Page 37 of Whispers in the Quarter

Butshouldis 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.”

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