I have come here to speak to Cordelia, Enoch went on, on a subject related to the murders and their investigation.

Cordelia stood up straighter. “Anything you want to say to me privately, you can say to all of my friends.”

As you wish. In the Ossuarium you asked me a question about Filomena di Angelo’s Strength rune.

The others were looking at Cordelia in confusion. “I had asked,” Cordelia explained, “whether she had one.”

She did, Enoch said. She wore a permanent Strength rune on her wrist, according to her family, but that rune is missing now.

“Missing?” Christopher sounded baffled. “How’s that possible? Scarred over, you mean?”

There is no scar. A rune can be used up, leaving only a phantom of itself behind, but it cannot vanish from one’s skin entirely once it has been drawn. Enoch’s focus shifted to Cordelia. How did you know?

“I saw my father’s Voyance rune was missing,” Cordelia said, “and in the courtyard, when Filomena’s body was there, I thought I noticed her Strength rune missing from her wrist. It could have been nothing, my own memory playing tricks—but after I noticed my father’s rune, I had to ask.…”

She could feel the weight of Brother Enoch’s gaze, as if he were staring at her, though she knew he did not see as ordinary people did. She tried to keep her face expressionless. She hoped the others were doing the same. Lying to a Silent Brother was more than difficult: if Enoch chose to rummage in her mind, he’d see easily enough that it had been Filomena’s ghost herself who’d hinted at the truth.

He took my strength.

If she told the truth, though, there would be inquiries—prodding—questions that might turn toward Lucie. She willed herself to look pleasant and blank, as James did when he wore the Mask.

“But what could it mean?” James said, the sharpness in his tone cutting the tension like a knife. “The fact that two of the victims are missing runes? It’s not possible to steal runes, and even if one did, what use would they be?”

“As some sort of trophy, maybe?” Lucie said, with a grateful look in Cordelia’s direction.

Christopher looked slightly ill. “Jack the Ripper took… parts… of the people he killed.”

Lucie said, “Or as proof the person is dead? If the killer was acting at the behest of someone else—if he had hired himself out, perhaps, and had to prove he’d done the deed—”

That could not be. It is not that the skin where the rune is inked has been cut away, said Enoch. The rune itself has been taken. Its spirit. Its soul, if you will.

Anna was shaking her head. “But what could one do with a rune that’s been removed? It’s bizarre—”