"Dead? What do you mean, Brutus is 'dead?'" Mathilda demands.

She stands before the hearth in the library, a hand pressed dramatically to her breast. August, Aileen and Penelope sit in various chairs, while Ambrose and I occupy the sofa. Dane stands before the tall windows, center stage, while Freya leans against the wall by the door, a silent but keen observer.

It's a little after five in the morning, and everyone looks somewhere between alarmed and half-asleep, still in their nightclothes, a little vulnerable, and not quite their best selves. Which is exactly what Dane is aiming for.

"I mean dead, as in 'no longer alive,'" Dane answers. "I mean someone murdered him."

"Murdered?" Penelope echoes softly, sounding more interested than distressed, her pale blue eyes even larger than usual. "How?"

"Fire iron," Dane growls. "Brains bashed in."

"Oh lord..." Aileen sinks back against the cushion of her chair, smoothing her hands over her frizzy hair and looking ill.

I swallow a bit thickly myself. Dane has slipped into his 'detective' persona as easily as an actor assuming a familiar role. I know that his blunt, impersonal attitude is meant to elicit a reaction, but it seems insensitive and harsh, given the circumstances.

"So." Dane looks at Mathilda, Aileen, Penelope, and August in turn. "What happened tonight between midnight and three a-m?"

August looks up from the pattern in the carpet he's been studying and fixes him with a red-eyed glare.

"My fucking gift-relic was fucking stolen, that's what happened," he rasps.

His thin, greasy hair stands up in clumps and his hands shake. I'd expected him to reach for relief in a bottle, his greatest fear having come to pass, but he hasn't touched a drop that I've seen.

"That, and a man is dead," Dane agrees. "Now from what I hear, it's no great loss, but I still mean to find out who killed him. So start from the beginning. What happened?"

"Excuse me," Mathilda interrupts sharply, drawing herself up and lifting her chin, "but that 'man' was my son, and you will show some respect. He may not have been perfect, but he had a far greater influence on the world than you ever shall, detective. Why are you here, anyway? Why has no one called the police?"

"I think you know this isn't something the police can help you with, Ms. Macleod," Dane answers, frowning at her. "My sister and I have... a unique set of skills. We're your best bet—maybe your only one—at catching whoever did this."

"Really?" she sneers. "Because you've done such a wonderful job so far. Not to mention you're hardly impartial. Your brother is Ambrose's new fuck-toy." She jerks her head at me. "For all we know, he did it and you're protecting him."

Dane doesn't react, but Ambrose's eyes flare red and the heat coming off him tells me Mathilda is on dangerous ground. I lay my hand on his thigh and very slightly shake my head. Dane is baiting her on purpose for some reason, and turning her to ash won't solve anything.

"We agreed to come to this gods-forsaken house because you said we'd be safe here," she goes on, arms crossed over her chest, her silk dressing robe wrapped tight and doing little to conceal the fact she's wearing nothing underneath. "We've barely settled in, and we've had another theft, and now one of us is dead. Forgive me if I don't have much faith in your... 'abilities.'"

"Fair enough," Dane allows. "But something about what happened tonight is different. August didn't get a warning. So far the thief has tipped each victim off to the fact they're the next target—revealed exactly when and where she'd strike—but as far as I know, Ambrose was the last to get a note."

"'She?'" Aileen asks, looking up from where she'd been dazedly staring at her hands, picking absently at the paint beneath her nails. "So the thief's a 'she' now, eh?"

"That's our theory," Dane says. "I don't know how, yet, but something tells me this all connects back to your sister, somehow, Ms. Macleod. To what happened to Rosie."

"Half-sister," Mathilda snaps. "She wasn't a proper Macleod, you know. She was lucky to be acknowledged at all."

"Oh? Why's that?" Dane asks.

Mathilda presses her lips together in a tight line, but Penelope leans forward, her thin hands clasped beneath her chin.

"It was quite the scandal, at the time," she breathes. "Grandfather Macleod brought a woman home from his tea plantation in India—this was in the mid-eighteen hundreds, you know—as a 'maid.' She fell pregnant soon after—or maybe already was—though she was unwed. She died in childbirth, but grandfather took the babe in as his own—which everyone knew it was, anyway. That was Rosie."

Mathilda scoffs. "Can you imagine my poor mother, forced to raise that creature as if it were her own? Everyone called her 'beautiful,' too. She didn't even look like the rest of us."

Ambrose's scowl has grown so marked, I'm worried it might become permanent.

"It was your idea, wasn't it? For her to wed Aengus," he says. "You knew what the ritual called for—what would happen to her and her child. You knew and you—"

"No," she cut him off sharply. "I swear I didn't. Not... exactly. I..." She turns away, pressing her fingers to her lips. "I admit I wanted to be rid of her—through marriage, though—nothing else. And I may have... suspected that things might not end well for her. But I swear I never imagined something so awful. I never wanted her or her baby to die."

I'd been listening with interest, and also with a growing sense of anxiety as something that had been bothering me finally fell into place.

"Were Rosie and her baby, er... Were their remains ever found?" I ask. "After the fire, I mean?"

Mathilda shakes her head. "Just ashes. The fire was too hot."

"Oh." I fall silent and say nothing more, but Dane and Ambrose both cast me similar looks. Neither presses me, though, and Dane finishes collecting everyone's statements without further drama.

No one had heard or seen anything unusual until they'd been roused by August's shriek of alarm. Something woke him, he told us, though he couldn't say what. He always slept with his bottle—his gift-relic, that is—under his pillow, and it was his habit to check on it frequently. He'd done so, but finding it gone, had made 'some noise' in his distress and surprise. Then everyone had rushed out and seen me and Ambrose at the bottom of the stairs, at which point I'd ordered them back to their rooms.

The only person, it seems, who had seen and confronted the thief, was Brutus, and he was in no condition to tell us about it.

After a prolonged argument, Dane manages to convince Mathilda and the others to remain at Ambrose's house, still feeling that it's best to keep everyone in one place, where they can look out for one another and help guard the only relic that remains un-stolen—Aileen's paintbrush.

"We failed this time—and yes, I include myself in that failure," Dane says, "but we have one more chance. Judging by the note left for Ambrose, the full moon has some significance, and it's not for another week. We have seven days to solve this thing. In the meantime, I suggest you find a more secure place to keep that paintbrush, Ms. Thorne. A vault, for example."

"Seven days?" August moans. "I won't last seven days. I need that bottle, I—"

"Oh, shut it, Augustus," Mathilda snaps. "I need my mirror, but I've made do. Penelope needs her inkwell, but you don't see her falling apart at the seams. And Brutus, I daresay, needed that awful bust of himself, but..." She trails off. "Well, he was fine."

August's protruding bottom lip trembles, which, paired with his watery, blood-shot eyes, makes him look a bit like an underweight trout. It's hard not to feel sorry for him, if only because he seems so pathetic.

With their statements in hand, Dane excuses himself, and Ambrose and I follow him and Freya outside, where Brutus still lies, covered with a sheet.

Dane turns to me. "You know something," he says. "So spill it."

I bite my lip.

"I don't. Not for sure. It's just..."

I look at Ambrose and take a deep breath.

It was the strange smell I'd detected from the thief's trail—that scent of cool, shadowed water and a pleasant, unknown fragrance. As Mathilda had spoken, telling of Rosie's mixed heritage, I'd remembered where I'd encountered it before.

"I think that maybe either Rosie or her baby survived somehow," I say. "Or at least... someone related to them. I think I know who the thief is, and..." I take another deep breath and look up to meet Dane's eyes. "I think I might be working for her."

~ ☾ ~

As I explain about Shanti and her mysterious shop, both Ambrose and Dane's expressions grow increasingly dark.

"So do you think she might be? A naga of some sort, I mean?" I ask when I finish, chewing a nail.

"Nagi, or nagini, is the female form," Ambrose corrects distractedly. "It's possible. I haven't heard of them being particularly associated with books or knowledge before, though. Also, from what you've described, this 'Shanti,' doesn't sound like a violent murderer. 'Shanti' means 'peace,' you know."

I sigh. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's no connection at all."

Ambrose's brows lift and he slips his arm around my shoulders, giving me a gentle squeeze.

"You're a wolf, darling," he whispers, kissing the side of my head. "If you say the scent is the same, I believe it. Your nose knows."

He winks and quirks a brow and I can't help laughing at his awful attempt at a joke, though I immediately feel bad for doing so, given that I'm standing over a dead body at the moment.

"What about... him?" I ask, nodding at Brutus' sheet-covered form.

"I'll take care of it," Ambrose says. "That is, if there are no objections."

Dane shrugs. "None here. We've already agreed not to involve the human authorities, and I'm no forensic pathologist, or whatever. He's worm-food now."

At his words, a thoughtful look crosses Ambrose's face.

"You know... there is someone who might like to have a look," he says. "She's no trained scientist, of course, but... Well, she's made a study of such things. She might have something of value to add."

A few minutes later, Penelope joins us, her luminous blue eyes looking ghostly in the pale, pre-dawn light.

"Oh *my... *" she exclaims, when Dane draws back the sheet, though it's more an exclamation of interest and delight than shock and dismay.

Donning a single latex glove, which apparnetly she keeps on her person at all times, she picks up the fire iron from where Ambrose had dropped it, then carefully inserts the spike into the bloody wound on the side of Brutus' skull.

"Definitely the murder weapon," she concludes, extracting it and laying it aside.

We'd been fairly certain of this already, though, and from Dane's scowl I can tell he's unimpressed.

Freya's expression is less judgmental, and more curious. She has an affinity for the macabre herself, I reflect, though thankfully a fully functioning conscience as well.

Penelope isn't done, however, and probes gently at the area around the wound with her glove-clad fingers.

"Skull is fractured—spider-web pattern. Squishy. Blunt force, quite a bit of strength required. Killer would have struck from behind, and... above."

She mimes the gesture, bringing an imaginary weapon down at an angle against Brutus' head.

"Would have had to have been at least two meters, or about six feet, tall. About Ambrose's height, actually," she adds, eyeing him. "Yes, just about."

"You're saying the killer took Brutus by surprise?" Freya says.

Penelope nods. "Yes. Has he been moved at all?" she asks, looking at Dane.

He looks at Ambrose in turn.

"Not that I know," Ambrose answers, though his voice is quiet and unsure.

"Well, if that's the case, then I'd guess he was facing... that way." She points towards the street. "And the killer sneaked up on him from behind, and bashed his head in!"

She demonstrates the gesture again, with verve, before falling into her usual demure stillness once more.

"Death would have been... almost instantaneous," she adds softly, eyeing Brutus' rigid, pale face. "Regrettably."

"Regrettably?" Dane repeats, narrowing his eyes. "Sounds like you don't regret it much at all, Ms. Oakfield."

She looks up at him, blinking owlishly.

"You think I am a monster, don't you, Mr. Detective," she states. "You are right. I am. But not all monsters are born as such, you know. Some are made. And when you are born among monsters, sometimes you must become one, simply to survive."

With that, she gets to her feet, turns, and wanders back inside, humming softly under her breath.