“Ryker.”
The voice comes from everywhere.
I peel the mask away?—
“Ryker!”
I jerk upright, air tearing into my lungs. Frodo stares at me from where he sits at the foot of my bed, releasing a tiny whimper.
Raymond stands over me, one hand on my shoulder, the other already pulling back like he doesn’t trust what I might do half-awake. The room is dim, real, blessedly solid.
No fog.
No spotlight.
“Landon’s back,” he says quietly, his hand lowering to absently pet Frodo’s head, who has curled back into a ball. “And we need to talk. Now.”
I laythe photos out across the table one by one, careful, deliberate, like if I’m too rough with them, the truth might fracture further. Cheap printer paper, glossy in places where the ink pooled. Landon and I didn’t fucking know what will prove to be important, so we took pictures of everything. Every document. Every photo. Raymond printed them up for us, and now, seeing them like this, the truth of Aria's obsession plain to see…
Piper whistles low. “Jesus.”
Victoria doesn’t say anything. Her eyes move, calculating, cataloging, like she’s already rearranging the puzzle in her head and deciding which pieces don’t belong.
Jane sits opposite me, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles have gone white. She hasn’t touched the photos. Not once. She hasn’t even spoken. She’s spent most of her time here locked in one of the spare guest rooms and has only just made an appearance.
Landon leans against the counter behind us, arms folded, relaxed in a way that makes my teeth grind. He smells faintly like Ellie’s shampoo—citrus and something soft—and I want to punch him for it. Smug bastard slipped away, saw her, and came back like nothing happened.
I want to say he’s a goddamn idiot, but then again…I did it too.
It doesn’t change the fact I’m so fucking jealous I want to kill everyone here.
Raymond breaks the silence. “Were you aware of any of this?” He directs this at Jane, sliding a photo toward her.
Jane finally looks. Her breath stutters. One of her hands flutters up until it touches the bottom of her throat. “That’s…that’s a shrine.”
“Yeah,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “That’s what I thought too.”
Raymond flips to another image. A close-up this time. Newspaper clippings. Academic journals. Obituaries carefully trimmed, dates circled in red pen. Someone’s handwriting annotates the margins—questions, notes, arrows connecting ideas.
Victoria exhales slowly and parrots what Landon and I already concluded. “This isn’t admiration. It’s fixation.”
Jane’s hand flies to her mouth. “I didn’t know,” she says immediately, the words tumbling over each other. “I swear to you, I didn’t know any of this. If I had, I would have told you. All of you. I swear. I would never?—”
“I know,” I say, attempting to soften my voice, though it’s pretty damn hard. I’m not really in the mood to comfort her. But dammit, Ellie is making me soft. Jane’s eyes are glassy, panic swimming just beneath the surface, and I need to saysomethingbefore she completely loses it. “I know you would have.”
She shakes her head anyway, guilt etched into every line of her face. “I trusted her. I loved her. God, I didn’t even know she was connected to Ellie and her parents. I swear. She never mentioned them to me. Not once. I thought?—”
“You thought what she wanted you to think,” Piper cuts in gently. She reaches across the table and takes Jane’s wrist, grounding her. “That doesn’t make this your fault.”
Victoria nods, though when she speaks, her accent is sharper than before, more pronounced. “Aria kept her two lives separate.That’s classic. You don’t expose the ugly parts to people you might need later.”
Jane swallows hard. “I should’ve seen something. Some sign.”
“You’re not psychic,” Piper says. “If you were, we’d have won the lottery that one time we got tickets. Remember? When we used those shitty fake IDs?”
That almost elicits a smile. Almost.
Raymond clears his throat. “Jane. Hypothetically. If Aria was hiding something—something she considered truly valuable—where would it be?”