Page 91 of When I Accidentally Snagged a Serial Killer

Three weeks, and the pet name still slides down my spine like warm honey. I suspect it always will.

We pass the jousting field just as attendants lead two horses along the rail, and I slow to watch. One is a dark bay with a white blaze down her face, her coat gleaming in the afternoon sun. That old, familiar ache blooms behind my ribs, but it’s not so painful anymore.

When I glance up, Gage isn’t watching the horse. He’s watching me. “What?”

“Nothing,” he dismisses me.

“Not suspicious at all.”

He tucks a curl behind my ear, careful of the crown. “Enjoy the horse, Princess.”

I narrow my eyes but let him get away with it—for now.

By midafternoon, we’ve eaten our collective weight in food on sticks and watched a sword-throwing demonstration. We also spent forty minutes in an artisan tent, because Gage underestimated my need to study every piece of jewelry, and I underestimated his need to spoil me with my seven favorites.

I’m carrying a tiny felt dragon for Marzipan when Gage glances at the wooden sign pointing to the privies. “I’ll be right back.” He bends and presses his lips to my forehead. “Stay here.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“You’ve wandered off twice.”

“There were shiny things,” I protest.

“Exactly.” He disappears into the crowd before I finish sticking my tongue out.

I’m still smiling when a man speaks beside me. “You look so much like him, J.J.”

Every pleasant sensation in my body stops at once.

J.J. A name from my past. My father’s name for me. Short for Jubilee Jessica.

I turn. He’s late forties, maybe early fifties, tall with salt-and-pepper hair, combed neatly away from his face. His suit is luxury-casual—probably costs more than most people’s rent.

My brain flips through old images faster than I can catch them, then snags. Saint Violet. The man by the far wall. The one who was watching me.

My fingers close around the felt dragon. “Excuse me?”

His intensity rattles me. “Your father. You have his eyes.”

Everything around us recedes, as if someone lowered a pane of glass between the Fest and me. “How do you know my father?”

Regret colors his features. “My apologies. I should have started that considerably better.”

“Yes,” I say flatly, “you should have.”

That seems to surprise him, and then he laughs softly under his breath. “You’re definitely Jacob’s daughter.”

The name hits harder than it has any right to. Nobody says Jacob like that anymore. He says it casually, as though Dad exists somewhere outside missing-persons reports, dead-end searches, and the worst years of my life.

The stranger extends his hand. “My name is Joshua Ricketts. I’m your uncle.”

Ricketts. A wave of cold crashes through me. “My father’s last name was York.”

“When you knew him.”

My stomach pitches. “What does that mean?”

“It means there’s a great deal about your father you were never told.”