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Ruan’s skin was oddly pale as he picked up his teas and wooden box of herbs. He’d been strangely quiet on the way back to the boardinghouse. Brows drawn up, I reached for him but he slipped away silently out the door and down the stairs. I didn’t like that look on his face, but I’d worry about that later. It was likely just Mr. Owen reminding him of my ill-advised adventures that caused such a reaction.

With an exasperated sigh I flopped down in the wooden chair across from Mr. Owen with a thud and leaned my head back, staring at the ceiling of the attic room. The skin of my scalp tugged against the stitches and I shifted my position. It wouldn’t do to pull one out and have Ruan sew me back up again.

“Now tell me, lass. What did you find tonight? I heard the pair of you leave, come back, then leave again within the hour.” He narrowed his dark brown gaze, pinning me like a butterfly under glass.

“Fix me a drink and I’ll tell you everything.” I gestured to my mostly empty bottle of wine with two fingers. Mr. Owen let out an irritated harrumph, but did as I asked. Once I began to tell him what we’d discovered the words poured out of me like water. Everything I’d learned of my mother, and the murders. The rumors of the lake and the missing child. The peculiar electrocution of the orderly, and the discovery of the baptismal record hidden in Narcisse’s throat. But for some reason I kept my suppositions Félix might be a pellar to myself. Mr. Owen had a penchant for that particular sort of witch, and it would do us no good to distract him from our current predicament. I grew increasingly convinced Mr. Owen was correct, and the otherworld was at play. But until I knew precisely how, I wasn’t about to share that supposition with him.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, struggling to make sense of what we’d learned tonight. “What I cannot figure out is how one gets struck by lightning when there is none? I, for one, do not believe in divine retribution though it might come in handy from time to time.”

“One doesn’t,” Mr. Owen grumbled beneath his breath, taking a sip from his wine. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve taught you anything in these last four years besides how to make a decent cocktail.”

“And you have such vast experience in diagnosing murder?” I narrowed my gaze, tugging my legs up into the chair with me, bare feet propped on the edge far above the chilly floorboards. “You’re as like as not to tell me he was taken by a selkie or some other nonsense.”

“One shouldn’t speak of the fair folk. Even in jest.” Mr. Owen leaned forward in his chair. “There’s electricity in that hospital, is there not?”

“Of course, there—” I stopped mid-sentence and smacked my hand on the table. Cursing myself for not having even countenanced the possibility. “Of course there is … he wasn’t struck by lightning at all. He was killed at the power station…”

Ruan had returned the very instant of my outburst. He stood there in the doorway, steaming teapot in hand, turning the notion over in his head. “How would he have gotten from there to the lake?”

“The same way they got him to the hospital, I presume. It would be easy enough to carry the fellow. The power station lies at the edge of the wood—Dr. Peterson had pointed it out to me on our walk.” I worried my lower lip, shifting in my chair. “Our killer could have killed him there and left his body until nightfall. Then, under cover of darkness taken him to the woods. It’s the perfect place to hide something.”

“Or someone…” Ruan growled, a peculiar shadow clouding his expression.

I rolled my eyes and quietly padded around the room, hands on my hips, my glass hanging loosely from my fingers. “We have to go to the power station—see if our killer left any clues.”

Mr. Owen looked properly satisfied I’d hit upon a new direction for my investigation, but there was a small flicker of amusement in his eyes. Something he was not saying. My heart sank like a stone. I knew that look all too well—Mr. Owen knew something I did not. “What … what have I missed?”

He winked. Winked. The damnable man. “Are you not going to ask me what I’ve found, my lamb, while you were out risking your neck?”

I finished off my wine and quickly topped it back up because I sensed I would need it for whatever came next.

Mr. Owen rubbed his hand over his full white beard. “It might interest you to know that your orderly wasn’t the first soul to die of unexplained lightning in this little hamlet.”

My breath stilled in my chest as I recalled what Alfred had told me before my poisoning. About the newspaperman who’d come asking questions. No. No he was not. There had been another man, one who came around asking questions and was found struck dead in the middle of the village.

A look of smug satisfaction crossed his expression as he relished the moment of my surprise. “Mrs. Wauters told me about that newspaperman. Struck by lightning but the curious thing is…”

“There wasn’t any lightning that night either, was there?” I asked softly.

He shook his head. “Not as Mrs. Wauters recalled. She said it occurred in late November, not long before von Keller locked down the hospital. She said her son, Djhan, had come to her house to see her. He’d been troubled by the death but would not say why.”

“Do you know what the reporter was looking for? Did Mrs. Wauters have any ideas?”

He hesitated with a frown. “Said he was looking for a strange woman.”

“My mother,” I confirmed.

He nodded with a frown. “Mrs. Wauters doesn’t know. At least I don’t believe she knows you are the daughter of Niamh Vaughn. It’s likely for the best.”

I stared at the empty bottle of wine between Mr. Owen and me, irritated Violet Devereaux had broken that lovely brandy my landlady had given me. But it was for the best. I needed a clear head for where we were headed. I’d been caught up in my own thoughts—in my own worries about what we might discover at the power station—I’d not even noticed that Ruan had slipped away on his own after delivering the tea. He’d disappeared into the adjoining room without even saying good night, leaving the pot of tea now gone cold upon the table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEInto the Dark

I was awoken by a crash.

Heart thundering against its bone cage, I shot up in the empty cold bed. My sluggish mind thick with sleep as I spotted Ruan on the floor. He was curled up onto himself, pushed into the corner. His arms wrapped around his knees, illuminated by the shaft of moonlight coming in through the open curtains. He looked so small. So fragile there.

A sharp intake of breath.