“Yes?” Raven called, too harshly. “What is it?” Her vision was red-tinged and her heart was thumping hard and it took every ounce of self-control to school her features as Melanie cracked the door open and poked her head through. “What is it, Melanie?” she asked, managing a kinder tone.
She heard Toly address Ian in an undertone: “She’s too tired. She needs to go home.”
And Ian, the traitor, said, “Yes, I’ve been concerned about the hours she’s keeping. Butyoutry telling her to listen to a man’s suggestion.”
Both of them deserved a tongue-lashing – but Melanie’s face was very pale, and her lower lip quivered as she drew a short breath in through her mouth.
Alarms pinged in the back of Raven’s mind.
“Fuck suggestion,” Toly was saying, as she stood, and moved around the desk. “She needs to–”
“Melanie?” she asked, walking toward her. “What’s wrong?”
She was aware of conversation cutting off behind her. The chaise creaked as Miles and Cassandra sat up straighter to pay attention.
Melanie eased the door open the rest of the way and revealed a box held flat on her palm. A small, sleek jewelers’ box, black velvet, the size meant to hold a necklace. It trembled – Melanie’s hand trembled. “This – this came for you, Miss Blake. Just after Mr. Shaman arrived.”
Dread pooled dark and viscous in the pit of Raven’s stomach. Premonition prickled up the back of her neck. She did not want to take the box; didn’t even want to set a fingertip on it. “Was it wrapped?”
“It–” Melanie was having trouble getting the words out, her teeth chattering. “It was – it was in a shipping…envelope.”
Something brushed her arm, and Ian was suddenly standing on her right side. “It came through the post?”
Melanie nodded jerkily. “One of those – those bubble mailers. I didn’t – I usually open all your packages, and so I–”
“Mel, it’s alright, take a breath,” Raven urged.
The scent of Hugo Boss swelled up in stereo as Toly materialized on her other side. He’d donned a pair of slim, black leather gloves and extended them now toward Melanie. “Let me see.”
She relinquished it readily, and rubbed her hands together briskly afterward, as if washing them.
Toly angled his upper body so that when he opened the box, Raven couldn’t see inside it. He stood, perfectly still, one hand supporting it, the other holding the lid, and stared down at its contents. He blinked once.
Impatiently, heart in her throat, Raven pressed in beside him to take a look for herself. “What is it?” she asked, and then her gaze landed on it, and then her mouth went so dry she could no longer speak.
The box had been made for a necklace, but it held only a ring. A brilliant sapphire on a platinum band, circled with small, many-faceted diamonds. The roomier box was necessary to accommodate the thing upon which the ring was perched.
A human finger, its stump dark with dried blood.
Five
Toly heard Raven’s breath get stopped up in her throat; felt the press of her arm against his elbow as she tried to inhale, and wasn’t able to. He shifted the jewelry box to a one-handed hold just in time to loop an arm around her waist as her knees gave out.
It was only shock and blood sugar, he knew. Just like he knew she wasn’t in danger of actually fainting. She gripped his jacket, swayed, muttered a quiet, “Shit,” and turned her face away. He heard the dry click of her throat as she swallowed. As she wrestled with shock and horror. Then she got her knees straight, and she stepped away from him, and he let her go. Even if she was far too pale, still.
“Melanie,” she said, voice strained, “would you–”
“Yes, ma’am,” Melanie said, and scurried out the door, pulling it sharply shut behind her.
“She’s not calling the police, is she?” Toly asked.
“No.” Raven pressed her hand, briefly, to her mouth. “No, she knows not to.”
What else did she know? he wondered. Who would she talk to, out there in the office, after having seen a severed finger delivered to her boss?
“Lock the door,” he said, to no one in particular.
Miles scrambled up to do it.
