The fright Prin must have looked, standing there dripping with cold sea water, uncombed hair full of sand and who knows what else, with his back to the door he had just closed, shutting off their escape route, was reflected in the face of his friend.

Aster looked up at him, her body trapped between the bed and the larger and less clever of the two investigating men (Hobbs, Prin’s mind supplied from somewhere in the depths of it, like a single cookie offered on a china plate at high tea. Was that right?). Her dark eyes reflected the almost alien blue ones she was looking into, and a new kind of fear crossed her features. Not the fear of what happens with a man who won’t be refused, and hasn’t even paid the house for the privilege, no, that fear was no doubt a well worn familiar one, old hat.

The prince felt a mote of disappointment. He had thought those men more professional than this. And also, if he had to pick he would rather have eaten the too clever one with the smirking baby face. More satisfaction in it. This would have to do.

“Oh, Prin, no! It’s okay.” Aster shimmied out of her already loosened dress and was out of the bed and standing before Prin as quick as a blink, like a magic trick. She held her hands up. “I can – I can handle this, you go home now.”

“As slippery as an eel.” Hobbs was left holding the pretty dress, like a beautifully made pie crust with no filling. He rolled over on his back with a nervous smile. Half amused, half worried about who had just caught him in the act. When he saw it was Prin he visibly relaxed for a second, before tensing back up and narrowing his eyes with suspicion. “How close are you two?” He asked, as though the answer might feature into the solving of his murder mystery, or at least grant the excellent leverage that blackmail could provide.

“Not as close as you and I are about to be.” Prin licked his lips. Come to think of it the larger one was not so bad, more meat on the bones.

Hobbs barked out a little laugh. “What is this, some kind of set up? Or . . . is this something you’re into?” He cast a glance at Aster. “I’m sorry, I don’t think skinny moppets that look like something the cat dragged in – I mean, maybe under different circumstances I would – There is something compelling about those eyes. But is this really how you present yourself when propositioning someone?” He lounged on the bed, propping his head up on the palm of his hand. “Oh, I’m sure some would.” He shook his head, incredulous but intrigued.

“What are you doing here, bunny? Let’s go.” Aster took Prin’s arm and tried to lead steer him toward the broken door. “Are you sleep walking? Go on home to your pretty man. I don’t need rescuing, you know me.” She looked up at him with that lopsided smile, half the confidence of the gods themselves, half lost child.

Prin walked a couple steps in that direction, muscle memory, without having any intention of leaving. “He wants to hurt you.”

“Nah, not really.” Aster lowered her voice and leaned in closer to Prin, standing on her toes to reach his ear. “Let me just give him what he wants, a little taste anyway, and he’ll go away. I know this type. He feels like a big man when he can intimidate someone, just let him think you’re scared. You know?”

The prince pulled his arm out of Aster’s grasp and turned fully to face her. He put his hands on her arms, holding them tightly down against the sides of her slim body. He could feel her freeze up and tense all down the length of her, like a possum about to play dead, or a rabbit with nowhere to run.

“Don’t interfere with my dinner.” The prince said.

Don’t you dare hurt her! Let go! The voice in his mind shrieked impotently in the background.

Knowing he would do whatever he wanted and there was nothing Prin, or anyone, could do to stop him.

“Luckily for you, you are too scrawny to make a good meal.” The prince winked at Aster. “But don’t tempt me.”

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“This is all pretty weird.” Hobbs sat up. The nervous smile was back. Perhaps he enjoyed bullying those he considered helpless but adding Prin into the mix introduced a level of crazy that was too unpredictable for his taste. “I think I’ll take my leave after all. We can continue this . . . conversation another time.” He stood up, looking as though he wished he could figure out how to escape without going right past them.

Prin released Aster and turned to face the investigator. “Do you still think I killed that witch?”

Hobbs put his hands up in the air. “Hey, it was never really me who thought so. That was my partner.”

Prin stepped closer, blocking his way to the door. “Well, I did.”

The investigator frowned, he looked over the prince’s shoulder at Aster. “Is he not well, mentally? Or is this some kind of elaborate prank? Because it’s not something to joke about.”

The prince stepped closer still.

Hobbs cringed away from him. As much as he tried to act nonchalant, he had to feel how the dynamic had shifted. He had no upper hand.

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid of me?” Prin asked.

Hobbs scoffed. “I think I could take you in a fight. I’ve had training.”

“Good luck with that.” The prince leapt on the cowardly man and bit at his neck, where he knew the blood would come flying out like a geyser. He was learning.

As much warning as he had been given in the situation, and as much as every muscle and nerve in his body must have been screaming out for him to run, it did no good. Prin still had the element of surprise. Somehow.

And the blood did indeed shoot out like a public fountain on a hot day.

Hobbs tried to scream but Prin cut him off with another bite to the throat. He had to quiet and incapacitate the man before he could relax and feast in peace. It was all surprisingly easy.

He surely took some small wounds in the flailing and thrashing about, but he could barely feel it.

The prince was halfway to filling his belly before he thought to wonder where Aster was.

Probably halfway to the other side of the island by now. The voice said, with an almost satisfied sounding tone. As if they were not one and the same, as if they would not experience the same shit smelling and damp stone prison cell, feel the same noose as it tightened snuggly around their throat.

Prin raised his head from the comforting warmth of the raw meat that was Hobb’s unworthy chest. And looked toward the door.

Aster was still standing there. One beringed hand out, grazing the door, but more as though to assure it was there and solid and real, than from any attempt to open it. Other than that she had frozen, dark eyes as far away as distant stars, expression blank. The only movement was fat tears that smudged the kohl eyeliner and ran down her face in dirty rivers.

Leave no witnesses.

What about Elwin? The voice asked.

Elwin doesn’t count.

Prin stood up and went toward Aster.

Aster didn’t move. It was as though she thought that by not moving she couldn’t be seen. Or someone had hit her off switch.

The prince put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Hi.”

Aster said nothing. With eyes that looked through him and out the other side to the body behind him.

“I will take no pleasure in this, since you are more or less a good person.” The prince said.

You won’t hurt her. You wouldn’t dare!

He ignored the nagging voice.

“Maybe it’s a mercy killing.” The prince suggested. “Since you seem to be broken.”

Aster said nothing.

The prince lifted her wrist to his mouth. Maybe he would do it this way, just let her bleed out, remaining beautiful. Nah, probably not.

Just as his teeth sunk into a petite arm, feeling the graze of bone against his incisors, he heard a horrible sound from the floor beside the bed, where he had left the body of Hobbs.

The, apparently, not yet dead body of Hobbs.

The investigator made a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a growl, and began to violently thrash against the floor of the shed, thumping and clattering in his death throes.

It was a bit loud.

The prince let go of Aster and turned back to his first victim, to finish him off faster so that he would at last shut up.

He took ahold of the man’s head by the hair and wrenched it, hoping to decapitate him in one grab. This was harder than he had imagined and the head remained attached by the trailing snake’s tail of the spinal cord. But he was definitely dead. Prin could have almost laughed. Why had he thought that would be easy?

As he was turning back around to Aster, all of this having barely taken a moment, the prince just had time to appreciate how ferocious she looked, and feel a stir of appreciation below his abdomen.

Aster’s white chemise turned red on one side, the blood flowing in a line from her wrist down over her arm and staining the white cloth all the way down, as she held a chair above her head. Her face stripped of customer service politeness, the charm of civility, the artifice of polished beauty. Feral.

“I. Want. To. Live.” Aster smashed the chair over Prin.