"I tell you what, once that fucker started talking, nothing in Soar was going to stop him," Hel said, accepting a piece of Mylaf's best cherry cake and sighing in pleasure at the 20% boost to her HP. "The prick had a lot of words, not much sense, but enough greasy charm to make me want to rip out his throat.” She lounged in the battered armchair, her legs slung over one armrest, chewing like a cat toying with a mouse. Lowe sat across from her, his collar stained with sweat, looking like he'd been born tired and never quite managed to catch up.

"You do know that if ever you get bored of Lowe's trademark hangdogness, I'd hire you like a shot?" she asked the , only half-joking.

Mylaf smiled. "That's very kind, Ms Hel. But I think I'm very happy here with the master."

"Well, you know," Hel said, spraying crumbs as she did so, "suit yourself. But remember, the offer’s there if you ever get tired of playing nursemaid to Mr Sunshine. The same goes for you, too," she added as Arebella returned to Lowe's sitting room.

"Sorry, what did I miss?"

“Just Hel trying to poach Mylaf. And you, apparently,” Lowe said, rubbing his temples. “She thinks she can find a use for a in her line of work.”

"Oh, I'm sure I can come up with something to occupy the long, dark hours," the said, smiling wolfishly.

"Let's focus, shall we?" Lowe said, clearing his throat as Arebella blushed bright crimson. "It sounds like you were successful?"

"Well, yes and no." Hel sat up a little straighter, the smile fading from her lips as she produced a vial from her coat. "You were right, he had this hidden in his flat."

They all stared at the glowing liquid. Even seeing it safely encased in a tube of glass, Lowe felt himself shift uncomfortably. He could well remember the clawing to his mind the substance had caused in the bowels of the museum. "Sneaky fucker."

Hel sniffed. "I'm afraid that might be the last of the good news, though. As far as I could tell, he's only really been using it to make his targets more . . . suggestible."

"Targets?" There was a sharp quality to Arebella's voice.

"Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, I'm going to need the longest, hottest shower in the history of Soar when I get back home. That man is one of the creepiest fuckers I've ever come across. And you need to remember, I had a on my squad."

"Oh, and how is Tenia? Have you heard from her?"

"Just last week, actually. Her and Charl have found a little farm to settle down on. Turns out the Skills that make you a good assassin are completely useless when confronted with cows and chickens. They're having a ball."

"How lovely! Do give them my best."

"Ladies!" Lowe couldn't help but feel he was losing his grip on the general direction of the conversation. "Can we get back to Kelvin Kregg?"

"Sure," Hel twisted her wrist, and a small pillar of wind rose to spin the vial end over end above the table. "It is - well, was. I suspect he may have learned the error of his way - the wanker's habit of slipping a couple of drops of this into the drinks of anyone he liked the look of. Apparently, having some of that on board made his weak little Charm Skills far more . . . persuasive." She retrieved a leatherbound book from her other pocket and threw it to Lowe. "And if that wasn’t simply lovely, he also kept lengthy notes of his conquests. His prose is unpleasantly explicit."

"Fuck," Lowe caught the book and began flicking through it, brow furrowing as he read.

Hel nodded, a steely light coming to her eyes. "Yes. He did. Regularly. Probably not so much, moving forward, though."

"And he used this to poison Jana?" Arebella asked, staring at the spiralling vial with horrified fascination.

Lowe shook his head, both at what he was reading - Hel wasn't the only one who would need a wash - and the question. "No, I didn't drink anything when I was there."

"Yeah, I wondered about that. I'm assuming, though, he made some sort of ostentatious 'hail fellow well met' greeting with you when you came in?"

Lowe triggered Grid View. Yes, he saw, Kregg had come walking towards him, gloved hand outstretched. Concentrating, he paused and zoomed in on Kregg's palm. It glittered unpleasantly. "He had this shit smeared on his hand. Bastard."

"Yep. He was pretty smug about that. At least to start with. Of course, he got all kinds of remorseful as the evening progressed."

So Lowe had been right. It had been the who had sought to mind control him. "Did he say why?"

"No, but this is where shit gets interesting. He says it was because you were being your usual charming self, and he wanted to teach you a lesson. But - " Hel's voice trailed off, and the spinning vial moved in the opposite direction.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"But what?"

"There was clearly another reason. If I had to put gold on it, I would say someone ordered him to do it. But if that was so, he wasn't sharing."

"Perhaps you didn't ask hard enough?"

The temperature in the room dropped through the floor, and Lowe hastily clarified. "Sorry, what I mean is . . . what I was getting at was . . ."

"What Jana meant was 'thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to help him out in this matter." Arebella supplied smoothly.

"Yes. Yes, that's what I meant."

Hel cricked her neck, and the room began to warm back up. "Sorry, I'm more than a little on edge. That man - " she shook her head.

"It was bad? I mean, I've heard rumours," Arebella said. "Everyone knows about Kelvin Kregg."

"I would suggest they don't know the half of it." Lowe closed the - for want of a better word - abuse journal and tapped its cover with his finger. "I'll make sure this gets in front of Staffen first thing."

"Good," Hel said. "Although you may want to warn whoever picks him up that he'll probably be a touch fragile. They may want to take a mop with them."

"Sorry, so is that it? This unpleasant young man is who you were looking for?" With a blink of her eyes, Mylaf swapped out the cherry cake for a celebratory round of mana-regenerating cocktails.

But Lowe was shaking his head. "No. Not at all," he said, holding up the journal. "According to his journal, Kregg has been up to this for years, but it is only in the last few weeks he started introducing necrotic slime to proceedings."

Hel nodded. "He says he 'found' the stuff after the first death. Several vials were left on his desk, apparently. He had no idea who put them there, and he swears he had nothing to do with any murder."

"You believed him?"

"I didn't disbelieve him. But he wasn't telling me the whole story, which was quite impressive considering how I was asking. Someone has put the fear of Soar into him, and he was willing to keep schtum even with me - "

"I don't think I want to know the details," Arebella interrupted.

"Ah, don't knock it until you try it, sweetie. It's amazing how close pleasure and pain can get. Let me know if you fancy a dabble. I don't mind telling you that Latham's quite the convert."

"Anyway," Lowe said, clearing his throat, "let's see where this leads us. If we're confident Kregg didn't kill either of the . . . " he looked at Hel, who shrugged back.

"I think so. He was lying about something, but it wasn't that."

"Okay. Well, in lieu of anything else to go with, let's run with that. He’s not our guy. What about the missing ?"

"He definitely knows something about what happened to Culloden. For example, he's clear she's not returning to the museum, but it feels like he's been told that rather than was the cause. But I couldn't get out of him who. Again, I feel the need to stress that if he was more afraid of the hypothetical wrath of whoever was threatening him rather than the very real presence of me, you're going to need to be real careful, Lowe."

Hel paused, and when she met Lowe’s eyes, there was no humour in her expression at all. “I know you think you’re all kinds of resilient. And maybe you are in the normal run of things. But that twat was afraid. Scared on a deep, bone-deep level. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. And I’ve been around. So believe me when I say you need to think very carefully if this is a case you want to continue with.”

*

Even as they were talking, Kelvin Kregg lay in his own room, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes. His once pristine apartment had become a squalid hole, littered with the remnants of broken furniture, his shattered ego and the stench of blind terror. He hadn’t moved from the spot on the bed where he’d collapsed after Hel left him. His mind churned with paranoia, each creak of the floorboards, each whisper of wind through the cracks in the window, sending spikes of terror through his gut.

Then the front door creaked open, and Kregg’s heart leapt into his throat. He tried to move, to bolt upright, but his fractured limbs wouldn’t obey. His eyes, wild and desperate, fixed on the figure standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the hallway. They closed the door with a deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness, and Kregg’s breath hitched in his throat, recognition dawning in his eyes.

He tried to speak, but his voice came out as a strangled croak. “I didn’t tell her… anything… I swear…” The words tumbled out in a frantic whisper, his tongue tripping over itself to spill the denial. His body shook, a cold sweat breaking across his skin as the figure advanced.

The intruder said nothing, its silence more terrifying than any threat could have been. Each step the figure took closer towards him ratcheted up Kregg’s panic. He struggled to sit up, his hands clawing at the sheets, but what Hel had left of his muscles refused to cooperate. His heart thundered in his chest, the blood rushing in his ears drowning out any rational thought. The figure reached the bed, looming over him like a shadow of death, and still, they said nothing.

Then, without warning, the figure struck. It was methodical, precise, and almost clinical. Its claws gleamed in the dim light as they descended, a flash of bone that caught the last shreds of Kregg’s sanity and sliced it to ribbons. The first cut was quick, severing the tendons in his wrists, a clean slice that left his hands useless, flopping like dead fish.

Kregg screamed, a high, keening wail that filled the small room, but no one would hear him. The figure’s hand clamped over his mouth, silencing the scream, forcing the sound back down his throat where it bubbled up as a sickening gurgle. His eyes bulged, tears streaming down his cheeks, his body convulsing as the blade moved with grim efficiency.

The claws carved into him, slicing through skin, muscle, and bone with ease. Blood sprayed across the bed, splattering the walls, the sheets, and the figure’s clothes. His chest was flayed open, ribs cracked apart like a butcher disassembling a carcass. The figure worked with a cold detachment, the movements almost mechanical as they dug into his chest cavity, pulling apart the flesh to expose the pulsing organs within. Kregg’s vision swam with red as his life drained away.

The figure reached into his chest, fingers curling around his heart, feeling the last, desperate beats before squeezing. The final act was almost tender as the heart was ripped free. Kregg’s body slumped back against the bed, lifeless, an empty husk.

The figure stood over the corpse, staring down at the ruined body, their face expressionless. Then, its mouth opened, and a river of slime flowed from it, covering the body and immediately beginning to consume it.

By the time the first of the Investigators arrived in the morning, there was relatively little left to question.