Elisa:
You deserve more, but this token of affection is all I can offer until we can be together.
—Your friend
Same handwriting, same cardstock, as the note I’d gotten the night of the party. Same anonymous “friend” who’d been creepy enough to send it.
I looked back in the envelope, wondering what “this” was, and my blood turned cold.
I pulled out a pendant on a leather thong. And it took only a moment for realization to strike. This was Blake’s necklace—the one he’d worn at my door and the Grove.
Nausea rose, and I squeezed my eyes closed against the wave of it.Someone had killed for me.I dropped the pendant back into the envelope.
“What is it, Lis?” Connor must have felt my fear and magic from across the room, as he left his post by the windows and came closer.
I held the card out to him, fingers shaking with disgust, with violation, with fear.
Someone had killed for me.
Connor’s expression darkened, and his eyes went dangerously flat. “‘This’?”
“Blake wore a leather pendant,” I said. “It’s in the envelope.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” I cursed, put the envelope down, the card on top of it. I didn’t want to touch them more than I already had. “But I don’t think it’s the first time they’ve contacted me,” I said. I pulled a clean kitchen towel from a drawer, used it to pick up the note I’d tossed aside after the party, brought it back to him.
He looked at it, then lifted his gaze to me. Anger percolated now. “You didn’t tell me about this.”
“It’s not my first fan mail,” I said. “I didn’t even think about it. Do you tell me every time someone sends you underwear?”
Connor blinked, narrowed his gaze. “Do people send you underwear?”
“Only once,” I said, then shook my head. “Not the point. The person who killed Blake says they did it for me.”
“Or it has nothing to do with you, and they’re trying again to drag you into it.”
Either way, sickness and anger settled low in my belly. I didn’t know Blake, didn’t like the AAM. But I wouldn’t wish death on any of them.
“He was killed—murdered—in my name.”
“No,” Connor said, voice firm. “He was murdered because someone wanted him dead. You didn’t ask for it, and it wasn’t for you in any possible way. This is about the killer.”
I nodded, because I understood the words and the sentiment. But the killer had made it about me. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any of it.
“Whoever it is knows you didn’t go to Paris,” Connor said, looking over the first note. “They’ve been following your career.”
“I was on-screen,” I said. “Especially after Cardona’s Master was killed.”
“I remember. You got a lot of airtime.”
“And he was watching.” That thought put a line of sweat at the small of my back.
“There’s no postmark. There is on the first envelope,” Connor said, comparing them, “but not this one.”
“So it was hand-delivered,” I guessed.
“Yeah.”