Page 99 of Black Curtain

All the seer refugees who’d joined our ranks.

We still had absolutely no idea how many of them were in danger.

Would my sister really sit back and let Brick kill all my friends?

Would shehelphim kill all my friends?

Would she kill Angel? Yumi? Hiroto?

It was too much for me to think about. Just allowing the thought in was enough to make me feel sick. I wanted to scream, to beat the image out of my head. Instead I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, shaking my head to clear it.

By the time I could see again, Black had pulled me against him.

He wrapped an arm tightly around the front of me.

He squeezed me against his chest.

I felt heat on him, worry for me, worry for our friends, a hotter ripple of that murderous rage at Brick. I felt him wonder about Zoe too, but I felt him try to do that part quietly, where I wouldn’t hear him wonder about Zoe. The problem was, I heard everything right now. I doubted there was anything that went through his mind that I didn’t hear… or feel… or see.

It struck me that everyone else was silent, too.

Everyone was thinking about Black’s words.

“We have to solve this,” I said. “We have to solve it right now.”

Everyone looked at me.

I felt all of them agree.

Black squeezed me tighter against his chest.

“I still don’t think there’s nothing here,” Black said, his voice hard. “As much as I hate to admit it… I still believe there’ssomethinghere we’re supposed to figure out. This is too fucking elaborate… even for Brick. If he just wanted us out of the way, he could have hit us all with darts and locked us up somewhere. He didn’t have to go to this much trouble. But whatever this is, it may not be as simple as a murder. I don’t think Brick ever called it a murder in that original recording, did he? He called it a crime. A mystery. Not a murder, per se.”

There was another silence.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Jax said.

He sounded decisive, and like he agreed with Black.

“He’ll lead us through it. I suspect he’s already shown us more than we realize… we’re just not looking at it the right way yet.” Jax squeezed Kiko’s hand, glancing at Nick, then at Dex. “We have to keep going through the house, looking at all the clues. We have to calm the fuck down. We’ll figure this thing out… and that vampire prick will let us go.”

He gave Nick a quick look.

“…No offense.”

Nick shrugged. “Heisa prick. And a vampire.”

“Then we just need to do what he wants of us,” Dex said. “Great. We do favors for the murderous vampire and he lets us live. What a great precedentthatwill set, assuming me manage to get out of here alive.”

“But what could it possibly be?” Kiko asked, exasperated. “Does anyone have any idea at all? What could he possibly want us to be figuring out from this?”

She motioned around the room, and I blinked into the sunlight, at the lawns behind the three-story house. I found myself wishing I could sit out in that garden, maybe with a cup of coffee and a book.

“All of this happened solongago,” Kiko said, her voice openly frustrated. “How are we supposed to figure outanythingwhen it happened so long ago? When he’s spoon-feeding us clues without context? When we can’tgoanywhere to learn anything new? When we can only interview fake people for stuff that may not even be true?”

There was a silence after Kiko spoke.

I frowned, trying to think.

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