Mara Quinn didn't sleep much anymore.
There was too much to chase, too many answers buried in silence and bureaucratic dust. At twenty-seven, she'd already burned bridges with two local news outlets, a podcast sponsor, and one county sheriff's department. Her crime blog—The Cold Cut—had gained a cult following for its mix of raw reporting and obsessive, late-night theorizing.
But this one was different.
She could feel it in her bones.
The girl—Lila Holloway—had been too perfectly staged. Too clean. Too symbolic. It wasn't just murder.
It was a message.
Mara's apartment smelled like instant ramen and dry-erase markers. Her walls were littered with printouts, crime scene photos, maps of Durnville and its surrounding woods. Red thread pinned between names and dates. Yellow Post-its with scribbled thoughts like:
"Ritual??"
"No blood = symbolic??"
"Where was she KILLED?"
She stood at the corkboard, mug in hand, eyes fixed on a printout of Lila's autopsy summary. No signs of struggle. No defensive wounds. Painless, almost surgical.
There was something else that had been bothering her.
In the photo leaked online—since scrubbed by the department—a strange mark was visible on the bark above Lila's body. The same symbol Rowan had noticed. It looked like a spiral inside a triangle.
Mara had seen it before. Twice, in cases that never made the news. Kids. Isolated towns. Same mark.
Coincidence?
She didn't believe in that word.
Mara stepped out into the cold night air, bundled in a coat that was one size too big and covered in lint. She had an address scrawled in her pocket—the name of a former groundskeeper from Briarwood Park, someone who'd supposedly seen "odd things" before the murder.
The man lived in a run-down trailer on the edge of town, past the old train tracks. No porch light. No car. Just a wind chime made of bent silverware clinking in the breeze.
She knocked. Once. Twice.
No answer.
She turned to leave—then stopped.
The door creaked open an inch.
"…Hello?"
Silence.
Mara swallowed, pushed the door open wider. Her flashlight swept the interior—bare mattress, piles of newspapers, an open drawer spilling its contents. And a smell. Something sour. Faintly metallic.
She spotted a figure slumped in the corner, back against the wall.
"Sir?"
No movement.
She crept closer, the beam of light shaking slightly.
The man's face was pale, eyes wide open, lips sewn shut with black thread. A note pinned to his chest with a single steel nail.
Mara gasped, staggered back. Her stomach flipped.
The note read:
SHE IS WATCHING.
STAY SILENT.
STAY CLEAN.
Beneath it: a hand-drawn version of the same spiral-triangle symbol.
Ten miles away, beneath the church on the hill, in a space that didn't officially exist, nine masked figures sat in a perfect circle. Robes. Gloves. Silence.
In the center: Claire Holloway, her porcelain mask now painted faintly red along the lips.
"She has seen," she said softly. "And she has chosen."
The figures bowed their heads.
Claire stepped forward and laid a white lily at the center of the circle.
"Her sacrifice opens the season," she whispered. "The network grows."
One figure raised a gloved hand. "And the girl investigating?"
Claire's voice didn't waver. "She will serve us soon enough."