My testing closet y utterly empty except for a small pile of clothes. I stared down at them. I….the door had been locked. I leaned down, lifting the clothes up, searg through them as if I could find them hiding among them. The door had been locked!

  I found nothing besides the piece of paper, which had three words scrawled across it: Out For Lunch.

  The rest of the room was bare, which wasn’t strange. You could see the marks oone floor from me dragging the testing table in and out of the room, and nothing else was stored here duriing. Whily made the ck of the intruder more apparent.

  I let out a noise remi of a steam whistle as I moved to one of the walls, hammering it with my fist. Rough wood threateo put splinters in my hand as Tolman leaned down, reading the note.

  “Well, what do you know, they disappeared from a locked closet. And they left their clothes behind. Maybe they got overly warm and decided to go streaking to cool off?”

  I ighe joke. Thud went my head into the wall, then again and again. My head hit rough wood, my short horns digging into it.

  “Fara? It was a joke.”

  “Why me?” I asked no one in particur. “I’ve done my best. It’s been years since I killed anyone before yesterday. I barely do anything worse than anyone in this district. I’ve kept away from the worst of my vices. I’ve not done a scrap of diabolism since. Why are the gods punishing me?”

  Tolmao grab a chair from my b, sitting down on it.“I'm pretty sure stopping killing people doesn’t improve your standing too much. Scamming people and stealing at the same level as those in this district is still a sin. And you drink way too much mead to cim you don’t have any vices.”

  “Tea is not a vieither is mead. But besides that, things were looking up. Now they’re heading down at a swift rate.”

  He’d picked up some of the clothing, searg it for anything hidden inside. “Might be true, but no use moping about it. You’ve had a few bad days. You’ll bounce back.”

  Tolman did have a point. Moping about this would not solve anything. Sighing, I looked around the b. I had an emergency teapot somewhere. The intruder had gohrough the drawers again, opening up even more ingredient tainers I dutifully shut. Some of these were ruined, but at least nothing poisonous had been touched.

  I eventually found the shattered remnants of my spare teapot inside one of the cupboards. Ah, they had choseh.

  I returo the testing closet where Tolman had finished going through the clothes pockets.

  “Okay. Let’s think about this. The intruder got out, but they couldn’t have used a key. Outside of why they didn’t just use it to tirying to fight me, leaving the clothes here suggests their only method of escape required needing to strip their clothes off.”

  Tolman cocked his head. “Are you copying Voltar?”

  I didn’t know whether he was referring to having entered Voltar as part of the Bck Fme or one of Dawes’ published ats of their cases. He was right, but I did sound like the detective's vocalization of his dedus.

  “I…it’s not copying. Voltar didn’t i deductive thinking, Tolman. But besides that point, if the intruder could open the door, they wouldn’t have stripped naked.”

  “Uhey want you to think that.”

  I shook my head. “No. As insane as events in this district get, someorolling through naked would have gotten attention. They wouldn’t do that willingly. So they got out of the testing room. The door is locked, and most of the room is reinforced. So the only potential exit is this.”

  This was the craderh the door, one I’d yself to precise measurements. If testing something with dangerous fumes, I’d stop it up with a material that would expand and seal it off from the air. Then, I’d prepare the rest of the b so I could safely open the door. Not the best solution, but on limited funds the best I could do. Most of the time I left it unblocked, like I had st night.

  It also only half an inch tall. I should have noticed my stop-gap s to stop the intruder’s screaming had somehow vanished.

  Tolman leaned down, poking a finger into the gap. “You think he made it out through that?”

  I y down on the floor, looking at the crack. “Unless another expnatios itself, it’s what we must go with.”

  I washused about this being the possibility either, but there were no signs of another way they could have left. The wood of the testing closet, roughly knotted and pockmarked, was solid and showed no signs of being tampered with.

  “Well, if he went through there, maybe he Biosculpted himself to fit through it?”

  I shook my head. “Remember how long it took me to alter myself pared to you and Arse’s even more time-intensive when you work on yourself because iably you’ll be altering parts of your body that help you manipute the tools you use to alter it.”

  That had beeruggle in handling my own disguise. The only reason I’d ma was having a half-year in which to do it bit by bit slowly. On pce, the temporary alterations only required me to touch up on them and fuel them every two weeks. I’d done minor alterations, like the ones since Lady Karsin had tacted me, but they were retively easy pared to altering my entire form.

  “It wouldn’t be possible to do some quid dirty ones just to make him capable of leaving uhe door?”

  “If she, or he wao try that iime they had, they must have aplished some breakthrough in the field that I haven’t heard a whiff of. We’re talking about a plete transformation to something barely resembling their base form ht.”

  “You’ve not been doing it the past couple of years. sidering how little you've been doing, you might be a little out of touch.”

  “Which doesn’t mean I haven’t been following it.” Although if the ability to alter one form on the fly like this had been made, it bei secret wasn’t too far a stretot if they wao keep that ability for themselves. But there was still one issue besides all that.

  I gestured at the pile of clothes at our feet and hooves. “Even if they did make some breakthrough, they wouldn’t be able to take their sculpting tools with them. Even the fi set wouldn’t fit through that opening.”

  “If not biosculpting, perhaps some other kind of magic. Teleportation?”

  “They could have taken the clothes with them if they teleported. Shifting magic maybe, but they all have a limited number of forms, and anything small enough to fit through the door crack would be difficult to ge back from.”

  “Right, you mentio a couple of times when Darv wao bee part wolf. The animal brais an influence, and the smaller you get, the more it does. What happeo him anyway?”

  “Went chasing stories of lythropes. Versalicci didn’t receive it well. You never heard?”

  “Versalicci trusted me with a lot less than he did you. But if we’re talking about lythropes, vampires, maybe? They turn into mist. Even if they’re a bit rare.”

  I she reason vampires were rare is that most of them were dead. After the Infernal Empire's colpse, vampire hunters killed most of the knoires. Which didn’t stop rumors of them cropping up every time a new spree of murders occurred. Even in quite a few cases where the killer has been caught, rumors still fly about a vampire being responsible. It was easier to believe a blood-sug monster could do such cruel acts over someone you knew.

  This was on top of the usual everyday rumors about various nobles or public figures secretly being vampires. Although apparently, a rend among some in the upper css was to pretend to be vampires. Supposedly to spice up their love lives, or so I’d heard.

  That sounded like the kind of utter nonsense people stu arranged marriages might pursue to spice up their lives. Either way, I doubted any member of the nobility could be a vampire.

  “If it was a vampire, I doubt I could have manhahem into the closet so easily. And before you ask about lythropes, outside of them, they are als enough to rip my arm from its socket on average, and they ’t dispce their mass as easily. Their animal forms ’t get smaller than a small dog. No, wait. Some do vermin, but only very rge vermin.”

  “Shapeshifters, perhaps? They might be able to shrink their bodies small enough to fit out between the door crack.”

  “The st shapeshifter known to exist iy erhaps a hundred years ago? Ign all the cims and rumors that were never proven.”

  Those were always in season, especially if you wanted an excuse guaranteed not to work for why your spouse caught you cheating on them.

  “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shapeshifter. Not knowing if someone is them or not is part of their entire deal.”

  I frowned. “The question is why they’d be rooting through my b. Regardless of whether they are shapeshifters, vampires, or something else. Montague still tops that list.”

  “Where did you put the cures?”

  “Somewhere secure,” I answered. “Not that I don’t trust you Tolman, but sidering everything that’s , I’m not saying it out loud.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t in your head either, you never know if they have someone capable of reading minds,” he joked.

  I gred at him. “I am being precisely the amount of paranoid this situation requires, Tolman. Those cures were expeo make, and I doubt I’ll be able to acquire the ingredients for more.”

  There were very few substahat could be substituted for the extracted brain fluids of a draitity. I doubted another would die again so soon or be so puarded. Smaller creatures wouldn’t be much easier to find and wouldn’t be as useful to harvest. You didn’t tend to get much fluid out of the brains in the first pce.

  I couldn’t go out and kill oher. Outside of morality, I rather doubted I could.

  Sighing, I went through the pile of clothes again. I found nothing, not even any personal items to help find out who he’d been. The clothes were definitely not what I expected: a m coat with silver metal thread mixed in, trousers, a waistcoat with more metal thread except this looked like gold, a shirt with well-done embroidery, and even a top hat. Despite our brief fight st night, their tears were only minor.

  Had the intruder broken into my b after a fancy dinner party?

  “We’ll o take these with us,” I said, already folding them up. I’d o find a box or a bag from my b to put them in.

  Tolman tossed me the waistcoat. “They’re pretty fancy, but I don’t see pawning them earning you much.”

  I sidered the belt missing from the set of clothes. Perhaps taken with, if it could fit uhe door? Perhaps with a on, like the sed saber I had strapped to my own? “Maybe I’d pawn them eventually, but I meant more for finding out who the intruder is with them. These couldn’t have been cheap. Hrrm, no identifying marks, but they might have been hand-tailored.”

  We both left the b, the clothes stowed away in a bag. I locked it behind me and sighed. I’d have to remove everything from here ure out how its defenses had been bypassed.

  “Apologies fing you out here, Tolman.” I pressed a few pounds into his hand. If I kept burning through Lord Montague’s adva this rate it wouldn’t st a week.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, taking the money and then opening the door for me. We’d be traveling light. I’d have to hire security or people to help me move the b’s tents and tools. “It beats work at the b and gives me something outside the fighting pits. Arsene is the breadwinner anyway, even if he keeps moaning about not being able to artifice like he used to. I think someday he will murder Kart for not doing things right.”

  Kart would be the bcksmith Arsene had goo work under after I’d arranged his, Tolman's, and my ows from Versalicci’s gang.

  “Still. This is an additional risk for you since Versalicows who I am. He might guess you and Arserue identities.”

  Tolman snorted derisively. He always didn’t have the proper fear and respee should have for Versalicci. He’d not been around the boss when things had reached the end, and he’d never been as far into the inner circle as he thought.

  I’d never spill the details on that. Partially because just remembering some of them made me sick, partially not to draw attention from Versalicci. I did not want to see if any of the curses set up to prevent us from talking about them still worked.

  We reached the downstairs. It would be mid-m now, so if I ran for it, I might make it to Halmon before he closed for today.

  Of course, as soon as we exited the building, the batch of trouble began.