When no one answered, Chelle sighed and boldly lifted the man’s limp arm. Her frankness and tenacity more than made up for her unintimidating stature.
She pushed the man’s coat and shirtsleeve down, revealing a tract of coarse black hair on the top of his forearm. On the pale flesh underneath, something had been inked into his skin. Ingrid craned her neck. It was an arrow, the head aiming toward the man’s blue-veined wrist and the fletching curved in half crescents toward the crease of his elbow.
Nolan moved away from the table, muttering a long string of curses. Chelle dropped the man’s arm.
“What does it mean?” Ingrid asked.
“Only one sort of Alliance member receives the Straight Arrow,” Chelle answered. “An assassin.”
Ingrid looked upon the dead man with new horror. Carrick Quinn had spoken of Alliance assassins. He’d said the Directorate would send one to end his life for betraying their orders. Ingrid had feared that they might send one for her as well once they discovered the mimic demon had failed. But after a month had passed with Marco practically adhered to her side and no trace of danger, she’d let herself breathe again. Too soon, apparently.
“Let’s not speculate,” Hans said, pinning Ingrid with his cool glare. She had relayed Carrick’s confession to Hans, but it had gone unaddressed.
Like many Alliance fighters, Nolan’s father had been exposed to mercurite, a tincture of mercury and silver used to destroy whatever poison a fighter became infected with after a bite or gash from a demon. But mercurite was a poison of its own. After years of use, it started to eat away at the hunter’s internal organs, including his brain.
By the time Carrick had set the mimic demon on Ingrid, he’d been suffering badly. Even Nolan had noticed how different his father had been acting. They all believed he’d been half mad with mercurite poisoning, and of course, the Directorate had denied ever having voted to have Ingrid murdered.
Even she had started to question Carrick’s confession. The body on the table, and the tattoo on his arm, removed any lingering doubt.
Marco moved closer to Ingrid, mindful to keep his bared body out of her side vision.
“It’s hardly speculation,” he said. “The Alliance wants my human dead, and this proves what we’ve already tried to tell you.”
The knotted tangle in the pit of Ingrid’s stomach tightened a little more every time Marco called her that. My human. As if she belonged to him.
“Or this man could be connected with the Dusters that have been disappearing,” Hans murmured. “Miss Waverly is a Duster, after all.”
At Ingrid’s last session at Clos du Vie, where she practiced gathering and storing electric pulses in her fingertips, Monsieur Constantine had mentioned that a few of his students had not arrived for their scheduled lessons. They had not been seen at their homes, either.
“He isn’t connected,” Marco said. The finality in his voice brooked no argument.
Chelle tapped the sole of one bare foot against the tile floor and glared at Marco. “Of course he isn’t. We already know who is. Or I should say, what is.”
Ingrid risked a glance over her shoulder. Chelle’s hostility toward the Dispossessed wasn’t new, but she was accusing them of harming Dusters. Oddly enough, Marco didn’t make a sarcastic retort. He cut his eyes away from her, toward the body on the table.
Nolan had taken up the unpleasant task of searching through the dead assassin’s coat and trouser pockets, most likely for any identifying information. “Marco is right. Assassins aren’t trained to hide the bodies of their targets, and none of the missing Dusters have been found,” he said. “Though a seasoned assassin would have known better than to approach his target and her gargoyle.”
Finding nothing, Nolan reached for a length of linen toweling. His hands were smeared with blood from his search.
“The ink on his arm does look fresh,” Chelle noted. “He could have been newly initiated.”
“I said we should not speculate,” Hans barked. “Now go wake the others. I want to know who this man is. Perhaps someone will recognize him.”
Chelle swallowed her retort and left the room.
Hans kept his gaze on the dead assassin. “I’ll contact the Directorate. Until I receive word, perhaps, Miss Waverly, you should remain in your home.”
He didn’t wait for Ingrid’s response. He stole out of the room and left her gawping. Stay in her home?
“He doesn’t know the Waverly women very well, does he?” Nolan said, raking a hand through his tousled black curls. Then his amused grin faded. “Have you heard from your sister?”
Ingrid shook her head, startled he’d mentioned Gabby. He hadn’t, not once, in the last month.
He rubbed his mouth, his palm scraping over the shadow of a beard. “I need to send a telegram to the London faction,” he said, his eyes glazed. Concern pulled his dark brows into a slant.