Signa’s throat tightened. So lost in her thoughts was she that she tried to reach for the paper herself, only for her ghostly hand to slip through it. Death stepped beside her, inspecting the pages from over her shoulder. And then he spoke aloud the truth that filled Signa with such dread—“Byron is investigating Percy’s disappearance.”
There weren’t just notes in the ledgers but also the names of vendors and friends. Charlotte Killinger’s name was underlined, and Signa noticed with great distaste that her own name had been circled. Elijah’s, too.
Behind them was a map that Death turned and inspected in grim silence. Signa turned to it as well, though she immediately wished she hadn’t. There were towns struck through with an X, and only one still circled—Amestris. She returned to the desk to find the same name on the ledgers, with the address of every inn and pub in Amestris noted.
“Byron’s searching for him,” Signa whispered. Her guilt was acidic, burning through her. It seemed Byron had searched nearly half the country by now. Page by page his notes lost their elegance, until nearly illegible writing was scrawled across the journal. Some of it was so difficult to read that she nearly missed a word at the top the most recent page: Murder?
The shadows evaporated from her like smoke as Signa stumbled backward. Death gripped her by the shoulders, steadying her.
“He knows.” Had Signa been in her mortal form, she would have been sick. As it was, she settled a hand over her stomach and tried to quell the burning guilt. “He knows Percy is dead. He knows someone killed him. My name is on those papers, Death. He must think it was me. He must know—”
“He knows nothing.” Death’s fingers curled into her skin. “We left no trace behind. Byron can suspect all he wants, but he doesn’t know a thing. I promise you, I took care of it.”
Perhaps. Yet all she could see were the maps with cities crossed out and the dozens of scattered notes written by a wild hand. Outwardly, Byron was maintaining his composure. But inwardly…
“He loved Percy.” Signa’s lips numbed at the words. “He loved him, and he’ll never see him again. He doesn’t even know what happened.” She felt as though she were a forgotten doll, held together by threads that were fraying at the seams. As cruel as Percy was in the end, did his family not deserve answers? She had hoped to spare them such a painful truth, yet there was nothing she could say without them knowing she was responsible for his death. If that happened… she would lose the Hawthornes forever.
“Signa.” Death’s grip on her tightened. Her body was flickering in and out of its spirit form, visible one second and translucent the next. Shadows wisped around her, frenzied. “If it wasn’t Percy they had to mourn, it would be Blythe—” He cut off sharply as the handle of the door wiggled.
Death threw his shadows around them. Though Byron wouldn’t be able to see or hear them, both Signa and Death kept as still as could be, feeding off each other’s anxiety.
Only, it wasn’t Byron who entered the study. It was Blythe, and as Signa stood there, invisible in her reaper form, she felt rather silly for not having first asked her cousin about the key to this room. She’d been walking on eggshells around Blythe when it came to her suspicions about Byron, yet she should have known that her cousin would be as suspicious of him as she was. Signa should have known that while she was avoiding her, Blythe was doing her own sleuthing.
Blythe was as quiet as the dead as she made her way to the desk, though not nearly as careful as Signa had been as she riffled through the papers. She didn’t always close journals to the page they’d been opened to, nor was she careful about keeping everything organized. So that Byron wouldn’t realize they’d been there, Signa took care to reorganize things every time Blythe looked away and moved on to the next parchment. They were to be little more than ghosts passing through, just as Sylas had told her all those seasons ago.
Blythe dug deeper than Signa had, prying her way through the desk until she happened upon a tiny velvet box in one of the drawers. She stilled, and Signa gripped Death’s shoulder. Even without looking inside, the contents of the box were undeniable. Still, Blythe pulled the top open to reveal a stunning emerald stone set on a gold band.
That’s Elijah’s desk. She threw the words at Death as his shadows stirred, seeming unnerved.
Byron’s been using it for a week. The ring could belong to either of them.
The ring likely wasn’t Elijah’s, given how he was only just beginning to spend his days without losing himself to thoughts of his late wife. Byron, on the other hand, had been far more invested in this season than ever.