When Stars Come Out (When Stars Come Out 1)

And I will, but I have priorities, and one of those is figuring out who reanimated Lily’s corpse. So I start with the small lead we’d gotten last night in the cardigan Natalie found at the ritual sight. We don’t have a way to prove it is Lennon’s, but at this point, everyone’s a suspect, and it’s best to start eliminating.

I search Lennon Ryder.

The inquiry gives no results, which isn’t surprising considering I don’t think Lennon’s ever been arrested for practicing the occult.

“What about her mother? Her father?” Natalie presses.

“I don’t know their names,” I say.

“Jacobi’s got access to school records.”

I look at her, brow raised. “How do you know?”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve used his computer,” she says. She takes it from me and starts clicking around, navigating the interface like she’s done this a million times.

“So what? You just...head over to his house and look up whoever you want?”

“No,” she says, annoyed. “We’ve been trying to figure out who’s responsible for Roundtable.”

I try to imagine them together without me. Funny enough, it’s hard to do, but apparently it’s been happening. “And that’s...all you do?”

“Shut up, Shy,” Natalie complains, shoving me hard with her shoulder. I laugh.

“Hey, it’s a fair question.”

She glares at me, but she’s blushing and the corners of her lips are turning up. After a moment, she’s in the school’s records, pulling up Lennon’s name.

“Looks like she lives with her grandmother,” Natalie says. “There’s a restraining order against her father—Goliath Markov.”

My blood runs cold. Natalie must see I’m startled by the name because she asks, “What?”

“I know that name,” I say and take the computer back. Once I’m in the Archive again, I search Goliath’s name. He has a profile and not just any profile: Goliath Markov is Valryn. He’s also been incarcerated at the Compound for the last seventeen years—the whole of Lennon’s life—for several reasons, one of them being impregnating a human woman.

That would make Lennon an Abomination.

“How does the Order not know?” Natalie asks beside me as the realization settles upon her. If Goliath was in prison for his relationships with a human, the Order knew about Lennon at one point. They must have lost track of her, or assumed she died, and there was nothing about Lennon that screamed Abomination. She looked like any other human.

Anora's questions flood my mind....

Have you ever met an Abomination?

You don’t know what they look like?

If they are actually...deformed?

It’s Natalie who dares say what I’m thinking out loud. “She has to hate us.”

She probably does, and while that doesn’t make her a murderer, it does give her motive.

I push the computer aside, standing suddenly.

“Dammit.”

“What?” Natalie asks and I start to pace.

“The day Anora captured Vera’s soul I found her in the woods. As we were leaving, I noticed a raven in the trees. Any other time I would have followed it because I didn’t recognize it. What if it was….”

“Lennon.”