It was true. Of the three of them, Ilan was the only one with something to lose.

“You were at the club too, weren’t you?” Ilan asked, looking Mihály in the eyes. “Maybe I should bring you in...”

He shot Csilla a look that set off fresh guilt. He didn’t know what happened. “Why? I left right after Csilla. Lost my appetite. You can ask anyone there.”

“Mihaly,” Csilla started. “Someone was killed there. In the exact same way.”

Mihály’s eyes widened. “But we were just there. I didn’t see anything.”

“No one ever sees anything,” Ilan said, voice clipped. “That’s the trouble. You’re very sure you didn’t see anything? No one with a darkness on them?”

“I don’t know that I would have been able to tell. I don’t carry church glass.”

“I would have thought you could sense a demon.”

At that Mihály sat back. “The church thinks it’s a demon now? Open-minded of them.”

“I think it is. Or something close, a human already far past salvation.”

“And that’s why the church isn’t letting you be in charge anymore, is that it?”

Csilla started to ask how he knew, but the change in Ilan’s uniform was clear enough. As was the way he seethed.

“Yes. And their attempt at fixing things is only going to make it worse.” Ilan turned back to Csilla. “You heard Sandor’s new policy. He’s promising indulgence for turning neighbor on neighbor.”

Mihály cocked his head and gave half a shrug. “Not that I’m endorsing the method, but if they have information, maybe it will help.”

“Anyone who has actual information would have already brought it to us,” Ilan said, clipped. “Now they’re just trying to shove someone else in front of them to avoid suspicion, and our time is going to be wasted squeezing stones for blood.”

“Torturing innocent people, you mean,” Csilla said as her heart skipped. Mihály settled close beside her and put his hand on her leg for reassurance, and Ilan raised an eyebrow. Csilla didn't shift. She wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it was rare to be offered comfort, even if it did lessen whatever opinion Ilan had of her.

Ilan nodded slowly. “And they’ll hate the Church for it.”

“What does it matter to you if you’re whipping one citizen or ten, for sins you’ve cataloged or ones he’s trying to find?” Mihály prodded, his fingers tightening on Csilla’s thigh in his passion. “They call you the wolf, but you’re really the church’s dog, and the second they give word you’ll snap to heel.”

Ilan snarled in a way that did little to disprove Mihály’s assessment, but the Izir continued to stare him down. “So you don’t like the new man in charge. So the Church doesn’t believe your theory. Doesn’t mean we should help you.”

Ilan was going to walk out and take all his information with him. Whatever his feelings, he still knew more about the murders than they did. This was their chance to get help from someone on the inside.

She put her hand over Mihály’s, his fingers loosening to allow hers to slide through. “Mihály, he’s right. We don’t know what we’re doing.” Regardless of what Ilan would say about what they planned to do with the killer, they didn’t have much hope of finding him alone. Ilan would be useful.

“And Ilan,” she continued. “Mihály will trust you.”

Mihály’s glare had a hint of betrayal, but he didn’t contradict her. He sighed, then moved his arm to slip around her shoulders. It was uncomfortably warm, but she forced a smile.

“Fine,” the Izir said finally, continuing to hold Csilla so she couldn’t even squirm. “But if you want to work with us, you see all of it.”

16

Ilan

In the sharp light of full day, agreeing to leave Silgard for whatever the Izir deemed necessary seemed like a terrible plan. The sun-dappled greens and lichen grays of the woods were soothing, and the scent of pine and dank leaf mulch called just as strongly as they had when he was a half-feral child galloping his parents’ lands, but he was far from the city that needed him.

Ilan was loathe to admit to mistakes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t make them.

Ilan unhitched Vihar beside the run-down farmhouse as Mihály helped Csilla down from the cart with care. Her gaze didn’t leave the Izir, but it wasn’t quite a look of devotion. It was concern.

Csilla trailed them to the barn, hands twisting in her skirts and pursed lips that spoke to questions. Her nerves needled his curiosity. “With all you’re willing to say in the city,” he said to Mihály, “I can’t wait to see what you think you need to hide from us.”

Mihály merely pushed the weathered door and let dusted light slant over the carnage.

Whatever his opinion of the Izir, Ilan hadn’t imagined so much scattered fur and rot in his homestead. Dead animals, some dry and withered, some still bloated, littered the ground, and a rabbit hung by its hind leg from a rafter, half-torn by yanking jaws that left the drying meat in dank strips. The whole thing stank of curdled blood.

So this rancid display was what the angel did when no one held him accountable. Ilan slid his gaze to Csilla, her lips pressed thin, but no surprise in her eyes. She already knew about this. He never would have expected her to already be so sunken into heresy already. Nothing in this macabre scene was mercy.

“Shit. Something got in.” Mihály lit a lantern and swung it in an arc of cast orange, but there was no scurrying in the shadows.

Ilan picked the ripped head of a fox from the ground, lifting its black lip with a thumb to examine the frozen fangs. If the Izir had been a hunter, he could respect it. But these weren’t food, and weren’t trophies. They were corpses, laid out without the care even animals deserved. “What is this?”

“This is...” The Izir paused, mouth working for the word. “Research.”

“Research.” Ilan tilted a prone squirrel upright. Its black eyes shone as if it were about to break the spell that held it and scamper away. “And what have you learned from all this?”

A distance clouded Mihály’s eyes. “Not enough. I can touch their souls, keep or even draw them back here momentarily, but they don’t have enough fire to stay.” His voice bit on the last word.

Ilan hummed a prayer as he moved down the line of unfortunate creatures. “What in Asten’s holy name made you believe you needed to work with souls?”

His eyes went to Csilla on the word as she crouched, gathering up the mess and speaking softly to animals long past hearing her. No wonder she’d been taken in by him. The difference between immortal saints and the forgotten faithful was often a measure of divinely sanctioned violence: Wise Angyalka, hanging with bulging eyes, Ladislaj the bounty, feeding his village in the starving season with strips of his own regenerating flesh. To someone so desperate, this massacre would look holy.

Mihály smiled, a grim contrast to the wretched surroundings. “Surely you wouldn’t want me to turn away a gift? Knowledge is a virtue, and how do we get more of it if we don’t experiment once in a while? Miracles are proof of the transformative nature of the divine. I’m doing nothing more.”

Knowledge. A fine summation of chewed-on birds and crusted feathers and tufts of matted fur. “You’re divine, but you’re no god. Knowledge without obedience is heresy.” Csilla seemed to have glossed over the details with his promise of miracles, but the tiny broken bodies should have made her afraid. Being raised in the church had given her too much trust in the appearance of the holiness, without a soul to understand it. If she’d never experienced the ecstasy, she couldn’t understand the horror.

Though she had lived her own kind of horror, one that had led her to kneel in old sawdust on a barn floor with a lap full of dry dead things.

“It’s a very old kind of power,” Mihály continued. “From before the Severing.”

“People weren’t moving souls before the Severing,” Ilan countered. Angels and demons had lived among humans and added their magic to their territories, swayed them one way or the other, but the basics of souls never changed. Everyone had two aspects, brilliance and shadow, and the side you nurtured during life determined your eternity. You couldn’t touch them or redirect them. That power belonged to Asten alone.

“People weren’t. Angels were. Sometimes a soul could be held for a day or two. Sometimes it could be brought back. But in this corrupted world, it needs something to cling to. Something fresh, almost like life.” Mihály pushed the hanging rabbit lightly, and it danced on its rope, a grim and slow waltz.

“Blood.” Ilan knew how easily the body gave it up.

Mihály nodded. “Still warm. Enough to give it a physical tether while Csilla accepts it. And the killer has spilled enough to forfeit theirs.”

The image of Csilla, chestnut ringlets matted and pale skin smeared crimson, was unholy intoxication. In the dusty light coming through the wood cracks, she was splattered in golden sunlight that could all too easily be running red. “That’s madness. Not a miracle.” How could this man be one Asten Themself had marked as holy?