Rowan stared at the newspaper.
Then at Noel.
Then at the newspaper again.
He forgot about the pain in his side when he stood — forgot about the stitches, forgot about the careful way he had been holding himself all morning — and crossed the room to where Noel sat. He took the paper from his hands and looked at it.
A black and white photograph, grainy and dark, of a covered body on the floor of a small shop. The shelves in the background were overturned. Broken pots. Scattered soil. The white shape of an ivory flower, just visible near the edge of the photograph, its petals dark with what the black and white print couldn't name but didn't need to.
Joel's shop.
Rowan knew every inch of that floor.
He had bled on it.
He stood there reading the article and the words settled into him with the particular coldness of something he had not expected and could not immediately account for.
'Joel the florist. Found before dawn. The Ivory Killer's latest victim.'
