The brightness was a momentary distraction. I uncovered my eyes and turned to the floor, already knowing what I was going to see. The blood had been notification enough, like a marquee sign leading toward horror and the grave.

Mac and Leanne were stretched out side by side, his head by her feet, her head by his. Their hands were joined in the space between them, pinned to the floor by a spike of what looked like ivory, or polished bone. Like the others, they were naked, their bodies laid bare to the unforgiving world. Runes were carved into their skin, so deep in some places that bone glistened through the gore, blindingly white in contrast to the red around it. The runes were larger this time, more elaborate.

The others saw it, too, but it was Alice who put it into words: “They’re not afraid of getting caught. Those pictures you showed me before, those were a mess, but this . . . they took their time and made sure every little detail was Just. So.” She shook her head. “This is sick.”

“What are the differences between this scene and the last?” asked Dominic. He had a high, tight note in his voice, like he was stepping back from the situation and putting it behind a glass wall, something clear enough to let him see, but solid enough to distance him. It was his Covenant training coming to the fore, and I almost envied him the ability to become divorced from the terrible things that were going on.

I had no such training. My training was less about killing and more about saving: it never let me step back. Instead, I took a step down, moving closer to the mess, and said, “Some of the runes are the same, but there are more of them, and some I’ve never seen before. The spike is new. That’s physical evidence of what they’re doing. The last two victims weren’t holding hands.”

“They’re not sliced down the middle,” said Malena. I glanced up at her. She was still sticking to the wall, and her transformation toward her more canine form was continuing; spikes had broken through the skin of her neck and shoulders, and her complexion was shifting toward a dusky gray. It was a slow process. She’d be able to talk for a while yet, even if she chose to keep transforming. “There’s no way the killers could’ve gotten to their guts.”

“So we either have two ritualists, or the ritual is evolving.” I pulled out my phone and began snapping pictures. “Malena, I’m going to need you to take the overhead shots again.”

“We need that spike,” said Alice.

“We can’t take it,” said Dominic. His voice was sharp. We all turned to look at him. He shook his head, and said, “Whoever is doing this, they use the confusion charms to keep people from realizing the eliminated dancers have vanished without a trace—everyone thinks they’ve seen the missing people with someone else. Our killers aren’t aware that they have an active opposition in the building.”

“Yet,” said Pax.

“Yet,” agreed Dominic. “Nothing stays secret forever. But if we steal that piece of ghoulish equipment, they’ll realize someone knows what they’ve been doing. They’ll change their ways. I don’t think they’ll stop. People like this, monsters like this, don’t stop simply because they’ve been discovered. If anything, they kill faster, destroy faster, because they no longer have secrecy to protect them.”

“He’s right,” said Alice. “Every snake cult I’ve ever seen has gotten a lot nastier once people knew for sure that they were there. It’s like rattlesnakes. They’re pretty good neighbors until you flip their rocks over.”

“Don’t compare these people to rattlesnakes,” said Malena, and her voice was filled with the sound of bones rearranging themselves, teeth sharpening to new points. I remembered with a jolt that she and Mac were from the same season. They had danced together. He hadn’t been her regular partner, but he’d been the Pax to her Anders, and now he was dead, bled out on a cold stone floor in the basement of the theater, and there was nothing she could do to bring him back.

“Rattlesnakes only bite when they have to,” Malena continued. I could hear the sorrow under the sounds of shifting now. I had just needed to figure out how to listen for it. “These people, they’re biting for the fun of it. They’re biting because they want to get something. They’re not rattlesnakes. They’re monsters.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry,” said Alice, glancing in my direction. I nodded slightly, thanking her without words. The last thing we needed was for Malena to launch herself at my grandmother because she’d been insensitive. “We need to stop this.”