Chapter 8

Eight

B lood and screams coated Quinn's nightmares as she jolted awake.

The Looking Glass had worked extra hard last night, causing nightmare after nightmare after nightmare, all filled with vampires murdering her or terrible mirror consequences. Consequences like her kisses cause men guttural pain. Apparently, that was one of the infamous Harlowe Merriwether's consequences.

But one thing was certain: the Looking Glass was taunting Quinn.

She was used to these types of rotten dreams, living in the City of Nightmares, but they were still jolting from time to time—especially today. Every morning, Quinn cursed the Royalle House for making their stupid deal with the Looking Glass.

Fuck.

Drums pounded at Quinn's temples. The world tilted to the side, and Quinnevere Ashelle tumbled out of bed, shaking the dividers of her makeshift bedroom, and falling into the pile of ballet attire.

Quinn and her uncle lived in a humble one-bedroom apartment above the morgue at University Square. Because sharing a room was improper, they converted the living room into a cobbled-together bedroom of wall dividers, stacked boxes, and hanging curtains.

It looked far better than one would expect. But then Quinn was a perfectionist, so even under meager circumstances, she would make the room orderly.

She groaned and sat up, and a ribbon stuck to her cheek .

She had landed on the pointe shoes she'd laid out the night before. Even when one partied, it was important to be ready and prepared. Therefore, Quinn always chose her clothing well in advance and neatly laid them out so as not to get wrinkles.

Oh fuck. She was running late again.

Well, at least her birthday had been . . . absolutely, horribly, and gutturally confusing.

Quinn bit her lip, remembering the rite and remembering that mirror consequences awaited her future. At least her lips actually touched his, so she wouldn't incur the seven years of bad luck. But there were worse results of a mirror deal gone wrong, and she knew in her core that something truly horrific was about to happen.

Especially after Nightshade's warning.

Quinn stumbled around, hopping on one foot as she tried to dress. It would be the second time that she would run down the streets of New Swansea in a tutu, but at least this time, there'd be no crowd.

Her headache only grew worse throughout the morning, and her body was slow and lethargic. The world swam and tilted on its axis. Two hours into dancing, Quinn felt like her body might give out, but she pushed through it. Athletes didn't give up, and they certainly never gave in.

The night before was an intense blur. She barely remembered partying with her best friends, her jarring rite, and catching Emrys threatening Jane—who was strangely missing from class this morning.

An anchor of unease sank in Quinn's stomach.

Quinn turned on pointe, trying to keep her dancing accurate and beautiful. It was quite a challenge.

I stayed up too late.

It didn't matter if Quinn felt like she could throw up from her lack of sleep. She would dance the Captured by Death pas de deux from the ballet Lover's Lost . The dance took place in the third act when the main character, Isadora, tragically died in her lover's arms and was pulled into the underworld by Death. It started with quick bourrée steps to symbolize Isadora running from Death. But eventually, he captured her. The majority of the partner dance was done between Isadora and Death.

The dance was mesmerizing lightning, but for Quinn, it was an exhausting rain. With every move, she felt a pulsating stab in her calf.

A bead of sweat hovered over Quinn's eyebrow as she spun into a partnered pirouette. Wrecked with fatigue, she measured her arm movements and made her feet move at precisely the right time. But Quinn missed steps—a rarity.

When the music slowed, her partner whispered, "So you're hungover. I heard you were partying at the Viridian last night."

Shit. Who else knew that?

She had drunk one—or seven—too many drinks after her deal failed. Quinn groaned and whispered a not-so-pleasant curse back at him. Arthur chuckled and pulled her into a lift.

By the time the dance was almost finished, Quinn had missed her arabesqueseven times, and her lines were wonky from the pain cutting at her leg.

I will never party again. Or challenge another mirror.

The morning passed like wildfire. Quick and destructive. Quinn danced for three hours before meeting her uncle in the morgue.

Stepping into the lab, Quinn placed her pack down before walking over to meet her uncle, who examined a corpse.

Uncle Matias Thyssen was her only living relative and her mother's younger brother. He had ivory skin, dark green eyes, walnut hair, and an eccentric personality. He lived and breathed corpses, choosing to spend even his free time studying brains and rotting flesh. He mumbled to himself incoherently and hated uncleanliness of any kind. For all his knowledge about the human body, he knew very little about feminine issues and how to raise a child.

But he was the only family she had, and despite his many quirks and flaws, Quinn loved him—except when he told her to be practical and be a medical examiner instead of dancing ballet or when he reminded her that at twenty-three, she was entering into her spinster years.

It was in lectures that she longed for her parents or Gideon. Gideon was her father's best friend, who was like family. She'd never met him because he died in his mid-twenties. But even a fake, non-existent relative sometimes felt better than her real uncle. Apparently, Gideon was a rebel, endlessly charismatic, and deeply kind. He probably would've loved Quinn's passion for dance and cherished it. But he died far too young, and his death rocked the family to the core.

But, of course, everyone ignored his death.

It was a family trait. Refusing to acknowledge death, emotions, or hardship.

"Anything interesting?" Quinn asked, making her way over to the exam table. From afar, Quinn only saw the left side of the victim's face, which was bashed in and unrecognizable. A brutal murder.

"No. Just another dead gang member," Uncle Matias said, tilting the victim's head so that only the left side of her face was visible. He pointed behind her ear. "She has a Les Fant?mes tattoo." Quinn stepped in and inspected the marking of a mask with a snake coiling around it. "No need for an autopsy. We need to write up a report and send her on her way."

New Swansea was a city filled with so much crime that when a gang member died, the city refused to waste resources on an investigation. If someone chose to belong to a gang, they decided to live outside of the law—in turn, so would their death. That was the risk and deterrent of joining a gang.

At least that was the official reason for not pursuing gang investigations, but the real reason was far more sinister and because of the police's foolish mirror deal.

The institution of the police bargained to be able to solve any murder instantly, but their unintended consequence was that they were forbidden from acting on Mirror-Blessed murders. They couldn't arrest the murderers or even tell the victims' families who did it. People could bargain with a mirror as a group, and everyone belonging to that group was a party to the deal. That's also how the entire city of New Swansea was bound to the Looking Glass's nightmares, and the police were tied to this shit one, which left a third of the population utterly vulnerable. But not just vulnerable. Mirror-Blessed were hunted.

So, the five gangs of New Swansea emerged as bodies to protect those with magic.

And because the police were forbidden from investigating Mirror-Blessed killings, cases were assigned to medical examiners' offices and were rarely looked into. Unfortunately, murder was so rampant in the city that there weren't enough resources, so the royals—who oversaw all crime—agreed that the medical examiners would only solve non-gang-related murders .

But the royals didn't stop the gangs from investigating and seeking their own justice.

Uncle Matias started to wheel the victim into the cooling cell when Quinn noticed something strange. Puncture wounds under the slice marks on the neck.

Like a vampire's marking.

"Wait." She put a hand on his shoulder. "There is something off about this corpse."

"It doesn't matter, Quinn. It's gang business. Leave it alone." Uncle Matias continued wheeling the corpse to the cell.

"I know, but can I take a look to appease my curiosity?" Quinn asked.

The punctures resembled a vampire bite, and Quinn's insatiable need to understand things ate away at her core. She must know how things ticked.

Vampires were extinct, and it couldn't possibly be their markings, but it was far too interesting to pass up.

"Fine." He sighed. "You can have a quick look."

"Can I do the autopsy by myself?" Her uncle cocked an eyebrow. "It would be a perfect way for me to practice without any stakes. If I mess up"—which she wouldn't because she'd spent eleven years helping with autopsies and four actually performing them, but it always made her uncle happy when she volunteered herself to do them—"the stakes won't matter."

His face creased in thought. He probably weighed the cost-reward split. Quinn rarely volunteered to do an autopsy on her own. She enjoyed them, and she was good at them, but she'd always preferred to be dancing, and her uncle desperately wanted her to focus on a "real career" instead.

"Fine. But you have to perform the autopsy after our briefing," he said. "You can do the external now if you want, but you must save the rest for later. And you won't under any circumstance use the information you gather for any other reason than studying. "

"Agreed." Quinn flashed him her best attempt at a studious smile that said, look at me. I'm trying to make you proud.

She pulled on rubber gloves and started a quick external examination of the corpse. The two slices across the victim's throat were given postmortem based on the lack of blood flow, but the puncture holes in the jugular occurred while the victim was still alive. Interesting . Why cut the throat at all if the puncture wounds killed her, and why postmortem? To hide the punctures? Quinn traced her finger along the wounds.

Along the woman's wrist was a painting tattoo. Just like Quinn's. Strange.

What could it mean?

Gently, she turned the victim's head to see the other side of her face and throat.

Quinn jerked back and crashed into a tray of tools, which went flying, the metal clinking against the ground as they fell. Bile rose in Quinn's esophagus. She was going to be sick. Racing to the sink, her heartbeat erratically, and she braced her hands on either side of the metal and let out the remnants of her breakfast into the drain.

Then Quinn sank to her knees on the floor.

The body was Jane Whitfield-Wryte .