What if she hadn’t died? Could our relationship have been repaired? I was far from a model sister myself. I flaunted the red envelopes—lucky money from our grandparents—I received for my straight As, and sometimes I pushed Angela when I knew she was at her breaking point, as only siblings can. If she were alive, could we regain at least some sense of the family that we lost three years ago when our parents died?

For so long, I blamed myself for their deaths.

It’s only recently I’ve begun to move past that.

Seb pulls out his cell phone. “It is late. I will meet you tomorrow morning after you finish at the morgue. Then we will go to the catacombs and continue our search for information.” He nods to our tiny clue pile: a few receipts from June, found on her desk, that the police thought were useless and hadn’t confiscated; a research paper about the catacombs bearing edits in red pen; and now her agenda.

I stand and follow him to the door. “See you tomorrow.” I lock the dead bolt behind him, my words more a promise to myself that I’m ready. His footsteps groan down the stairwell into the marble foyer.

My stomach growls. Considering I haven’t eaten anything since a sandwich this afternoon, I open Angela’s laptop to search for supermarkets nearby. I could use something to drink. Only one of them is open at this hour, a place around the corner from here. I’m about to close the window when a bookmark at the top of the screen catches my eye.

Moon.

Hope floods my chest. I stop breathing.

Everyone, including our parents for a while, called Angela Sunshine, while I was the shadowy contrast to my sister’s effusive personality. Complicated, painful emotions rise as I recall her name for me—Moonshine—before either of us knew that typically meant bathtub gin. Moon.

My trigger finger hovers over the link, then clicks. A public post from a blog she hasn’t touched in years opens, displaying a single phrase followed by numbers:

Divine Research

48535.75 2201

A scream cuts through the square outside the apartment. What the hell? I rise and peer through the open shutters; the fountain is deserted, the sidewalks empty in the lamplit dark. Was that a person? A chill skips along my arms. The sound was feral in its sharp appeal, then abruptly silent.

Valentin’s accented English echoes in the quiet: Series murderer.

Divine Research.

Moon.

The lifetime of intensity I’ve experienced today alone threatens to pour from every cell of my body in snotty tears, but I don’t let the sobs begin. My sister’s final communication to me could be staring me in the face, possibly containing the answer to why she disappeared, why she died. There’s no time to fall apart.