Chapter 34

Stuck in the cramped waiting room at city hall, Selene couldn’t stop fidgeting. Dashiell fared no better, pacing the small room like a caged panther. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Thinking it might be one of his frantic assistants, or perhaps, as he dreaded, his disapproving mother, Dashiell pulled out his phone. But it was an unknown number flashing on the screen. It was a message containing no text, just a video. He tapped it open and saw what looked like a CCTV camera footage in colour. A doctor’s office, sterile and antiseptic, appeared onscreen, a man in a white coat hunched over a desk piled with charts and a miniature skeleton. But it was the woman across from him that froze Dashiell’s blood. He had to press pause, zoom in, until Selene’s face filled the entire screen. She looked…different. This Selene was anxious, her eyes darting, hands twisting in her lap as she spoke in rapid bursts. There was no audio, forcing Dashiell to focus on her body language. She made a gesture as