Page 93 of Girl, Unseen

Maybe that's what had been wrong all along. She'd been so focused on keeping things alive in the field, she'd forgotten to keep things alive at home.

‘There’re some reporters outside,’ Luca said. ‘I just want to talk to one before we leave.’

‘You? Talking to reporters?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

Luca said, ‘Well, you know how killers contact the media so they can spin their narratives? I always wondered why we didn’t do the same.’

Ella considered that. Years of chasing monsters and she'd never thought to turn their own tactics against them.

Trust a rookie to see what veterans missed.

They made their way down through the theater's bones. Past the crime scene tape and shell-shocked ushers. Past Lydia Soulwright's abandoned props and into night air.

Four months ago she'd thought she had this job figured out - chase the monsters, solve the puzzles, move on to the next case. But sometimes the best lessons came from unexpected places. Or unexpected partners.

Maybe that was the real alchemy. Turning darkness into light, one story at a time.

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

Thirty thousand feet above the Eastern Seaboard, Ella watched storm clouds gather below. A flash of FBI credentials at the boarding gate had landed her and Luca a spot in first class courtesy of the lack of flyers. Someone might as well be in there, the gate operative had said.

Ella made the most of the extra legroom seats, and for once, no case files littered the table between her and her partner. Just the New York Times with a headline that made her want to laugh and groan simultaneously.

ELEMENTALLY, MY DEAR WATSON.

Luca hadn't stopped grinning since he picked up his copy at LaGuardia. She couldn't blame him - it was his handiwork after all. He'd fed that headline to the reporter outside the Gramercy Theater.

'You're proud of that headline, aren't you?'

Luca's smile could have powered Manhattan. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘A little?’

‘Okay, a lot. The line came to me when I had Amelia in cuffs.’

The story beneath wasn't half bad either. No sensationalism, no breathless speculation about satanic cults. Just facts assembled into something approaching truth. Four victims chosen to represent the classical elements. One killer with delusions of transformation. The FBI's behavioral analysis unit saves the day.

They'd gotten most of it right, which was a minor miracle in modern journalism. What they hadn't printed was even better. Amelia Blackwood had sung like a captured songbird once Ross got her in the box. Maybe it was relief at finally being caught. Maybe the weight of four bodies had gotten too heavy to carry alone.

The marine biology connection had been the key. Amelia Blackwood worked alongside Sarah Chen for two years as a part-time lab assistant at the Marine Research Institute. That's where she'd gotten the burns - an accident with sodium thiopental while assisting Sarah. When Sarah had testified that the incident was due to Amelia's negligence, the compensation claim had been denied. Sarah's casual destruction of both Amelia's face and future had earned her a spot on the list.

The perfect inside job - who'd suspect the quiet lab tech with the scarred face?

The NYU angle explained Marcus Thornton. Amelia was a marine biology student there, and she knew about Marcus’ love of rocks through her brother, Felix. The hole in the quarry that claimed Marcus had been cut using Amelia’s father's concrete saw – heavy industrial equipment from the farm that could slice through limestone like butter. Just another tool Amelia had repurposed for her twisted alchemy.

Felix had also been the one to recruit Amelia to the cult, much to his regret. They’d found the poison in Sarah, Tessa and Victor’s systems; the same poison they found in the water bottles on Lydia Soulwright’s table. Amelia had also planted bottles of the same brand in the bathroom at Madam Butterfly's. Luca had seen someone go in there right before he did. Cultist Number Three – confirmed by several people to be Amelia Blackwood. This had been Amelia's attempt to frame Ezra Crowley for the murders by suggesting that he'd already spiked the bottles before Lydia got her hands on them. That way, police could still find him guilty even though he was locked in a holding cell.

The grave robberies made sense now too. Amelia had confessed that she’d been practicing on the dead before moving to living subjects. Each desecrated grave had been a chance to perfect her ritual before targeting actual victims. The ancient bones had been her test subjects.

‘You know what gets me?’ she asked. ‘All that planning. All those perfect murders. Then she throws it away on a forty-foot swan dive.’

‘Guess even serial killers have performance anxiety.’ Luca scooped up the paper and tucked it into his carry-on like a trophy. The gesture was pure Hawkins - earnest and enthusiastic and somehow endearing despite itself. Or maybe because of it.

Ella's stomach did that thing it had started doing whenever she looked at him too long. A flutter that had nothing to do with altitude and everything to do with the man who'd literally caught a falling killer because he thought she might need the help.

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