Page 97 of Black Curtain

We all followed his pointing finger, and I realized he was right.

The man wasn’t wearing a wig either.

Just a leather thong that made his dark brown hair into a ponytail.

It had to be getting into the later part of the 1700s now.

“So we don’t even know if those two still live here,” I said, frowning.

“And we have no way to ask this lot,” Jax pointed out.

“It still seems likely it’sthemthough, doesn’t it?” Nick frowned, folding his arms. “Brick at least seems to be strongly suggesting it’s them. Otherwise, why include them as the only ones who speak? And why program the recordings to tell us all that shit about Louisiana and the missing kids? They made it pretty clear they were killing people in New Orleans. Anyway, who else would it be? We’ve been given no other suspects. We haven’t even been given any real motives, apart from batshit looney pirate people. And we can’t exactly conduct our own interviews. We can’t even research it properly, not while we’re stuck in here.”

“Maybe vampires did it,” Dexter muttered from next to him.

Nick turned, glaring at him for the first time.

“Give it a rest, Dexter. Jesus. Did you see bite marks on any of them? Vampires generally don’t go around whacking people with hammers.”

“Some of them weren’t hit with hammers,” Dex retorted, pointing at the woman whose throat got torn out. “Looks pretty vampire-y to me.”

Nick looked at the dead woman and shrugged.

“Again, not something we’re likely to do.”

“Why? Because you’re so civilized?”

“Because we haveteeth,asshole,” Nick snapped. “And it wastes too much blood.”

There was a silence.

Dalejem looked at me, and at Black, whose shirt remained open.

He frowned. Briefly, he looked like he might say something, but Black must have communicated something back with his stare, because Jem looked away.

“Did you find anything else?” I asked the others. “Anything upstairs?”

“There’s a crib.” Kiko gave me a grim look. “Upstairs. In a nursery.”

I grimaced. “Do I want to know?”

“Which part?” Nick asked sourly.

Thinking about that, I realized I really didn’t want to know.

I asked it anyway.

“Any virtual images?”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “Nothing. We walked around it a few times. But he’d left an old wooden toy. It looked like some kind of bird maybe, or––”

“––or a bat,” Kiko interjected.

She exchanged looks with Nick, and I couldn’t help noticing how normal things seemed between the two of them now. I wondered if that was what was bothering Dexter.

“Not the only thing,” Jax said, giving me a hard look.

I glanced down and saw Jax holding Kiko’s hand.

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