of the three missing girls. “Notice anything?”
I looked from one to the other. “They’re all Arcana. They’re also young and pretty.”
“With dark hair,” he pointed out. “And petite. The tallest one is five-foot-two.”
“Oh … you’re right.”
“Know who else is a young, pretty, petite girl with dark hair?”
“Who?”
“You.”
Ice plunged through my gut. “He said … the sorcerer told me … ‘You have the look.’”
“You’re his type.” He split the stack of cases in half. “Let’s see if any of these women are also his type.”
It took us two hours to sort through all the cases, but we only found a handful where the missing women matched the sorcerer’s preferences, and they were of no use. They’d all been solved—the women found or their killers caught.
“Nothing,” I sighed.
Ezra leaned back in his chair and rubbed the scruff darkening his jaw. “The suspect disappeared two decades ago when guilds started investigating. Maybe he learned his lesson and changed his MO.”
“Based on what he said to me, I don’t think he’s changed his … tastes.”
“No, but maybe he doesn’t require a specific mythic class … or even a mythic.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on.”
I followed him out of the workroom and up the stairs to the large office with the guild officers’ desks. He tapped on the open door as he walked in.
Felix, the third officer, looked up from his monitor. Dark circles smudged the skin under his eyes, his goatee was muddled from several days without maintenance, and his blond hair was tangled.
My gut clenched with guilt. Felix was Zora’s husband. He probably hadn’t slept properly since she’d been injured.
“Felix,” Ezra said with a frown. “You’re working tonight?”
“Darius offered to take my shifts, but I—I needed a distraction.” He took a long drink from his coffee mug. “What can I help you with?”
“How is Zora?” I asked softly.
A faint smile lightened the exhaustion on his face. “Better. She’s awake on and off now. She asked about you. She was worried.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” I rushed to his desk. “Can I see her? Can I bring her anything? What can I—”
“She needs a lot of sleep. I’ll let you know when she’s up for visitors.” He sat back. “What do you need?”
Biting my lip, I glanced at Ezra.
“Can you run a Vancouver PD search for us? Missing women under thirty, five and a half feet or shorter, with dark hair.”
Felix jotted that down. “Date range?”
“Last six months.”
“Sure. Give me a few minutes.”
As he typed rapidly on his keyboard, I shifted closer to Ezra and whispered, “You think the sorcerer could be targeting human women?”
“The mythic community is tiny. We don’t sit around when someone goes missing, and a dozen guilds combing the city for a killer makes it really hard to get away with anything. He might’ve switched to easier victims.”
As we waited, I surreptitiously peered from the aeromage to the guild officer and back. I hadn’t noticed it until seeing Felix’s weariness, but Ezra also had an air of exhaustion clinging to him. Though his warm complexion disguised the dark circles under his eyes, he had the look of someone who needed a lot more sleep.
Felix typed for a minute more, then the printer beside his desk whirred to life. A dozen pages spat onto the tray.
“There you go. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do.” Ezra collected the pages. “Get some rest, Felix.”
We returned to our worktable and spread the pages out. Six women. Three had gone missing last year, and the police had clear suspects—a boyfriend, a mother-in-law, and a pimp. The other three …
“Reported missing January third,” I read off the first one. “Reported missing January eleventh. Reported missing January eighteenth.”
“Last Friday,” Ezra murmured.
“No bodies. No suspects. Disappeared on their way home.” I looked up at him. “It must be the sorcerer. He’s killed three times just this month?”
“I suspect that means he only arrived in town this month. If we check the Portland police database, we’ll probably find more cases like this.”
I shuddered. “He needs to be stopped.”
Ezra slid the most recent disappearance in front of me. “This one is our best shot.”
“Our best shot at what?”
“At finding the sorcerer. Are you busy tomorrow?”
“No …”
“Meet me here at nine a.m. and we’ll get started.” He tapped the page. “Her workplace first. We know what this guy looks like, which gives us an advantage the police don’t have. Someone must’ve seen the sorcerer scoping out the girl.”
“Right. Okay.” My brows pinched together. “What about Claude and