hideous mosaic that was materialising in front of her. The pictures were crime scene images of bodies and body parts.
‘What’s he doing?’ she murmured in horror.
‘He’s hunting them, just like we are,’ Ash answered quietly.
Chapter 12
In the centre of the wall was a map of LA. It took Evie a while to figure it was a map at all because the whole thing was covered in red pins that obliterated most of the street names.
Beside her, Ash was busy snapping pictures on his phone, leaning in to take close-ups of the map, crouching down to make sure he got all angles. A piece of paper stuck at the top of the wall, near to the ceiling, had four words scrawled in large block letters on it.
BEVERLY HILLS
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
‘Do you think he’s trying to pinpoint their lair?’ Evie asked, pointing at the piece of paper.
‘Maybe,’ Ash answered, his fingers starting to run over the cluster of pins stuck into the map. ‘Look at how the pins are grouped.’
There were two larger clusters of red on the map around Beverly Hills, and another along Mulholland. Maybe that’s where Victor was right this moment. Tracking them. Maybe he was planning on killing them himself. Which was fine by her – she’d happily let him handle the situation alone. The only thing that concerned her was that he might not make it back alive so that she could then kill him.
‘Hey guys,’ Vero suddenly said. ‘Check this out!’
Evie spun around.
Vero was standing in the doorway brandishing a sword over her head. An enormous grin was splitting her face in two. Evie glanced upwards, her gaze settling on the silvery blue blade shimmering in Vero’s hands.
‘No way,’ Ash whispered.
‘It’s a shadow blade,’ Evie said, pointing out the obvious.
Vero let the blade fall, hefting it lightly in her palm and then running her finger along the flat.
‘It’s his. I mean, I found it out in the hallway by the coat stand. He must have taken it off a Shadow Warrior at some point.’
‘Well, it’s ours now,’ Evie said, brushing past Vero and heading back into the hallway, wanting to check what other weapons they might have overlooked. That’s when she heard the key turning in the lock.
Evie leapt backwards, swinging her sword up to chest height.
In the same second, Vero and Ash moved into flanking positions, Vero brandishing the shadow blade, Ash the nunchuckers.
The door fell open. Evie drew in a breath, the sword trembling in her hand. This was her moment.
Victor pushed open the door and stepped inside. There wasn’t even a ripple of surprise on his face at seeing them there. He just gave them a curt nod.
‘Good evening,’ he said, shrugging off his jacket.
The three of them were too stunned to say anything in reply.
Victor pulled the blue silk scarf from around his neck and shook it out. Evie’s focus fell to the thin pink scar running at a diagonal across his throat and for a brief moment she pictured Lucas kneeling on Victor’s chest, his blade pressed to his neck, about to slash through his windpipe. He would have killed him that night if Evie hadn’t intervened. She wished to hell she hadn’t.
She felt an elbow suddenly nudge her in the ribs and realised that Ash and Vero were waiting on her cue. Startled, she lifted her gaze from Victor’s neck and forced herself to meet his eyes.
He smiled at her. ‘I knew you’d find me eventually,’ he said. ‘I just wondered how long it would take. Longer than I expected as it turned out.’
In the thousand different scenarios Evie had played out in her head when she imagined this scene, she had always been the one doing the talking while Victor cowered speechless in a corner. In her fantasies she’d lifted her sword without any hesitation and swung it at him over and over.
They were veering quickly off script.
‘You must be Ash,’ Victor said, his attention switching from Evie. He held out a hand for Ash to shake.
Evie could feel the situation slipping rapidly out of her grasp. ‘Shut up!’ she yelled.
Victor turned to her with an amused smile. ‘I’m assuming this little break-in and sword-waving routine is your attempt at killing me?’
Blood roared loud as thunder in Evie’s ears and the edges of her vision blurred.
‘So are you going to get on with it?’ he asked in a bored voice.
Evie clenched her hands around the hilt of the sword and took a step forward. She wasn’t going to let him