His fevered whispers and professions while he brought me to the brink, over and over, our passionate lovemaking an act of magick in its own right.

And in the end, all it took was one tiny totem—Alister’s cufflink I discovered near the stream—to unlock my memory and send me reeling through time into a hellscape of my own design.

All the tangible proof is right here.

It has been the whole time, locked in a file box waiting to be unsealed, just like the latent memories were locked inside me.

With an aching sigh, I trace my finger over the collar. After Kallum gave me his sweatshirt, he burned my bloodstained clothes in his fireplace. I can still feel the heat, smell the smoke mingled with his woodsy cologne as he stood before me, his intense clashing gaze cast down at my bare shoulder.

I lightly press my fingers to that spot, the feel of his phantom touch heating my skin before I wince at the tender pain from where Devyn wounded me. Then I turn the sweatshirt inside-out to see the rusty stain—his blood—from the sigil.

Parts of that night are still unclear. By that point, shock and sleep deprivation were wreaking havoc on my mental state. I recall the intoxicating sensation that gathered inside me as Kallum traced the rough pad of his finger over my skin, the tantalizing friction burning beneath my flesh as his beautiful, captivating eyes seared through me. The way he reverently held my face, his breath brushing my lips and drawing me further into him. The dare to sever the last tether to my sanity before his lips crashed against mine.

Then everything that was past and hard and painful faded beneath the promise that kiss held.

It was sensual, and erotic, but it was also safe. I felt sheltered by his arms, where I could finally break.

A mysteriously sexy and intelligent man in an all-black suit fused himself to my soul in that moment. A man I had only just encountered made me believe in the illogical, like I was meant to find him, to belong to him. A man who witnessed me murder in cold blood and kissed me afterward, then harbored my dark secret like a shadow of the soul, waiting for me to come back to him.

Truth is, Kallum Locke is even more of a mystery to me now.

Whatever transpired after he marked a sigil on my body is still buried in my unconscious. I can only rationalize my mind wiped the traumatic event to protect its host from a full shutdown.

Kallum was willing to take all of it for me, even do the time, in order to protect me, to keep his word.

“I won’t leave you in the dark.”

Then I walked into the Briar Institute and asked for his help.

Apparently, the fates are not without an ironic sense of humor.

I futilely rifle through the box, knowing my search will come up empty. The only proof of Professor Percy Wellington’s involvement in the Harbinger killings, that he was the infamous killer, was lost that same night during the attack.

The cufflink from the third Harbinger crime scene is gone.

“Dammit.” Expelling a weighty breath, I abandon the flimsy hope of recovering it now. Realistically, its existence means nothing to the case, which at this point remains open and unsolved. As the perpetrator is dead, the serial killings will go cold.

No new murders, no more leads. No more case.

It’s unlikely that even six months ago that piece of evidence would have resulted in Wellington’s arrest and subsequent incarceration.

I knew this as I watched him try to escape—that even if his cufflink wasn’t a tenuous connection that a pricy lawyer could explain away, I had already corrupted the chain of evidence.

I didn’t set out that night with the intent to commit murder. Wellington was alive after I defended myself. At some point it altered. I felt the dark current sweep over me when I looked into his eyes and was met with a soulless fiend. I’ve never felt such conviction—and I was powerless.

He had to die.

Grief is a sickness. It’s a corrosive acid that eats through us, burns away the very fiber of our existence.

I shouldn’t have been working the Harbinger case.

I’ve studied killers. I’ve walked in their steps. To do what I do, to solve the most debased cases, I’ve learned to think like them, to mimic them. I’ve sunk down into the roiling pit of their tarred souls.

And in that moment, I took on the persona of a killer.

To some degree, we all have a shadow. We look at our dark side in the privacy of our mind, where we can raise the veil when the threat becomes too great.

I bring the sweatshirt to my nose and inhale the lingering scent of woodsy cologne and sandalwood, Kallum’s scent mixed with a faint trace of smoke to rouse the chaotic emotions which stirred my soul that night.

Head canted, I curiously rub at a smudge of soot embedded in the fabric of the sleeve before I crumple the garment and stuff it down in the bottom of the box. Then I withdrawal the composition notebook.

Within the pages are my recorded thoughts and findings on the Medford crime scene, the Harbinger’s third victim. I kept these journals for myself, my personal notes not logged into the CrimeTech database.

I told Kallum that I didn’t regret what I did—and I still don’t. I feel too removed from that moment, as if it was someone else who swung that weapon. But I do need to find a way to offer the families of Wellington’s victims closure.

I stole that vindication from the victims’ loved ones when I took the law into my own hands.

Slipping the notebook under my arm, I close the box and lock the lid.

As I stand and look around the small unit, I realize this is it—the end of the mystery. I have my answers, as Kallum promised I would by the end of the case.

Only the case isn’t over.

As if to confirm my thoughts, my phone vibrates in my tote. I bring it out to read a message from Agent Hernandez. Special Agent Rana has requested my presence at the Hollow’s Row Police Department. The locals have brought in Tabitha for questioning. The waitress from the diner, the one who served me the coffee laced with a hypnotic right before Devyn took me to an abandoned mine shaft.

I run my thumb over the cracked edge of the phone screen, my thoughts turning to the woman who literally tried to rend me apart and consume me during her ascension ritual. I had wanted to reach her, to help her, but she was too heavily under the influence of her own drug and delusion.

At least, this is what I’ve been trying to convince myself of ever since Kallum disrupted her ritual and carried me away, allowing Devyn to flee into the night.

The truth is much more sinister, and painful, and comes with a substantial dose of reality that I’ll soon have to contend with. Despite the details I provided to Agent Rana during my debriefing, where I stated Devyn ultimately released me, I’m the one who let her go.

A choice I made knowing that Devyn is a potential threat. She heard enough of the damning details of what transpired the night I killed Wellington to piece together the facts. Only I couldn’t let her suffer a fate that I myself evaded.

Lying on the cold floor of the cave, as I stared into her haunted eyes, I commiserated with the immense pain I saw there, and I couldn’t let her be brought in like that. Not without knowing the full truth.

Why a brilliant and intelligent woman suddenly decides to try to deify herself and ascend into the Übermensch.

There are things she said to me during her ritual that shook me, that raise even more questions.

A part of me understands the lure, the addiction. I tasted the frenzy. I let myself become lost to it. The numbing balm is easy to be seduced by. If Devyn was provoked by her pain, then I’ve already walked in her footsteps.

And I can find her.

I touch my forearm, where the inked words of Voltaire have been defaced, the wound Devyn tore into me stitched in sloppy needlework with black thread by Kallum. Which is fitting, since it was Kallum who gave me the words to begin with.