And that meant that if my instincts—and Dean’s—were correct, Malcolm Lowell was not the poison Master.
You were something more.
“You groomed your grandson for greatness,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. “You saw the potential, and you made Mason a monster. You made him your heir.” I paused. “You sent him to live with a man who knew—intimately knew—the thin line between medicine and poison.”
Mason Kyle had left Gaither when he was seventeen years old. He’d attempted to bury all traces of his identity. He’d lived as a ghost for two decades before he’d become an apprentice and then a Master.
He knew it was coming. He always knew what he was meant to be. Even thinking about Nightshade, I never left the old man’s perspective. You made him in your own image. You made him worthy.
A flicker of shadow was the only warning I had that Dean and I were no longer alone.
“Basements are actually relatively rare in Oklahoma,” Sloane commented, popping up beside us. “But this house has one.”
My heart had leapt into my throat before I’d realized that Sloane was the one who’d joined us. It stayed there as I turned the word basement over and over in my mind, thinking about the fact that Laurel had grown up inside and underground.
Thinking that Holland Darby might not be the only one in Gaither with shackles built into his walls.
I knew, logically, that it couldn’t be that simple. I knew that my mother had probably never been here, knew that wherever the Masters kept her, wherever they conducted their business, it probably wasn’t in one of their basements. But as I wound my way toward the basement, Dean and Sloane on my heels and Lia and Michael falling in beside us, I couldn’t push down the roar building in my mind, the incessant thumping of my heart as I thought, You built this house. For your wife. For your family. For what was to come.
The basement floor was made of concrete. The beams overhead were covered in cobwebs. A surplus of cardboard boxes made the room’s function clear.
Just storage. Just a room.
With no idea what I was looking for, I began to open boxes and go through the contents. They told a story—of a man who’d gotten started on his family later in life. Of the local girl he’d married. Of the daughter who’d lost her mother when she was six years old.
Six years old.
Suddenly, I was taken back to the day Malcolm Lowell had caught Melody and me in the apothecary garden.
“How old are you?” the man demands.
“I’m seven,” Melody answers. “But Cassie’s only six.”
I was six years old when I met Malcolm Lowell. His daughter was six years old when her mother died. Mason Kyle was nine when he watched his grandfather murder his parents.
“Six,” I said out loud, sitting down hard between the boxes, the concrete digging into the skin under my legs. “Six, six, and nine.”
“Three plus three,” Sloane rattled off, unable to stop herself. “Three times three.”
The Masters kill nine victims every three years. There are twenty-seven—three times three times three—Fibonacci dates total. My hand brushed up against something etched into the concrete. I shoved a box to the side to get a better look.
Seven circles around a cross. It was the Masters’ symbol, one I’d first seen etched into a wooden casket and later seen carved into a killer’s flesh. Like Laurel, Beau Donovan had been raised by the Masters. Like Laurel, his mother was the Pythia.
“Beau was six years old when he was tested by the Masters,” I said, looking up from the floor. “Six years old when they cast him out to die.”
Beau—and Laurel—had been born for one purpose and one purpose alone.
Nine is the greatest of us, Nightshade had told me months ago. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation.
I traced my fingers around the outside of the symbol. “Seven Masters,” I said. “The Pythia. And Nine.”
If Laurel passed their tests, if she was worthy, someday she would take the ninth seat at the Masters’ table. But whose seat is it now?
The greatest of us. The bridge from generation to generation. There had been awe in Nightshade’s voice when he’d spoken those words. There had been warmth.
“I know that face, Colorado,” Michael said, narrowing his eyes at me. “That’s your holy bleep face. That’s—”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. “We were never looking for the poison Master who preceded Nightshade,” I said, moving my finger from the outer circle to the inner cross. “We were looking for someone who’d been a part of the Masters for longer than twenty-seven years. Someone who held sway over the others. The whole time—we were looking for Nine.”
Everything I knew about Malcolm Lowell fell into place. How many years had he spent being molded in the Masters’ image, hidden away from the world? How old had he been when he’d finally been allowed a life outside those walls?
How many times had the Masters attempted to raise a new child to take his place?
There had been at least three Pythias in the past twenty years. My mother. Mallory Mills. The Pythia who’d given birth to Beau. In all likelihood, there had been more.
Had each woman had a child? Had all of the would-be Nines been tested and found unworthy? Turned out to die?
You don’t care to be replaced.
Without meaning to, I began walking toward the stairs. I climbed them two at a time and headed for Agent Sterling, but when I reached the top, a familiar voice froze me in my tracks.
“I’m not going anywhere.” That was Sterling—and her tone was steel.
“You are.” When Director Sterling gave Briggs an order, Briggs took it—but the director’s daughter was another matter.
“You’re not authorized—” Agent Sterling started to say, but her father cut her off.
“I’m not authorized to tell the Naturals what cases they can and cannot work. You saw to that, Veronica. I am, however, authorized as your superior in this organization to pull my agents off of a case—and that includes you.”
“We’re this close. You can’t—”
“I can and I am, Agent. I let you chase this lead, and you ran it into the ground. You’ve identified one individual connected with this group. Now Lowell is gone, and he’s not coming back.” The director’s verbal onslaught stopped, but only for a moment. “Briggs has three bodies, Veronica. Three crime scenes, three victims, three sets of persons of interest. That is where your attention should be focused—and starting tonight, it will be.”