Page 83 of Roguefinder

I nodded toward the notebooks. “Any leads?”

“No.” He followed my gaze and muttered, “I think I’m wasting my time.”

“We could walk around the city again,” I said. “Try to pick up Ulfrik’s scent.”

“Maybe later.” He pulled a notebook toward him. “I keep coming back to the silver. It should have affected me. Are you sure that’s what you felt?”

Phantom pain wrapped tight around my bones like barbed wire. “Yeah. I mean, I guess I can’t be absolutely positive, but the feeling was the same.”

“But you didn’t see anything?”

I shook my head. Every other vision had been sharp and full color, like I’d been dumped inside a movie. But the door and the mirror had given me nothing but pain and darkness. If the movie was in there, someone had shut off the lights.

I gasped.

Jesse was instantly more alert. “What is it?”

“Just because I didn’t see anything doesn’t mean something wasn’t there.”

He frowned. “I’m not following.”

I leaned forward. “What if I had a vision like usual, except the lights were off? I couldn’t see my surroundings because it was too dark. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” he said slowly, “but it doesn’t explain why you felt like you’d touched silver. Seers observe the future. Or, in your case, the future and the past. But they stand outside of it. They’re not part of it.”

A pin popped my little balloon of discovery. I sat back. “Oh. Yeah. Shit.”

He reached across the table and took my hand. “It’s still a good theory. We have to consider everything.”

“That’s what Little League coaches say right before they hand out participation trophies.”

“I mean it.” He gestured to his notes. “Good historians pull on every loose thread.”

His phone buzzed, vibrating the table. We both looked at it. Jesse looked at me.

I mimed zipping my lips and tossing a key over my shoulder.

His lips quirked. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he murmured. Then he cleared his throat and picked up the phone. “Van der Meer.”

“Good afternoon,” Stefanos said smoothly. “The Council believes you need reinforcements. Emile Laval is booked on the first flight to Rome in the morning.”

Somehow, I kept my mouth shut. But anger crested in a hot tide. Because how fucking dare Stefanos send Emile to Rome? How dare he force Jesse to work with the man who’d busted open his world by revealing the truth about Philippe?

“Emile will help you search for Ulfrik,” Stefanos continued as if he hadn’t just lobbed a grenade over the line. “We must contain him.”

Contain. Such a polite euphemism for kill.

“All right,” Jesse said, his face unreadable. Nothing in his voice betrayed any misgivings or reluctance.

“I want you to meet him at the airport,” Stefanos said. “Until then, you and Caleb stay put.”

“Understood,” Jesse said.

The call ended. Jesse set down the phone.

I stood, dragged my chair around the table, and sat next to him. “Are you okay with this? I’ll gladly call Stefanos back and tell him to go fu⁠—”

“It’s fine,” Jesse said, taking my knee in a light grip. “Emile has never bothered me. Like a lot of werewolves, he’s a loner. He’ll do his job without any fuss.”