All In (The Naturals, #3)(79)

I pulled my eyes from the screen to look at Sloane.

“I always wondered why there were only seven methods,” she said, her eyes swollen, her face pale. “Instead of nine.”

Three.

Three times three.

Three times three times three—but only seven ways to kill.

Because this group—whatever it was, however long it had been around—had nine members at a time. Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine.

“Beau Donovan is dead,” Lia told Sloane. “Poison. Presumably Nightshade’s.”

Sloane’s hands smoothed themselves down over the front of the shirt Aaron had given her. She trembled slightly, but all she said was, “Maybe the flower was for him.”

The white flower in the photograph that Nightshade had sent Judd. White flower. Something stuck in the back of my brain, like food caught in between the teeth. Nightshade always sent his victims the bloom of a white nightshade plant. White. White flowers.

I walked into the kitchen, scrambled until I found what I was looking for. I pulled out the evidence envelope, opened it, removed the photo inside.

Not white nightshade. The photo Nightshade had sent Judd wasn’t of a white nightshade bloom. It was a picture of a paper flower. Origami.

I stumbled backward and grabbed the edge of the counter for balance, thinking of Beau’s last moments, the words he’d said.

I don’t believe in wishing.

I saw the little girl in the candy store, staring at a lollipop. I saw her father come and put her on his shoulders. I saw her beside the fountain, holding the penny.

I don’t believe in wishes, she’d said.

There was a white origami flower behind her ear.

In my mind, I saw her mother come to get her. I saw her father, tossing a penny into the water. In my mind, I saw his face. I saw the water, and I saw his face—

And just like that, I was back on the banks of the Potomac, a thick black binder on my lap.

“Enjoying a bit of light reading?” The voice echoed through my memory, and this time, I could make out the speaker’s face. “You live at Judd’s place, right? He and I go way back.”

“Nightshade,” I forced out the word. “I’ve seen him.”

Lia looked almost concerned despite herself. “We know.”

“No,” I said. “In Vegas. I’ve seen him here. Twice. I thought…I thought I was watching him.”

But maybe—maybe he was watching me.

“He had a child with him,” I said. “There was a woman, too. The girl, she came up next to me at the fountain. She was little—three, four at most. She had a penny in her hand. I asked if she was going to make a wish, and she said…”

I couldn’t coax my lips into forming the words.

Dean formed them for me. “I don’t believe in wishing.” His gaze flicked to Michael’s, then to Lia’s. “The same thing Beau Donovan said when Sterling told him he only wished he were Nine.”

Right before he died.

“You said Nightshade had a woman with him,” Dean said. “What did she look like, Cassie?”

“Strawberry blond hair,” I said. “Medium height. Slender.”

I thought of my mother’s body, stripped to the bones and buried at the crossroads. With honor. With care.

Maybe they weren’t trying to kill you. Maybe you weren’t supposed to die. Maybe you were supposed to be like this woman—

“Beau said the ninth member was always born to it. How did he phrase it?”

Dean stared at a point just to the left of my shoulder and then repeated Beau’s words exactly. “The child of the brotherhood and the Pythia. Blood of their blood.”

Seven Masters. A child. And the child’s mother.

The woman at the fountain had strawberry blond hair. It would be red in some lights—like my mother’s.

Nine members. Seven Masters. A woman. A child.

“The Pythia was the name given to the Oracle at Delphi,” Sloane said. “A priestess at the Temple of Apollo. A prophetess.”

I thought of the family—the picture-perfect family I’d looked at, knowing to my core that it was something I’d never have.

Mother. Father. Child.

I turned to Dean. “We have to call Briggs.”





The man we knew as Nightshade stared back at me from the page. The police artist had captured the lines of his face: strong jaw, thick brows, dark hair with just enough curl to make his remaining features look boyish. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes told me he was older than he looked; light stubble masked the fullness of his lips.

You came to Vegas to take care of a problem. Watching me, tormenting Judd—that, you enjoyed.

I felt someone take a seat next to me at the kitchen table. The FBI had taken the sketch and run with it. They were monitoring the airport, bus stations, traffic cameras—and, courtesy of Sloane, the casinos’ security feeds.

You look like a thousand other men. You don’t look dangerous.

The man in the sketch looked like a neighbor, a coworker, a Little League coach. A dad. I could see him in my mind, hoisting the little red-haired girl up onto his shoulders.

“You’ve done everything you can.”

I tore my gaze from the police sketch to look at Judd. This man killed your daughter, I thought. This man might know what happened to my mother.