But as wonderful as tonight had been, I was too restless and had too many things on my mind to just relax and lie there next to Owen. So I slipped out of his arms and covered him with a blanket from the couch. Then I grabbed another blanket, wrapped it around myself, and left the den.

   I headed into Fletcher’s office—my office now—snapped on the lights, and went over to his battered wooden desk. Ever since the old man’s murder more than a year ago, I’d slowly been going through several decades’ worth of papers, photos, and other information that he’d collected and squirreled away in here. Now, finally, everything was organized and neatly filed away, and I could find info on just about anyone in the Ashland underworld in a matter of minutes. I’d even been updating and adding to the files myself, with Silvio’s help. But tonight I only had eyes for the bottle of gin and the glass perched on the center of the desk.

   I plopped into Fletcher’s chair, poured myself a healthy amount of gin, and drank it down, relishing the sweet burn of the liquor sliding down my throat. I poured a second glass, leaned back in the chair, and eyed the photo of the old man that I had placed on the corner of the desk.

   Walnut-brown hair, green eyes, tan wrinkled features. Fletcher smiled as he looked out over the scenic landscape of Bone Mountain, where we’d gone hiking together so many times over the years. This photo was one of my favorite shots of him, and now that I’d cleaned out his office and made it my own, I often found myself coming in here and looking at the picture for guidance, even if he was dead and buried.

   “Did you know about Tucker and my mother?” I asked. “Did you have any clue about the two of them? Because it was certainly news to me.”

   Of course, Fletcher didn’t answer. He just kept looking out over the mountain view and grinning his sly grin, as if he knew all these secrets and was silently telling me that I’d have to find the answers myself.

   Fletcher had set this whole thing up like an enormous treasure hunt, with one clue leading to another clue, all of them slowly revealing more and more information about the Circle, its members, and my mother. Not for the first time, I wondered why he’d done things this way, instead of just leaving all the information in one place for me to find. Specifically, why he hadn’t included a photo of the leader of the Circle with all the other pictures that had been in his safety-deposit boxes. What was so special, terrifying, or horrifying about this man that Fletcher had deliberately left him out?

   It was almost like Fletcher was building up to something—some secret that he knew would further rock my world—and he was trying to get me ready for it, trying to prepare me for the shocking truth, trying to soften the blow by only giving me small dribs and drabs of information along the way. I had the sinking feeling that my mother and Tucker being involved wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

   The old man might have thought he was protecting me, but it was damn frustrating to always have more questions than answers.

   “Well, Fletcher?” I asked, still staring at his picture, the office walls soaking up my soft words. “Care to tell me what you were thinking? What am I going to find out when I finally get to the bottom of this crazy rabbit hole?”

   Just saying the words made me feel better, like the old man was sitting here with me, like we were discussing a new assignment, a new mission, the way we had so many times in the past. And it also calmed some of my turbulent emotions, although it left more questions in their wake.

   If Damian Rivera’s mocking works were true, then Hugh Tucker had been sweet on my mother. At some point, he had cared about her, enough for other people to notice and remember it, even now, all these years later. Maybe the two of them had even had a romantic relationship before my mother met and married my father, Tristan. I could accept all those possibilities, although they still boggled my mind. Try as I might, I just couldn’t picture Eira, who’d always been so warm, caring, and considerate, with someone like Tucker. Someone so cold, heartless, and ruthless.

   Someone so much like, well, me.

   Then again, it had taken me years to get to this point. I hadn’t started out as a stone-cold killer. Once upon a time, I’d been a sweet, innocent little girl without a care in the world. But that little girl had burned to ash right alongside Eira and my older sister, Annabella, the night Mab Monroe murdered them and tortured me.

   Every single step I’d taken since then had seemed perfectly logical, necessary, and right at the time for my own protection, survival, and self-interest. Living on the streets, hiding my true identity, taking Fletcher up on his offer to train me, becoming the Spider. Now I was a notorious assassin with a perpetual target on my back. Not exactly where I’d thought I’d wind up, but it was my life, for better or worse, and I was going to make the best of it.

   For the first time, I wondered what had happened to Hugh Tucker to turn him into the man he was today. The one who did so many bad things on someone else’s orders. I wondered how fast the vampire’s downward spiral had been. I wondered what the tipping point had been, the one thing that had dragged him down, down, down into the darkness, never to surface into the light again.

   My own downward spiral had started with the murders of my mother and Annabella. But what had been Tucker’s trigger? The loss of his family’s wealth, power, position, and prestige? His own ruthless ambition to get it all back? Helping to orchestrate my mother’s death? Or perhaps all the dirty deeds he’d done for the Circle since then? The ones that had chipped away at his soul a little bit at a time until now there was nothing left?

   In the end, Tucker’s reasons were his own, and I doubted that I would ever learn them. And however sad and tragic his motives, however they might pluck the heartstrings, they still didn’t change everything the bastard had done to me and my friends. Tucker’s rationale didn’t change how he’d stood by and watched Deirdre Shaw weasel her way into Finn’s life, pretending to be a doting mother, when all she really wanted was to rob the First Trust bank. It didn’t change how Tucker had drugged and kidnapped Finn, Bria, and Owen so that I would hand over some precious jewels that Deirdre had hidden from him and the Circle. And it certainly didn’t change how many times he’d tried to kill me.