Violent offenders are locked up in places far worse than Briar.

Rana’s discerning gaze sharpens on me. “You’re not walking. Agent Hernandez will drive you back to the inn. I can place another agent with the professor and Dr. Keller. In fact, I’ll walk you out.”

I can feel Kallum’s scrutiny on me as I follow behind Rana. I can feel his battle at letting me walk out of this room.

As I pass the cage, I stop and stare down at the moth. Still alive, it flops on the ground. I drop my glove over its body and scoop the insect into my palm.

As we reenter the basement, I see Mrs. Lipton seated on the cot. The woman looks out of place here in this dingy environment, her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders, her crusted diamond earrings sparkling under the fluorescents.

Her lawyer speaks to her in a hushed tone as she stares off vacantly, tears tracking her makeup, the search happening all around her.

“They can probe all they want,” she says, her voice pitched over the ruckus. “My brother’s dead. I said goodbye to him five years ago. I have nothing left to say.”

Her lawyer touches her shoulder. “Regina, please. Say nothing else.”

Soon as we reach the basement stairwell, I take a full breath, relieved to be out of the confining room, yet I’m hung on Mrs. Lipton’s words as a memory is triggered.

Devyn had said something similar to me outside the precinct when I accused her of murdering Jake Emmons: Jake was already dead. I haven’t taken a single life.

Hernandez shakes his head. “I can’t decide if she’s ignorant about a whole torture chamber being under her house, or if she’s hoping hosting a party right on top of it makes her look innocent.”

Agent Rana pauses. “Maybe she wanted us to find it.” At Hernandez’s confused expression, she adds, “Discovering the chamber might be a relief for her.”

I raise an eyebrow, impressed at the agent’s insight. “Agent Rana, you need to search the victims’ medical records.”

She regards me suspiciously, but something else is banked there in her gaze. “I’ve already had the unit combing through them.”

“Not the local records,” I say to clarify. “You need records that haven’t been through town channels. They need to be requested directly from any noted specialists.”

Understanding lights her gaze, and she nods. “The updated lab results on the remains should be in tomorrow. We outsourced everything, every piece of viable evidence is in the process of being retested. I’d like for us to go over it.”

I hold her dark gaze, sensing a tenuous camaraderie. “Sure,” I say, knowing I won’t be here tomorrow to go over any of it with her.

As long as I remain here, Kallum will remain here. And the only way I can ensure he won’t fall prey to his violent nature is to remove any temptation.

I’m responsible for the monster I created.

“But feel free to also email me anything you want eyes on right away,” I add, hoping she’ll follow up.

Her forehead creases, but she says nothing else as her phone rings and pulls her in another direction. The lead agent is in the process of securing search warrants for all the victims’ homes.

Rana is not like Alister. Despite the bureaucracy of her agency, she appears openminded. She doesn’t just want to resolve the case, she wants answers, the truth.

By the time I reach the night air, my head has cleared. Maybe it was a touch of claustrophobia, or the shifting light toying with my equilibrium—but I can’t stop seeing the moth flitting around the bulb, like a dark silhouette against the setting sun.

I climb into the passenger seat of the SUV, the frail moth still cupped in my palm.

“Back to chauffeuring duties,” Hernandez says, but there’s no trace of malice in his tone.

I look his way. “We need to make one detour first.”

With a resigned breath, he keys the ignition. “No rest for the wicked.”

A despondent smile pulls at my mouth. “Nemo malus felix,” I say under my breath.

“What’s that?”

“Latin.” I glance down at my closed hand. “It means, peace visits not the guilty mind.” Those debilitating thoughts which plague the guilty, we’re offered no peace to rest. “First from the book is Isiah, then later, Ozzy Osbourne.”

He chuckles. “Christ, he’s rubbing off on you.”

Literally, he’s all over me.

I shiver despite the warmth of Kallum’s jacket, and Hernandez shuts off the A/C.

On the terrace, Kallum said he first saw me in the setting sun, yet it was night when we collided on our path. With Kallum, it’s all poetry in the words, beauty in the language, the startling intelligence that seduces the mind.

And that’s all it could’ve been, an arbitrary verse delivered to seduce.

I let my hand fall open. The moth lies on the bed of latex, its wing crushed from the light. Or it’s possible it’s my doing, trying to hold on too tightly.

I can’t entirely fault Mrs. Lipton for her actions. When it comes to the people we care about, when we see them suffering, we’ll do almost anything to spare them pain.

Because selfishly, we want to spare our own.

Trying to hold Kallum back from his own violent, self-destructive nature is like trying to stop a star from going supernova. It’s paralytic, the fear that I can’t protect him.

I put Kallum in that cage of violence. I told him to sever the head. His psychopathy should have never come into contact with that level of violence.

I lower the window and open my hand, allowing the moth to float away.

If the moth survives, I can’t stop it from returning to its source of pain, just like I can’t stop myself from being drawn to Kallum. It’s the light we’re drawn to.

The light is so lovely it’s blinding.

Some cages, we design for ourselves.

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8

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ALCHEMY OF MONSTERS

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KALLUM

The marshland surrounding Hollow’s Row is haunted.

But it’s not ghosts or ghouls that roam the tall grass, or monsters that cling to the eerie swamp trees.

This wetland is haunted by pain.

It’s a ghostly whisper of agony breathed through the barren, twisted branches as it curls up spines and raises hair from flesh. It’s a mourning specter dancing to the rhythmic drumming that imbues the muggy air. And it’s the blood-red moon hanging above the bleeding wound of this land.

With every stroke an artistic slash of heartache delivered with purpose to paint the crime scene.

The dark energy buzzing through the sodden field grips the task force members as the science begins; the deconstruction of art and melancholic beauty to analyze and strip that which cannot be defined.

Pain.

It haunts us all.

As a scholar, I rarely praise literary works, but I’d be as banal as Wellington if I completely disregarded the works of a few select novelists in their alchemical pursuit. Such as William Godwin who—though his philosophical contribution was largely as a political theorist—explored Hermetic themes of immortality and life extension.

There is little wonder, then, that Godwin was the father of the renowned Mary Shelley. The intertextual links between father and daughter’s works are undeniable once you uncover them.

The desire to escape death.

Monsters and their makers.

In Godwin’s gothic tale of St. Leon, our main character is determined to obtain the philosopher’s stone and the elixir vitae—the alchemists’ elixir of life. But along his journey to acquire such coveted gifts, he finds himself becoming weak and isolated.

The moral of the story is a theme as old as alchemy itself: When we achieve superiority over humanity, we in turn become exiled from it, as obtaining everything we desire is a descent into a solitary abyss.