Page 93 of Cathmoir's Sons

He shakes his head. “Honestly not a spell I ever thought I’d need, but I made sure he taught it to me after that. Never know when you might need to shrink a moose.”

I laugh, earning a collective glare from a small group of green-cloaked men and women sitting on the far side of the huge Orrey that commands the center of the room, its metal rings tracking the slow progression of the planets around the golden sun. Unabashed, I lift an eyebrow at them. They mutter and go back to the collection of maps they’re pouring over.

Capricorns. So stuffy.

Evan, the least stuffy Capricorn I’ve met, doesn’t look embarrassed by the noise we’re making in his Guild’s extensivelibrary. He tips his head at the disapproving group. “They’re going after Ulune’s Daughter, too.”

Are they? I make a note to use some of the methods Dittman taught me to reconstruct evidence to steal whatever maps they’ve found. Am I above spying on them to give my girl a leg up in her search? Hells no.

“Good luck to them,” I say.

“You’re confident in Kellan’s team, then,” Evan says, paging through the police file on O’s death he managed to get.

“Very.” I pick up the copy he’s made me and start reading. “They brought in dogs. I didn’t realize.”

“To see if they could pick up any scents. They must have questioned where O entered the river.”

“The human police were suspicious, too,” I conclude.

Evan nods. “It’s not an area where there have been a lot of drownings. Although the river was high enough that he couldn’t have walked across it, it wasn’t very deep. No rapids. No hidden currents. They had a diver go in to see if there was anything on the bottom he might have gotten caught on but didn’t find any debris.”

I flip to a page of pictures. My throat thickens at the sight of O’s pale face, his eyes open and clouded in death, his lips blue. “Evan, look at this.”

I push the pictures across the polished wooden table between us, tapping the one that shows the underside of O’s jaw.

Evan tips his head to the side. “That’s not a ligature mark. Not a puncture wound. What is it?”

“It’s a rune,” I say. I unbutton my shirt and show him the matching mark on my upper chest. “Licyssa, Queen of Bile.”

“The demon? Fuck,” Evan says softly. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture, then taps away for a moment. “Not sure who is going to be less happy about that, Teddy or Jou.”

“Did you just text a lord of Hell?”

Evan groans. “Group chat. You’ll probably be a part of it, too, in a few minutes.”

Sure enough, as Evan finishes speaking, my phone pings. When I check it, I find [email protected] has invited me to join a group chat.

I accept warily.

BaronAsh changed the theme to Pizza.

BaronAsh set the quick reaction to .

BaronAsh: Makes sense that they’d invoke Licyssa if they wanted it to look like he drowned. Question is, why would someone risk a soul-debt to that poisonous bitch? What did your cousin know?

“That is the million-dollar question,” I say to Evan.

He nods and types into his phone.

Capricorn: Assuming it was the answer to who framed me, why would Hell be involved?

“Up until now,” Evan says to me, “I assumed that the motive for framing me and killing your cousin to cover it up was purely human. Venal, perhaps, but human.”

“Were you investigating anything other than Jade Kalveri’s death when you were arrested?”

Evan shakes his head. “Some petty thefts in town. Drunken destruction of school property. Nothing else approaching the importance of Jade’s murder.”

My phone pings in rapid succession. I thumb off the chat notifications before the green-cloaked group abandons their maps and tries to strangle me.

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