After a decade with the SED, I shouldn’t have felt like a rookie on his first day. But walking through those main doors again, waiting for Robin to call my arrival up to Sergeant Hanna, made my confidence waver.

The three-week “administrative leave” hadn’t helped. Neither had relocating from Xavier’s warded sanctuary into my own place next door—a necessary change, since Jude’s ghostly commutes to the between-realms library were fraying the demigod’s patience and his protective spells. Packing Jude’s life, my life, and uprooting Ivan had consumed my days, leaving me to collapse into bed each night, haunted and exhausted. We had yet to move his grandfather, though that was in the works. We were trying to work out the issue of no elevator and that we were on the second floor.

The one bright spot was Wade had insisted on moving, too. We’d bought a four-unit building from Xavier. Having my best friend next door was the only thing that felt remotely like stability, especially when my boyfriend was a ghost, my job teetered on a cliff, and I now had a surly teenager to look after.

Victor had considered moving too, but his tastes ran more toward Xavier’s high-end lofts than the simple, sturdy apartments Jude and I preferred. I wasn’t surprised when I found him waiting by the elevators at the SED, looking tired and resigned.

“We should head to the morgue first,” he said, after Hanna’s not-so-subtle reminder of my probation—keep the shadow-beast leashed and follow the damn rules.

“For what?” I asked. It wasn’t like Jude’s body had miraculously turned up down there. We were chasing cold leads on Erlik’s larder, and every night I prayed we’d find what was left of Jude before the shadow god drained the last resonance from his bones. The problem was Erlik’s shadow magic masked every trace of his location, leaving us blind. If the larder was in a set location on the other side of the Veil, we had yet to find it. Which made us all suspect it was some sort of pocket realm.

“Cassidy.”

“He’s here?”

“His body’s been on ice since he dropped dead into Bowman’s apartment from the ether,” Wade said, joining us in the elevator and hitting the button for the lower levels. “Full autopsy is done. Cause of death is listed as systemic organ failure.”

“A polite fiction,” Victor stated without inflection. “The internal tissue was essentially soup.”

I grimaced.

Wade’s gaze flickered around the elevator car, searching for the ghost who usually hovered at my shoulder. Not that he could see him. Jude was there, but not here. His presence coiled with a ghostly chill around the ring on my finger. A faint tug would pull him to my side, but in the mortal realm, our connection was staticky. Seeing and hearing him was like tuning into a channel drowning in interference, a far cry from the crisp clarity we had across the Veil.

“Bowman’s still down there, too. His family’s waiting on release until we finish our examination,” Wade added.

“And Cassidy’s?” I vaguely remembered Jude mentioning the cop was a trust fund kid.

“Out of state. Unresponsive,” Victor said.

Wade cut in, “The team’s digging. They could be a direct link to Erlik’s network.”

“A troubling prospect,” Victor sighed, the sound weary. “Their extended family includes considerable mortal influence. Senators. Corporate heads.”

Perfect. No one knew how to bury crime better than rich assholes with power.

The elevator doors sighed open onto the sublevel. The sharp bite of antiseptic hit first, a brittle mask over the undeniable, cloying sweetness of decay.

Bodies weren’t my forte. Clues were. That’s why Hanna had added Jude to our team in the first place. Would he see something from the other side that could push us in the right direction? He hadn’t when we’d first processed Bowman, but maybe things had changed?

Wade pushed through the morgue door and spoke quietly to the ME on duty. The doctor nodded, gestured toward a steel table at the far end, then joined us moments later, tablet in hand. Without ceremony, she unzipped the body bag.

Cassidy lay on the slab.

On the outside, the body appeared intact. A little pale. Somewhat sunken, partly from time, partly from lack of fluids. The greyish, waxy pallor was normal enough. But the black edges around the mouth, nose, and Y-incision—restitched to prepare for release—were strange for a body on ice. The smell that escaped was earthy and foul, like spoiled meat and wet, forgotten soil.

“As noted,” Dr. Ling began, her tone clinical, “the internal organs show near total liquefactive necrosis. Consistent with a postmortem interval of several weeks, most likely over a month.”

Over a month. That timeline was impossible. It would mean Cassidy had been dead before he attacked Jude in the parking lot. Before he’d been walking, talking, and kidnapping victims for Erlik’s cult.

“What could cause accelerated, selective decomposition like this?” I asked, gesturing to the stark contrast between the ravaged interior and the relatively preserved exterior. “Something that targets the organs but leaves the rest?”

“There are documented cases,” Dr. Ling began, “involving cross-Veil parasites and certain terrestrial insects that consume soft tissues from the inside out. Some are small, like the so-called zombie wasp—it implants larvae that hollow the host while preserving the exoskeleton. But nothing on this scale or speed.”

“Larvae?” Wade repeated, the color draining from his face. “Cross-Veil parasitic larvae?”

The doctor paged through her tablet. “We’ve run full-spectrum analysis and toxicology. No known parasites, contaminants, or toxins have been flagged.”

“And Bowman?” Victor cut in. “Does he show similar liquefaction?”

She shook her head. “No. His remains show rapid, advanced desiccation. Mummification.”

I stared at the two bodies, trying to piece together what had happened. Erlik had worn Cassidy like a rotting puppet. Bowman he’d only siphoned. But why the difference? What made Cassidy a vessel and Bowman just a meal?

I needed Jude’s insight. That required privacy.

“Could we get a few minutes with the reports and the body?” I asked, knowing the cameras would still capture everything, but confident I could mask my conversation with Jude as talk to Wade or Victor.

Dr. Ling handed me the tablet, file already open. “Take your time. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Would you like me to open Bowman as well?” She gestured to the neighboring table and its black body bag.

“Please.”

I didn’t know if Jude needed to see the actual remains, but it couldn’t hurt. Dr. Ling unzipped the second bag, gave a nod, and retreated to her office. As described, Bowman’s body was different. Pale, but not gray. No dark staining around the mouth or the Y-incision marring his torso.

Erlik. The shadow god didn’t just kill. He consumed. He’d hollowed Cassidy out from the inside, taken the resonant energy, the life force, and left the biological machinery to collapse in on itself. A used-up battery, corroded at the core.

I tugged on the bond to Jude, hoping we were deep enough across the Veil for a strong connection. A few heartbeats later, he shimmered into view beside me, arms crossed tightly, expression grim.

Without thinking, I reached for him.

My hand passed through his shoulder like mist through smoke. Cold. Empty. Nothing.

I pulled back fast. Hoping no one had noticed.

Jude’s expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes flickered, pain, maybe, or resignation. He’d stopped flinching weeks ago.

I couldn’t stop reaching for him every time I saw him.

He could phase into me, lend me his Weaver’s sight, but the cost to us both was steep, often hours of sleep on my part, banishment to the between-realms on his.

“What do you see?” I asked, directing the question vaguely toward Victor and Wade, but letting my gaze flick to Jude’s location.

“Nothing,” Jude said, his voice a cold whisper in my mind. “No life thread. No weave resonance. No echo of a soul. It’s just… hollow. Whatever they were has been completely erased.”

Only empty shells remained. Proof they had once lived. A testament to what had unmade them.

I focused on Jude, searching for a way to translate what he saw. His hand slipped into mine, a cold shock that bloomed into a shared vision. The room shifted. Layers peeled back, turning my vision to that of my Bastion form without the change, and I saw what Jude saw.

Not threads, as he described them. Instead, a flow.

Ley lines spread out beneath the room like a river system—some wide and bright, others thin and flickering. I could feel them now, the way I’d once felt the shift of my cat form. The Bastion’s sight showed me the whole network at once. The current. The places where energy ran strong and the places where it had gone still. While Jude could focus on the most minute line of energy, calling it a thread, I could only decipher the brightest of currents. And neither of these men were connected at all to any of it.

Cassidy’s body was a dead zone. A black hole in the flow. Whatever energy had once moved through him was gone. Not just stopped, but erased. Bowman’s body was different. Faint. Flickering. Like a river that had been diverted, not dammed.

Wade moved closer, his tall frame a sudden shield between me and the overhead cameras. He touched my shoulder, his voice low. “Your eyes changed.”

In the reflection of a stainless-steel tray, I saw it—my irises swimming with faint, silver stars that spiraled and shifted like alien constellations. The Bastion’s mark. Proof I belonged to something older than the SED, something beyond any mortal chain of command.

The stars faded as I looked away, but the chill in the room remained.

Through the quiet, mental link I shared with Victor, I sent him the echo of what I’d seen, the erasure from the weave. That was the whole reason Zhenjun demanded an end to Erlik. The shadow god wasn’t just killing people. He was unmaking them. Tearing them out of the ley lines so completely that nothing remained. In Jude’s evaluation, with the energy of existence reflecting like a weave of finely woven threads, that meant Erlik punched holes in all of existence until things began to unravel.

Victor nodded and repeated what I’d shown him, phrasing it through his vampire senses as though the loss of blood to the bodies left them more than just empty, but completely unnatural.

Beside me, Jude stiffened. Jealousy spiked through our bond, cold and sharp. I could feel him trying to shove it down. Our mate bond had been too new to settle any disruptions caused by outside forces. I could only hope that once we retrieved his remains and stabilized his corporeal form, we could fix that.

Jude said nothing. Slowly pulled away. His last touch left me wishing I could wrap my arms around him and comfort him. Instead, he retreated, taking his scattered emotions with him.

“Nothing that leads us to Erlik or the cult,” Wade said, disappointment thick in his voice. Or Jude’s body, went unsaid.

“No.” It was the same dead end we’d hit for weeks. Bureaucratic walls. Redacted files. Witnesses who’d seen nothing. The team had scoured every document on every cult victim and suspect. It all amounted to zero.

What now?

Jude paced beside me; his attention fixed on the door as if it were an exit from a nightmare. With his energy withdrawn, I couldn’t tell if it was the morgue unsettling him or something else.

I shifted my weight, turning toward the door.

Jude winced. Something flickered across his face as he whispered, “Remi’s in the hall.”

My jealousy around Remi was as reflexive as Jude’s around Victor, though mine had a concrete cause. The fae-touched practitioner had once kissed Jude to siphon his energy and seal a portal. When Jude was taken by Erlik in Bowman’s apartment, I’d blamed Remi’s magic for triggering the kidnapping. But Remi had paid a steep price. The backlash from Jude unraveling the death curse placed on Cassidy had nearly liquefied Remi’s mind. He’d only been out of the hospital a few days.

I was trying not to be an asshole about it.

Trying.

“Okay,” I said, offering nothing more as I moved toward the door.

Remi paced the hall outside the morgue. He didn’t approach until Wade returned the tablet and thanked Dr. Ling. Only then did his steps slow, his gaze lifting to meet mine. Oddly, his gaze swept to my side to where Jude stood.

Could he see Jude?

“You wanted a link to the changeling, right?” Remi asked, voice low. “Saw a patient in the hospital with that same dark stain. Like the one the Thayerson’s kid is left with.”