Dr. Bleak looked up from his own workbench. “Perhaps she stopped to pick flowers.”

“On the moor?” Jack stood, grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair. “I’m going to go find her.”

“Patience, Jack—”

“Is an essential tool of the scientific mind; raise no corpse before its time. I know, sir. But I also know that this isn’t like Alexis. She’s never late.” Jack looked at her mentor, expression pleading.

Dr. Bleak sighed. “Ah, for the energy of the young,” he said. “Yes, you may go and find her. But be quick about it. The festivities will not begin until you finish your chores.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack. She yanked on her gloves, and then she was off, running for the door and down the garden path. Dr. Bleak watched her until she had dwindled to almost nothing in the distance. Only then did he close his eyes. He had lived in the Moors for a very long time. He knew, even better than Jack did, that lateness was rarely, if ever, as innocent as it seemed.

“Let her be alive,” he whispered, and recognized his words for the useless things they were as soon as he heard them. He sat still, waiting. The truth would come clear soon enough.

*   *   *

IT WAS THE RED that caught Jack’s attention first.

The Moors were far more complex than they had seemed to her on that first night, when she had been young and innocent and unaware of her own future. They were brown, yes, riddled with dead and dying vegetation. Every shade of brown that there was could be found on the Moors. They were also bright with growing green and mellow gold, and with the rainbow pops of flowers—yellow marigold and blue heather and purple wolf’s bane. Hemlock bloomed white as clouds. Foxglove spanned the spectrum of sunset. The Moors were beautiful in their own way, and if their beauty was the quiet sort that required time and introspection to be seen, well, there was nothing wrong with that. The best beauty was the sort that took some seeking.

But nothing red grew on the Moors. Not even strawberries, or poisonous mushrooms. Those were found only on the outskirts of the forest held by the werewolves, or in private gardens, like Dr. Bleak’s. The Moors were neutral territory, of a sort, divided between so many monsters that they could not bear to bleed. Red was an anomaly. Red was aftermath.

Jack began to walk faster.

The closer she got, the clearer the red became. It was like it had exploded outward from a single source, shed with wanton delight by whoever held the knife. There was a body at the center of it, a softly curving body, lush of breast and generous of hip. A body … a body …