“And you thought you would talk to Harlow Carrenwell about your spy work?”
I sigh. So much for not killing him. Henry just ensured I can’t let him leave this room.
Shane’s head snaps toward me. “I thought it was a glamour. I didn’t think you were actually a Carrenwell. Lots of the—professional women just do it for the fantasy. I didn’t know. I?—”
His words aren’t slurred anymore, but he doesn’t seem entirely sober either. Hopefully, this is the sweet spot for interrogating him.
“Relax, Shane,” I say. “I’m not going to sell you out. I just want to know what you know about Rochelli and the missing women.”
Henry’s eyebrows shoot up.
“I don’t know anything. I was just drunk and bragging,” Shane says.
Henry sighs and shakes his head. “Come now, Shane. You clearly had a purpose in bringing my wife up here. I can tell you the one thing that gets her going is information. Isn’t that right, lovely?”
I don’t want to share all of this with Henry, but I’m almost positive from the way his aura is shifting and the look in his eyes that he’s holding himself back from killing Shane immediately with great effort. If I don’t ask now, I might never get a chance to.
“It’s so sweet how you pretend to know what gets me going,” I taunt. His aura presses wider, but I ignore him and focus on our captive. “Do you know who Rochelli is, Shane?”
Shane laughs and shakes his head. “No one knows who he is. Some people think he’s a group of people. Some think he’s actually asheand that no one would suspect a woman because men of Lunameade underestimate women’s intelligence.”
I think of Bea again, but I can’t fathom how she would do it, or how she would have kept it from me until now.
“They’re not wrong about that,” Henry says. “Men here are very foolish. If you don’t know who Rochelli is, how do you communicate with him?”
Shane shifts, subtly tugging against the bindings on the chair. “Letters. A note comes to my house with the number of one of the public mailboxes in the city and the combination to unlock it. It’s different every time—never in the same quadrant and no rhyme or reason to the numbers.”
My stomach churns. As the Poison Vixen, I rent a few mailboxes around the city and rotate them each month to avoid being caught. The women who vet clients for me give our clients a mailbox number and a code just like this. The process is alarmingly close to the one I use—the process Bea suggested.
“Why did you get recruited?” Henry asks. “What makes them trust you?”
Shane looks toward the door and then back at Henry. “I don’t have a blessing, but I manage accounts for several of the high magical houses. I think I was invited because I have access and because I spoke out openly at a city meeting about the second monthly blood tax. My mother technically qualifies, but she has a bleeding disease. While the healer can heal the wound, it’s costly for us to pay them twice a month, and it’s a risk for her every time she’s cut. I got especially heated at a meeting six months back, and that’s when the first message arrived at my door.”
I frown. “And you just went with it?”
Shane shakes his head. “I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was a trap. But I followed the instructions. It was simple enough. I just had to leave some healing supplies—gauze, alcohol, a tincture for pain—with a woman at a bar. I didn’t know anything about her and she didn’t know anything about me. I simply went to the booth I was told to go to and she was waiting for me. I gave her the package and left. The next day, there was a pouch of coins left in my home mailbox.”
“But you’re so quick to give him up now?” I challenge.
Shane shakes his head. “No, I don’t know enough to give him up. I think that’s how this has gone on for so long.No oneknows enough. I met different people and dropped things in different locations. I think they wanted me because I work with a lot of people who come in and out of the magical houses, and I myself visit them quite a bit. Some people I’ve met claim there are meetings around the city, but I’ve never been to one of those.”
“Then how did you know about the women?” I ignore Henry’s eyes on me.
Shane tries to itch his nose on his shoulder and then gives up after an awkward attempt. “One of the men I met tonight when I was making a drop was talking about it. I was running late and he’d clearly been drinking while he waited. He just started gossiping about how the missing women weren’t an accident—that they were payment to stave off the Drained.”
Henry’s aura pulses out wide. “What do you mean?”
Shane nods to his vest pocket and wiggles his hands. “He had a note from Rochelli. I swiped it.”
I cross the room and pat his vest pocket, only vaguely aware of Henry coming closer. I pull out a small piece of parchment and unfold it. Thepenmanship is remarkably neat, but also distinct in the swoops of the letters.
These women are not merely victims of the thirsty Drained. They are the payment the Carrenwells offer to keep these evolved monsters at bay and?—
Henry swipes the note out of my hand.
“I was reading that—and it’s evidence,” I snap.
“I’d like to see what you earned with that dress,” he says.
