been the king of Salem at the time, which was around the beginning of online recordkeeping.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I warn the old man who died in his recliner with 1970s porn videos playing on his living room TV. “This isn’t exactly legal.”
He remains blessedly unmoving.
Hours slip by. I nod off twice.
Nearing the end of my shift, I close my companion into his locker, clean up, and carry the laptop back to my desk. I have enough time to search a few more cases, so I click into the next in my queue.
The autopsy report is two decades old and describes the death of a man whose body had washed up on the bay shore, his throat slit. I scan through the gruesome photos, pausing with bated breath when I spy the Leviathan brand on his chest.
My eyes narrow at the name. “Soren Bonaparte?”
Quickly, I find the file of Sebastian Bonaparte—the criminal whose hide has wrapped a dozen copies of the same classic novel now sitting in homes across the globe.
I’m a thorough man. There wasn’t a single mark on his skin.
I don’t find any evidence of branding in the post-mortem photos, either.
The remaining report contains the same information Scull initially provided: relatively young, professor of occult studies, employed by St. Aurelius’s Liberal Arts.
My brow furrows. I flip to Margot’s resignation letter, addressed to St. Aurelius’s Liberal Arts.
My brother’s runaway fiancée worked at the same academy as a criminal who was more than likely related to a dead member of Leviathan.
A member who was murdered during the Morgensterns’ war with the Volkovs.
I immediately dial Emi.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” answers a voice that isn’t hers.
“Petit Diable?”
“Disappointed?”
“Not at all.” Poppy has been recovering this past week, resting as per my instruction. My world, though, has strangely dimmed in her absence. “Where’s Emi?”
“Masturbating in the bath. May I take a message?”
I choke on a swallow, dragging a hand down my stupid smile. “I found a lead on Margot. Possibly Leviathan, too.”
“Thank fuck. I’m going insane in this bed.”
Insane. The lighthearted jest reminds me of our last encounter, when I’d been dropping her off at Beelzebub’s.
Something wasn’t right with her on that ride back from Indigo after speaking with her parents.
She didn’t hear a word I’d said, like she wasn’t even next to me.
She was just staring at her tattoo, gaze glazed as if in a trance.
I’d be lying if I said it isn’t starting to scare the ever living shit out of me.
If she keeps throwing fuel onto the flames of her impending burnout, there’s a high chance she’ll start to unravel into panic attacks.
Maybe even hallucinate. Possibly hurt herself and others she doesn’t truly mean to harm.
Just like my father.
“Well?” Poppy snaps, cutting through my thoughts. “That’s your cue to tell me more, monsieur.”
As I catch her up on what I’ve found, my mind wanders back to that night, turning over every word she spoke and expression she wore for the signs I so clearly missed—the stress, the anxiety, the episode of complete dissociation.
Slowly, I reach a harrowing conclusion: Poppy isn’t drowning; she’s trapped at the bottom of a crumbling empire as the weight of expectation crushes her into oblivion.
“Bronte,” Poppy barks, startling me. “Are you still there?”
Angels, now I’m the one dissociating. “Oui, still here.”
“I asked if St. Aurelius’s would have a storage area for staff that are no longer employed.”
“Like an archive? I would think so.”
“Parfait. Are you free tomorrow night for a little adventure?”
Checking my work schedule, I frown at the graveyard shift penciled in for tomorrow night. Easy enough to switch, though. A few of my colleagues owe me favors for covering their past shifts when I didn’t have a life outside work and the studio.
“Depends,” I tease, if only to keep her on the line a moment longer. “Does this ‘little adventure’ involve breaking-and-entering?”
“Is that a problem?”
It should be, but the fact that she’s asking for my help means if I agree, I’ll be with her if shit goes south. Or worse—if she’s attacked by her anxiety and gets caught by campus security.
“Not a problem,” I say. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Poppy chirps, “It’s a date,” and promptly hangs up.
“Angels above, bless my soul.” I sigh, dragging a hand through my hair and suddenly fiending for a smoke. “I have a date with a fucking devil.”