Page 83 of Girl, Unseen

The first threads of understanding began to weave themselves in Ella's mind. A woman. A deformed woman, desperate enough to kill.

Luca barreled on. ‘If our unsub identified with this book so much, chances areshe’sdisfigured too, and she wants to fix that.’

The puzzle pieces were rearranging themselves, forming a picture Ella didn't want to see but couldn't look away from.

‘There's more.’ Luca sounded like he'd run a marathon. ‘At the meeting. I saw one of the members, number four. I thought it was a man at first, but the build was wrong. It was a woman, Ell. And she had this skin condition. Flakes falling off her face onto her mask.’

Ella barely heard him over the sudden roar in her ears. A woman. Disfigured. Skin like parchment.

And just like that, the final tumbler clicked into place and the lock shattered wide open.

Clarity suddenly hit her like a thunderbolt. Three days of images conversations, and information suddenly aligned with exact precision. Details that she'd seen but overlooked at the time now took on a new meaning, and Ella felt like she – or Luca – had peeled back the mask and were glimpsing the true face beneath.

And a disfigured face at that.

You said female serial killers have different motives than men. With gender roles changing, do you think that might shift in the future?

Ella had seen this killer in the flesh three days ago. She’d been right there in the fifth row while she’d given a talk to starry-eyed students on life as an FBI Special Agent. The goth girl, the girl wearing black everything. The one with three layers of makeup and a scar on her cheek – a scar Ella now realized she was trying to hide. The innocent-looking student with a tattoo on her wrist that looked like a triangle inside a circle.

One of the symbols Ella had seen at four different murder scenes.

Then Ella's gaze fell on the photo on Felix's desk – him with his arm slung around a girl. A pretty girl, under the same layers of makeup, but with her face angled to one side to hide the scar on her cheek.

That's all you got. My sister hits harder

Sister.

‘Ell? You still there?’

She snapped back to the present. She was in a bedroom in upstate New York. A bedroom in the house of a serial killer.

‘Hawkins. Meet me at the precinct.’

‘Roger that, but Ell? Who is this woman? And how do we find her?’

Ella lost herself in her thoughts again. Knowing a killer’s identity was one thing, but stopping them before they killed again was another.

In her peripheral vision, she saw the book she’d thrown on the bed.

Beyond the Veilby Lydia Soul wright.

A psychic. The embodiment of spirit, as loose a notion as that was.

Sanguine, Felix. Love Lydia.

There were only two female members of the Order, Felix had said.

Ella couldn’t deny the math.

‘Just get to the precinct. I know exactly who this killer is – and who our final victim is.’

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

The Gramercy Theatre dripped with the kind of faux-opulence that made Amelia cringe. The Victorian-era venue suited Lydia perfectly – all that neo-Renaissance architecture screamedmystical enlightenmentto the kind of people who'd shell out sixty bucks to hear a middle-aged woman talk about chakras and universal consciousness. Just another temple to self-delusion, packed to the gills with crystal-clutching clowns.

Not that Amelia was judging. After all, she'd joined Lydia's little circle for a reason. The Order needed its spirit element, and who better than a woman who claimed she could pierce the veil between worlds?

Amelia touched her cheek, where the scar tissue had begun to soften. The burns from the lab had marked her for years, a byproduct of handling other people's poisons. But now they were starting to fade.

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