She cast her gaze over to where the shifters still surrounded Luce. “Not well enough.”
“That’s on me. I should have anticipated that Alvilda could have been going to meet someone.”
Becka shook her head. “We discounted Shadow-Dwellers from this a while ago. You couldn’t have foreseen it.”
He dropped his arms. “You’re right, but we’ll figure out what happened here.”
Quinn walked straight to the cabin and through the open door with Becka close on his heels. It was a small, one-room affair with a wood stove, sink, bed, and kitchen table.
“Oh my gods,” Becka whispered.
Blood covered the wooden table, oozing in rivers onto the floor below. It was still fresh enough to be dripping.
Brent’s white form hovered in the doorway behind them.
“Do we know the blood is Alvilda’s?” Becka asked.
The white wolf yipped. Quinn nodded, so Becka assumed that was a yes.
“Why would Alvilda have come here?” Quinn asked.
“Mimir said Alvilda had broken her oath,” Becka replied.
“Mimir?” Quinn replied, digesting her words. “You spoke with her?”
Becka nodded. “Alvilda was supposed to poison me and failed. Although according to Mimir, Alvilda failed due to some sham prophecy and she chose to punish her for it anyway.”
“Prophecy?” he asked. “You’ll have to fill me in after we get Caeda patched up. No doubt they’d met here before.”
Becka looked around the small space, noticing a shelf behind the bench on the far wall holding a few well-worn books. She walked over to it, taking care to avoid stepping her bare foot into the blood on the floor. Reaching out to the books, Becka felt the pressure of a headache threatening at the base of her skull.
“This is something,” Becka said, picking up one book, her gloves and her mental control shielding her and the book from each other. Flipping through the pages, she realized they were journals written in a foreign language she didn’t recognize. Becka held the book out to Quinn. “Look, it’s the same script as the Shadow-Dweller book you gave me.”
Quinn’s expression turned grim. “Which we still can’t decipher.”
“Why would Mimir have left this here?” Becka wondered aloud. Was this like the book Quinn had given her? Did it also have the ability to communicate underneath these odd glyphs?
“Who knows?” Quinn replied. “This place is far enough away from House Birch’s main holdings to be of little consequence, and likely let them work without interruption. I wonder how Alvilda met Mimir, how they decided to meet at this place.”
“She must have known of this cabin, as she grew up around Padrig’s farm. As she got older, she started attending parties and events, and then she’s been hanging off Calder’s arm for the past year or so.”
“If you wanted to get close to those running House Rowan, Alvilda was the perfect target,” Quinn said, running a hand through his hair. “I bet she was being manipulated by Mimir even before Tesse’s death. It couldn’t have just been Lagan, Woden, as he’s dead. Now Alvilda’s dead too.”
Becka looked around the room. “We don’t know she’s dead.” Quinn stared at her like she’d lost her wits, and Brent’s furry head was cocked to the side. “Okay, this is a lot of blood. So mostly dead? But why take her body? Who needs a dead fae?”
“Killers only hide bodies to hide clues.”
A revelation hit Becka hard. “Perhaps her body was covered in glyphs, like Tesse’s was?”
Quinn shrugged. “We can’t know now.”
Stymied, she needed to act. She had to, or the horror of this day would drive her to darkness. “What do we do?” Becka asked.
Quinn blinked, a ghost of a smile crossing his face, which was otherwise painted with frustration and grief. “We?”
“Yes, what do we do with this investigation?” she asked, clarifying.
“We…” Quinn whipped out his tablet and began taking pictures. “Catalog the evidence.”
Becka picked up the rest of the books. “Can I keep these?”
Quinn’s brow furrowed. “Sure, but let me take some pictures of them first.” His phone rang. “I need to grab this.” He stepped outside.
Becka stowed the new books in her bag and took one last look around the cabin, only to note what looked like blood smeared across the kitchen table. She drew closer and the words came into sharp focus.
FIND ME
A shiver ran down her spine. Mimir had left her those words, perhaps as a taunt? Perhaps as a threat? On a whim, she pulled the three new books and the original one out of her backpack. She opened them, one at a time, and flipped through the pages.
A vice-like pain gripped her heart. The words FIND ME were repeated, page after page, in all four of the books. Tears streamed down her cheeks yet again, but this time she didn’t wipe them away.
Becka returned the books to her bag. She shook her head, mopped the tears away on her sleeve, and then walked over to the table. She wiped the bloody words away into one giant smear. Becka used a drapery in the kitchen that was mostly clean to wipe her hand off.
What was she hoping to accomplish by destroying evidence? Guilt washed over her, followed by a wave of confusion. Becka didn’t fully understand why she’d done it, just that it had needed doing. Becka suspected the message, which Mimir had also spoken to her directly, was for her and her alone. She didn’t want anyone else getting caught up in the Shadow-Dwellers’ obsessive interest in her. Becka didn’t want there to be more Votts or Luces hurt in the crossfire.
She suspected the new book of glyphs was a clue to finding Mimir. She was familiar enough with how the one Quinn had given her worked and was already starting to develop a plan to study them further.
She turned and headed outside, again taking care not to step
