Chapter 4 · The Zero Tag (1)

The note on the morgue tag had been written in a hand that knew her name before she'd been born.

Liora sat in the records room at 6:00 a.m., the zero tag in a sealed evidence bag in front of her, a pot of the hospital's tar-grade coffee at her elbow, and the Voss dagger in a locked drawer of her desk. She hadn't told anyone about the dagger. She hadn't told anyone about the voice that came out of it, either. She was a woman who dealt in evidence, and the evidence was currently refusing to make sense.

"Zero," she said to the tag. "Not thirteen. Zero. Like they're counting down to something."

"Or counting up from something." Marcus, who'd come in early to keep her company—or to make sure she ate—dropped a bagel on her desk. "Zero's where counting starts, Doc. Whoever wrote this is telling you it's the beginning. Not the end."

"The beginning of what?"

"Your guess beats mine. But listen." Marcus lowered his voice. "The new body—the one that talked in your voice? Same mark. Same time, 3:13. But it's not a night-artist kill. Medical examiner says cause of death was a heart attack. The mark just… appeared on a man who died of a heart attack."

"Then the marks aren't being carved," Liora said slowly. "They're being called."

"…Called?"

"Like a lighthouse calling ships." She stood, the pieces sliding together with an almost audible click. "The marks appear on the dead right before 3:13. The bodies talk in my voice. The tag calls me Number Zero. Someone is using the dead as telephones—and the messages are all for me."

"Whoa. So the Night Artist isn't a serial killer at all?"

"The Night Artist is a delivery service," Liora said. "The question is who's paying."

She spent the day doing what she did best: being a menace with a badge. She pulled the Voss family records from the county archive—or tried to. The file for VOSS, EST. 1888 had been checked out. By whom? The system said L. Rodriguez, ADA.

Lucas had pulled her family's file.

She didn't confront him. She'd learned early that people who smile like April hide the sharpest knives. Instead, she went to the one person in the city who owed her favors and couldn't lie to her: the dead.

The medical examiner's cold storage held the new body. Male, fifties, a heart attack victim named Gerald Weiss, a retired librarian. No family. No enemies. Nothing in his life connected to supernatural conspiracies except one thing: the rune on his chest, still fresh, like a bruise that glowed.

Liora put her palm on it.

The world tilted.

She was standing in a library. Old. Vaulted ceilings, dust motes in shafts of dying light. Gerald Weiss was alive in front of her, and he was arguing with a woman in white—a woman whose face she couldn't quite see, but whose voice she knew from the hospital.

Iris.

"You promised me peace," Gerald said. "You said if I carried the message, I'd be free."

"You'll be free," Iris's voice said, gentle as water. "After the transfer. He has to hear it from a corpse, Gerald. The dead don't lie, and he trusts the dead. One more, and the chain is complete."

"The chain to what?"

"To the moment she remembers." Iris's voice smiled. "And then the blade does what blades do."

The vision snapped. Liora pulled her hand back, breathing hard, cold to the bone.

The dead had just shown her a memory that wasn't hers. A memory from a dead man who'd been recruited. Iris—the sweet surgeon with the moonlight eyes—was building something. A chain. Through corpses.

And the chain was aimed at her.

Her phone buzzed. Not Marcus. An unknown number. She answered.

"Dr. Voss." The voice was Iris's, warm and light. "I was hoping you'd call. I have something to show you—something your friend the prosecutor has been hiding. Meet me at the old Voss manor. Bring the dagger."

Liora went cold. She hadn't told Iris about the dagger.

"…How do you know about the dagger?"

"Because I'm the one who left it for you, dear." Iris's voice was almost fond. "It's been in your family for six generations, waiting for the right hand. Yours. And now it's time to tell you what the Voss family has been watching for, all these years."

The line went dead.

Liora looked at the dagger in its drawer. The voice in the blade had warned her. The man with the crimson eyes had warned her. The corpse of a dead librarian had just told her the warnings were coming from the wrong direction.

She put the dagger in her bag, and she went.

The Voss manor was a skeleton. Victorian bones, burned out and rebuilt three times, boarded up since her great-great-grandfather's hasty departure in 1902. The gate was rusted open, and the garden had swallowed the path. Rain had started again, a thin miserable drizzle, and the house waited at the end of the walk like a patient.

Iris was standing on the porch, holding an umbrella, smiling.

"You came," she said. "Good. I was afraid you'd trust the shadow instead of your own blood."

"I trust evidence," Liora said. "You have about five minutes."

Iris laughed. It was a lovely laugh. "Dr. Voss, I have six generations to show you. Let's start with what the Voss family really was."

She pushed the door open.

The manor's foyer had been preserved—or restored. Portraits lined the walls: Voss after Voss, generation after generation, all with the same steady eyes. Liora had seen these portraits in her grandmother's house. But the names below them were wrong. She knew them by heart: Silas Voss, 1842. Margaret Voss, 1871. Elias Voss, 1902. And yet…

"Read them aloud, dear."

Liora read. "Silas Voss…" She blinked. The plaque read SILAS VOSS, WATCHER OF THE SEVENTH CYCLE.

"Keepers," Iris said softly. "That's what the Voss bloodline is. Every Voss, for eight generations, was born with one purpose: to watch the lovers, and to make sure they never finished what they started."

"The lovers?"

"Her." Iris pointed at a portrait Liora hadn't noticed, hanging alone at the end of the hall—a woman in white, radiant, heartbreakingly beautiful. "The Starbound Bride. And him." The portrait beside it: a man in black, eyes painted red. "The Shadow King. Every cycle, they find each other. Every cycle, they love each other. And every cycle, the Keepers make sure one of them dies before they can become what they were meant to be."

"…Meant to be what?"

Iris turned, and her smile was no longer gentle. "The end of the Star Realm. The death of the gods. And the beginning of the world."