29. MIRROR, MIRROR
MIRROR, MIRROR
“BEFORE I FIND THESE PHOTOS,” RYE SAID, PAGING BACKWARD ON his phone, “I meant to tell you when we were eating dinner, but I have breaking news from Raven’s Head.”
A grateful shiver zinged up Embry’s spine. That’s right—they weren’t alone in this. Not even a little bit. “Ames left you a message.”
“It was actually probably Fairfax because the handwriting looks like a serial killer’s—”
“No, that’s Ames.”
Rye huffed out a laugh. “Okay, well, then, yes, Ames left us a message on my mirror.”
After a tap or two, Rye’s phone screen contained a picture of the mirror in the en suite off his primary bedroom—the scrolled frame around it was a dead giveaway—and a message left in what looked like blood but was probably the Revlon lipstick (shade: Super Red) that Ames kept in her bag for makeup emergencies because it was cheap enough that if something happened to it she wouldn’t be out a Sephora order.
Balthazar isn’t on campus.
But he hasn’t officially dropped. His stuff is still here.
He’s just gone. Not in class. Not in his room.
This… this was unexpected. The sorcerer wasn’t just hiding out after Friday’s homecoming court roller coaster and the shocking events of the next morning. He’d vanished.
Embry gaped at Rye. “How on earth did you forget to share this until now?”
“I didn’t forget,” he told her softly. Rye’s gaze rose to hers. “I just wanted you to eat first because you needed to. I knew this would distract you.”
Her lips dropped open to argue that she wouldn’t have been distracted—this was her friend, her corsage-giving homecoming dance partner. And now, what, was he the one Martinelli was referencing as “missing” when laying into Inspector Brown? Not Alistair?
Snippets of the conversation they’d overheard played in her mind. Disappearance. Concurrent search. Missing person.
And now—wait. Balthazar hadn’t vanished or even ghosted her. Not like Alistair.
“But Balthazar texted me.”
Rye blinked. “When?”
Embry slipped out her phone. “Sunday, before the coven meeting.”
Looking away as the lock screen flashed to life, she pulled up the messages.
As she did, a spike of something like embarrassment tore through her when the words appeared, but Embry tamped it down as far as she could.
Ames had already given her hell about the tone of her response, and even if she hadn’t Rye would’ve done it anyway. Because he was Rye.
Thanks. Are you coming to the meeting tonight? Miss you.
Miss you, too, Princess. See you soon, I hope.
Embry forced herself to catalog Rye’s expression as he read the texts, but whatever she was hoping to find there wasn’t telegraphed. He scanned the screen, his mouth held in a neutral line, his eyebrows steady, the line between them nonexistent. “Nothing since then?”
“No. And I only texted him in the first place because Ames and Fairfax said they hadn’t seen him all weekend. Wait—should I text him now? I think I should text him now.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, yes, do it,” Rye conceded, “but I would like to point out that you took photos with an old phone at the morgue because you’re worried about what the inspector will conclude from what’s on your active device.”
Okay. Yeah. He had a point. Embry could’ve dwelled on the fact that she’d already texted Balthazar, which was probably a mistake, no matter how careful she’d been about it, but another thought occurred to her just as Rye began to verbally work out the timeline at hand.
“So, either he went missing after Sunday night or—”
“He’s been missing this whole time and I’ve been texting the person who took him!”
Embry’s heart began to rise as suddenly the worst possible outcomes unspooled in her mind like a yeoman’s scroll.
“A sorcerer is just as rare as Oakley—what if this person stole him away? What if this person killed him? Can sorcerers be leached of their magic like vampires? Because of the dark well or whatever?” She gripped Rye’s elbow.
“What if he’s another victim and these texts are another way to entrap me?
” Her voice was definitely louder than the holiday antics of Home Alone playing on the TV. “It’s possible, right?”
Rye aimed to put a calming hand on her knee, but Embry wiggled away, agitated. “Wait—hold on. You’re jumping to conclusions—”
“I know you’re not a fan of Balthazar, you’ve made that more than clear, but he’s missing. And I highly doubt that is unrelated to what happened to Oakley, or to the fact that I’m the lead suspect in her murder.”
“And all I’m saying is that there could be another explanation.”
“What? Like the vampires stole him, too? Like, while they were doing a smash-and-grab to steal Oakley’s cadaver, they decided to make off with a whole magical boy as well? If their magic can be taken, maybe they can take the magic of another magical person?”
Rye waited until she was silent and breathing hard, her words squatting, hot in the air between them.
Embry wanted to steal that silence as her own to keep going, to keep spiraling into the worst thoughts possible, but she had the sudden clarity that no matter what she said next, what Rye would answer with would be just the same.
“The explanation could be that Balthazar is guilty.”
Embry felt the wind knocked out of her.
“I’m not saying that because I don’t like the guy.
” Rye’s hands flew up in placation. “First of all, research shows that vampires are the only ones with transferable magic as far as what’s in the Table’s archives.
That motive doesn’t compute when it comes to Balthazar.
Secondly, like witches, sorcerers have the ability to absorb vampire magic.
Thirdly, one thing guilty people do is remove themselves from the situation as fast as possible.
He has removed himself, except, conveniently, when it comes to talking to you. ”
Embry leaned into this sudden frustration, the familiar vexation of Rye Knighton. Always the devil’s advocate, always pushing, prodding. “If he left because he’s guilty, then why didn’t you say the same thing about Alistair when we learned he’d dropped out?”
Rye’s placating gesture flared again, and Embry’s anger flared with it, stoked by his neutral tone and unsatisfying reply. “I’m just saying, Balthazar’s disappearance is suspicious. More so than Alistair’s—even if diviners can also absorb magic.”
“Yet you’re not dragging Alistair through the mud,” Embry snapped.
“I’m not dragging anyone through the mud; I’m focusing our investigation on them for two seconds if you’d let me.
Will you let me?” Embry pressed her lips together, annoyed but silent.
Letting him speak—for two seconds. Rye filled that time with an extremely sarcastic, perhaps sardonic, question.
“Both of them are missing? I mean, come on. That is suspicious.”
Embry narrowed her eyes. “If you’re suggesting they’re working together on this, you may have missed the fact that they kind of low-key hated each other.”
“No one missed that. Their hatred wasn’t low-key; it was basically the broadside of a bus decorated in blinking neon.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was that bad, even if it was mostly subtext.” A small laugh crept out of Rye. “And it was from the very moment Balthazar showed up from wherever he was—”
“Romania.”
“Romania, the land of the vampires?” Rye arched a brow into his mop of sandy hair. “What was a sorcerer doing on a summer holiday in Romania, Embry?”
“He was with his family. I don’t know, going to the beach? Hiking?” She tossed up her hands. “What is there to do in Romania?”
A smug smile joined that arched brow on Rye’s handsome face. “I would assume that would have been a topic of conversation as you got to know him.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
Rye peered at her in a way that was as fiery as it was unsettling. As if he could see through her so clearly, he was counting the ridges of her spine. But not in a creepy way. “Woodcross, how well do you actually know Balthazar Hale?”
“Well enough.” That was a terrible argument.
This was not new ground between them. “I don’t need to give you examples.
In fact, if I recall, when I gave you examples of all the ways I was hanging out with Balthazar Hale the last time you gave me shit for it, you literally asked me not to list out all the places I see ‘the sorcerer’ when you can’t be there. ”
Rye had actually never gotten a chance to finish that sentence because she’d done it for him—accusing him of trying to rescue her when she didn’t need it. That had been a low blow, one Embry regretted immediately. One she regretted now. Even as it proved her point.
Rye cleared his throat, looked away. But then, quicker than she’d expected, Rye’s eyes returned to Embry’s face, the fire extinguished, the green again calm.
“Anyway”—he ran a hand down the stubble on his jaw—“I don’t think they’re working together, but I do think they hate each other enough that it is possible that one of them took out the other. ”
A laugh burst out of Embry. “You watch too many movies.” She flung an accusatory hand at the chaos of Home Alone as if she herself hadn’t seen it a million times.
“No, I watch enough movies to deduce that either Balthazar disappeared after finally whaling on Alistair because he divined you were a murderer or Alistair was so jealous of Balthazar’s obvious connection to you—as visually demonstrated by the corsage—that he went on a rampage.
” Embry scoffed and Rye tossed his arms out wide before plowing on.
“A rampage that killed both Oakley and Balthazar. Then he staged Oakley’s body to implicate you.
” She scoffed a second time, and he poked her lightly on the sternum.
“Because he loves you too much to murder you but not enough that he can’t stop himself from punishing you for not wanting him. ”
Embry wound her arms across her chest and gaped at Rye.