Celeste quickly explained about the meeting with Ibrahim and her new role as Mariel’s defender. Hypatia gave her a long look that Celeste couldn’t quite decipher, then motioned for her to follow her around back.

“And what about your meeting with Abraxas?” Hypatia asked as they walked. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

She sighed. “Not the way you mean it.”

“It never is.” She gave her a sideways look, urging her to say more, but Celeste wasn’t up for discussing it.

They arrived at the back door, retracing the very steps they’d taken in the dark hours of the morning.

Hypatia raised an eyebrow. “Wager they left it unguarded?”

“They can’t be that dense.”

“Arrogant is more like it.” Hypatia tried the door. No guard came rushing to investigate the noise, but it had been bolted from the inside. She fished around under a loose brick and pulled out a flat ruler. She wedged it into the space between the door and the frame. It took her a few tries, but with a powerful heave, she threw the bolt free. “I’ve locked myself out a few times,” she admitted, before she quietly opened the door.

Moonlight streamed in through the front windows, but they were careful to stay low as they passed the bar and went back toward the interior hallway.

“Do you know where it happened?” There was no need for Celeste to specify what she meant by “it.”

“I know where they drug him out from.” Hypatia looked down pointedly. Bloodstains colored the carpet like the trail to the witch’s house in a dark fairy tale. They followed the blood until it ended at Hypatia’s office.

The door was ajar. Hypatia lit a lamp on a desk strewn with papers. Light suffused the room, revealing a sleeping cot and shelves stuffed with what looked to be records, order forms, and the various sundries of running a business. Much of it was covered in dried blood. The bed in particular was soaked through with it. Celeste remembered Mariel saying there was blood everywhere, more than she thought a man could hold.

“Start looking,” she said, grimly setting to the task.

“For what?”

“A clue.”

“Being a mite more specific might help.”

“A murder weapon.”

“Celeste, if there was a knife here big enough to do this kind of damage to a body, don’t you think it would have been found by now?”

“Then look for something else. Signs a killer was in here. Footprints, secret papers… Hell, I don’t know. Anything that might help Mariel.”

Hypatia looked dubious but got to work, shuffling through the papers on her desk.

Celeste lifted the corner of the mattress, the bedding stiff and sticky, and peered underneath. There was nothing there. She moved to the nearest bookshelf, reading across the spines of tomes, looking for she knew not what.