Page 22 of The Unweaver

On the tangled bed sheets laid the long-stemmed cigarette holder Teddy was never without. Tears welled but she wouldn’t let them spill. Not yet. She pocketed it.

Bane turned over a bronze pipe packed with sickly sweet opium. She yanked it away and stuffed it in a drawer, avoiding his gaze.

Her gut told her no one had rifled through Teddy’s things except him. This was the legacy of a man in the throes of addiction. What had once been home to so many good memories was now a junkie’s rundown flat. Reminders of him clung to the air like mildew.

Why hadn’t she checked on Teddy since the tunnels? Had he been suffering, crying out to her all this time? She had seen the resurrecting demons of his addiction and left him to be eaten alive by them, too consumed with the trivialities of her own life. Now his life was forfeit.

Bane passed a strange object from his pocket over the blood stain. A faint, phosphorescent outline of Teddy’s body glowed. Cora found herself reaching towards it when it dissolved.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Teddy was—” She jumped at a flash of light from the window. Headlights. It was only the headlights of a passing car. She released a shuddering breath.

In a voice soaked with anguish, she whispered, “He was… splayed out in a pentagram. With red salt and crystals at the points. His heart was c-carved out. Someonemutilatedhim. My brother, my only— First they took his spirit, and now his body. All that remains of him is a blood stain. Why would someone do this? I—”

“What kinds of crystals?”

His brusqueness took her aback. Bane had remained expressionless while he observed the remnants of the atrocities committed here. To her, this was the worst day of her life. To him, this was just business.

“I-I didn’t notice,” she said.

“Was anyone else near the flat or inside when you came in?”

Cora silently berated herself for not checking for a shadow-cloaked Umbramancer or the glimmering outline of an illusion-casting Lumomancer. The grim implications of his question sent a shiver through her. Had the causes of her grief also borne witness to it? Had she interrupted the culprits before they could clean up the evidence of their wrongdoings?

And she had just left Teddy here, defiled and unprotected, for an ill-fated confrontation with the man now coldly judging bothof them. It was her fault Teddy was gone, in body and in spirit. Her shoulders stooped. “I didn’t notice anyone.”

“Did you notice anything useful?”

Her head snapped to him on a pulse of anger. “I was a bit preoccupied.”

Frowning, Bane circled the blood stain. “Yet they still made an effort to clean it up after you left. That worries me the most.”

“Seriously? That’s what worries you most?”

His eyes slashed to hers. “Did Teddy practice the Profane Arts?”

“No,” she said, too quickly.

The Profane Arts corroded the body and spirit; had more than dope aged Teddy beyond his years?

Grief was a knife between her ribs when she remembered how ill Teddy had looked the last time she saw him. The deep lines on his face and dark circles beneath his eyes. The gauntness of his frame. And she had abandoned him to his demons. The knife twisted deeper.

“No,” she said with more conviction. “Teddy is—” Her throat constricted. “Wasreckless, but not suicidal. Someone cursed his spirit elsewhere. But… Why? Who would want to make him suffer like this?”

“A shorter list would be who wouldn’t want to make him suffer like this.”

Cora cut him a sharp look. The Realmwalker deserved the vilification he received. Hell, he vilified himself just by opening his mouth. His unapologetic bluntness stretched the restraints on her self-control thinner and thinner.

Hands fisting at her sides, she rounded on him. “I don’t need your bloody help making this any worse. My brother isgone—”

“Clearly.” He gestured at the room.

“Are you going out of your way to be a fucking arsehole or are you always like this?”

The words burst out before she could stop herself. She winced into the ringing silence. She had communed with enough of his victims to know people didn’t speak to the Realmwalker like that and survive. Divested of all her weapons and flirting with hysteria, she was in no position to defend herself. She tensed, awaiting what form his displeasure would take. Would he rip her apart with his words or his hands?

Instead, he nearly smiled. It was far from comforting.

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