“Not necessarily,” said Fae. “You’ve got Grey, but you don’t believe he was acting alone.” She turned to Khabir. “Miranda’s trying to find the man who directed him. Maybe that man had a motive.”

“You’re asking us to restart the case from scratch,” Khabir said to Fae, his stern voice contrasting with his amused expression.

“It could keep me busy, Khabir. It would make me happy.” Miranda was surprised to hear herself pleading.

Khabir looked a bit startled himself, but he tried to cover it with a quick smile and turned to Fae again. “I don’t get paid for reopening solved cases, but if you’re that keen on mysteries, you’re free to bring back anything from my office that you think Miranda might find useful.”

Fae smiled at him dreamily. “I’ve always loved mysteries.”

—

Things unfolded so smoothly and naturally that Miranda hardly noticed she was being managed. Khabir humored her, and Fae assisted, both of them glad to give her a task that could be a distraction or even a bribe. One morning when Miranda was refusing to do her physiotherapy and Nurse Benet was at the end of her patience, Fae turned up with a thick folder, took one look at what was happening, and said to the nurse, “She’s not ready for these yet. Call me when you’re done.”

Miranda yelled at her as she left, but Fae only turned around once to give her a disappointed frown. Miranda spent the rest of the day in wordless brooding, but the following day she completed all her exercises with a grim precision that made the nurse look at her in silent worry, forgoing the encouraging platitudes that she usually employed to urge Miranda on.

“Call Fae,” Miranda ordered as soon as the last exercise was done, and Nurse Benet hastened to obey.

Fae came that very evening. She stood warily in the doorway of the atrium, expecting a quarrel, but Miranda was past that. “What have you got for me?” she asked her cousin bluntly.

Fae relaxed slightly and came closer. “Lists. Volunteer rosters, guest registers, and invitation lists for events at the City Shelter over a six-month period.”

They divided the work. Fae kept to one side of the atrium, maintaining a peaceful distance between them. Miranda quickly found herself scratching little tally marks into a notebook indicating how often a particular name came up and in which settings. As she ticked and tallied, she wondered which of the unfamiliar names might belong to the Mermaid.