All In
Page 77

I saw the little girl in the candy store, staring at a lollipop. I saw her father come and put her on his shoulders. I saw her beside the fountain, holding the penny.
I don’t believe in wishes, she’d said.
There was a white origami flower behind her ear.
In my mind, I saw her mother come to get her. I saw her father, tossing a penny into the water. In my mind, I saw his face. I saw the water, and I saw his face—
And just like that, I was back on the banks of the Potomac, a thick black binder on my lap.
“Enjoying a bit of light reading?” The voice echoed through my memory, and this time, I could make out the speaker’s face. “You live at Judd’s place, right? He and I go way back.”
“Nightshade,” I forced out the word. “I’ve seen him.”
Lia looked almost concerned despite herself. “We know.”
“No,” I said. “In Vegas. I’ve seen him here. Twice. I thought…I thought I was watching him.”
But maybe—maybe he was watching me.
“He had a child with him,” I said. “There was a woman, too. The girl, she came up next to me at the fountain. She was little—three, four at most. She had a penny in her hand. I asked if she was going to make a wish, and she said…”
I couldn’t coax my lips into forming the words.
Dean formed them for me. “I don’t believe in wishing.” His gaze flicked to Michael’s, then to Lia’s. “The same thing Beau Donovan said when Sterling told him he only wished he were Nine.”
Right before he died.
“You said Nightshade had a woman with him,” Dean said. “What did she look like, Cassie?”
“Strawberry blond hair,” I said. “Medium height. Slender.”
I thought of my mother’s body, stripped to the bones and buried at the crossroads. With honor. With care.
Maybe they weren’t trying to kill you. Maybe you weren’t supposed to die. Maybe you were supposed to be like this woman—
“Beau said the ninth member was always born to it. How did he phrase it?”
Dean stared at a point just to the left of my shoulder and then repeated Beau’s words exactly. “The child of the brotherhood and the Pythia. Blood of their blood.”
Seven Masters. A child. And the child’s mother.
The woman at the fountain had strawberry blond hair. It would be red in some lights—like my mother’s.
Nine members. Seven Masters. A woman. A child.
“The Pythia was the name given to the Oracle at Delphi,” Sloane said. “A priestess at the Temple of Apollo. A prophetess.”
I thought of the family—the picture-perfect family I’d looked at, knowing to my core that it was something I’d never have.
Mother. Father. Child.
I turned to Dean. “We have to call Briggs.”
The man we knew as Nightshade stared back at me from the page. The police artist had captured the lines of his face: strong jaw, thick brows, dark hair with just enough curl to make his remaining features look boyish. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes told me he was older than he looked; light stubble masked the fullness of his lips.
You came to Vegas to take care of a problem. Watching me, tormenting Judd—that, you enjoyed.
I felt someone take a seat next to me at the kitchen table. The FBI had taken the sketch and run with it. They were monitoring the airport, bus stations, traffic cameras—and, courtesy of Sloane, the casinos’ security feeds.
You look like a thousand other men. You don’t look dangerous.
The man in the sketch looked like a neighbor, a coworker, a Little League coach. A dad. I could see him in my mind, hoisting the little red-haired girl up onto his shoulders.
“You’ve done everything you can.”
I tore my gaze from the police sketch to look at Judd. This man killed your daughter, I thought. This man might know what happened to my mother.
“Trust Ronnie and Briggs to do what they can,” Judd continued.
A manhunt didn’t fall under Naturals’ jurisdiction. Once the FBI figured out who the man in the picture was, once we had a name, a history, information, maybe we could be of some use, but until then, all we could do was wait.
By then, a voice whispered in the back of my head, it might be too late. Nightshade might disappear. Once he left Vegas, we might never find him again.
Judd wouldn’t get justice for Scarlett’s death. I wouldn’t get answers about my mother’s.
Beside me, Judd let himself look at the police sketch—made himself look at it.
“You do what you can,” he said, after seconds of silence had stretched to a minute, “to make sure your kids are safe. From the second they’re born…” He stared at the lines of Nightshade’s face, the ordinariness of it. “You want to protect them. From every skinned knee, from hurt feelings and punk kids who push smaller ones into the dirt, from the worst parts of yourself and the worst parts of this world.”
This man killed your daughter. She died in pain, her fingernails torn, her body contorting—
“Briggs saved my life.” Judd forcibly shifted his eyes away from the man in the picture and turned to look at me. “He saved me, the day he brought me Dean.”
Judd’s right hand slowly worked its way out of a fist. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reached for the picture of his daughter’s killer and turned it facedown.
You do what you can to make sure your kids are safe.