His Favourite Sin

Chapter Eight: Names Without Ending

Elian Kroft did not believe in coincidences.

He believed in missing paperwork, misleading statements, careless witnesses, and people who assumed that changing a company's name would erase its history. Coincidences, in his experience, were often explanations invented by people who had not looked hard enough.

That morning, he stood in the kitchen of his small apartment, comparing two printed financial records while his coffee cooled beside the sink.

The first document listed a private medical clinic in Gloamspire's eastern district. The second belonged to a property management company that had dissolved three years earlier. Their registered directors were different. Their addresses were different. Their declared activities had almost nothing in common.

Yet both had received money from a holding company that had quietly changed ownership twice in six years.

And both were connected to people who had disappeared.

Elian circled the relevant transactions with a red pen.

His phone rang.

“Tell me you have something useful,” Imani said without greeting him.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“I've been awake since six.”

“That's unfortunate. Some people have jobs.”

“I have a job. It's called trying to prevent people from disappearing while everyone else pretends the paperwork is normal.”

Elian took a sip of cold coffee and immediately regretted it.

“What happened?”

“Another possible connection. A gallery employee named Clara Wren disappeared last night.”

He set down the cup.

“Was she reported missing?”

“Yes. But there's a problem.”

“There's always a problem.”

“She was last seen at an exhibition attended by Lucien Varr.”

Elian looked at the circled transactions on his table.

For a moment, he said nothing.

“Are you still there?” Imani asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know his companies.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“No, I don't know him personally. I've spent six months trying to establish whether several businesses connected to him are involved in a financial fraud investigation.”

“Fraud?”

“Possibly. Money moves through three separate companies before reaching a charity that funds private medical services. The transactions are legal on paper, but some of the invoices don't match the work supposedly performed.”

“Does that connect to the missing people?”

“I'm trying to find out.”

Imani exhaled.

“Can we meet?”

“Bring everything you have on Clara. I'll bring what I've found.”

“And Elian?”

“Yes?”

“Don't assume Lucien did it just because his name appears on a document.”

Elian glanced at the photograph clipped to one of his files.

“I don't assume anything. I follow the evidence.”

“Good. Because I have a feeling this evidence is going to become complicated.”

He looked again at the names on his table.

“It's already complicated.”

---

They met at a café near the old courthouse, where the tables were close enough together to make private conversations difficult and the coffee was strong enough to compensate for the lack of comfort.

Imani arrived carrying her laptop and a folder of printed photographs. Elian had already claimed a table in the corner.

“You look terrible,” she told him.

“You look expensive.”

“I bought this coat three years ago.”

“And you've been wearing it to frighten suspects ever since?”

“Only the ones who deserve it.”

She sat opposite him and placed her folder on the table.

Elian was in his early thirties, with closely cropped hair and a face that appeared perpetually thoughtful. He had worked as a financial investigator before becoming independent, leaving his previous position after a disagreement about a case he believed had been improperly closed.

Imani had met him while investigating a charity that had received donations from several companies later accused of falsifying their accounts.

He was methodical, stubborn, and considerably less impressed by powerful people than most of Gloamspire.

Those qualities made him useful.

“Clara Wren,” Imani began. “Twenty-eight. Gallery assistant. Employed there for nearly four years. No known financial difficulties, no reported disputes with colleagues, and no obvious reason to leave without contacting anyone.”

“Family?”

“An older brother in Calderwyn's northern province. They've spoken regularly. He says she wouldn't disappear without telling him.”

“Last confirmed sighting?”

“Shortly after eight last night. She was collecting a catalogue from the gallery's storage room. No one saw her leave.”

Elian opened his notebook.

“Cameras?”

“The gallery claims the corridor footage was being transferred to a new security system. The recordings from that evening are incomplete.”

“Convenient.”

“That's what I thought.”

He examined the photographs she had brought.

One showed Clara outside the gallery. Another showed the pendant at her throat, its crescent mark partly obscured by her collar.

Elian leaned closer.

“What is that?”

“A symbol connected to a ring Vesper inherited.”

He looked up.

“Vesper Quill?”

“You know her?”

“Not personally. Her name appears in one of the property records I found.”

Imani went very still.

“What property record?”

Elian opened his laptop and searched through a folder of scanned documents. After a moment, he turned the screen towards her.

The record concerned a building near Gloamspire's old harbour, acquired by a company that had dissolved in 1999. The transaction listed several associated names, including Mara Quill.

Imani stared at the screen.

“That's the same date as the photograph Vesper received.”

“What photograph?”

She explained the image of Eleanor, the threatening message, and the break-in at Vesper's workshop. Elian listened without interruption, his expression becoming more serious with every detail.

When she finished, he sat back.

“Someone is trying to connect her family to these records.”

“Or prevent her from doing so.”

“Possibly both.”

He opened another document.

“There's something else. The company that owned the harbour building transferred the property to a charitable foundation shortly before it dissolved. That foundation later funded the clinic I mentioned.”

“The clinic connected to the missing people?”

“Yes.”

Imani glanced at Clara's photograph.

“Do you think she found something?”

“I think it's possible she had access to information someone didn't want examined.”

“And the ring?”

Elian rubbed his forehead.

“I don't know. I'm not going to invent a connection just because the symbols look similar. We need someone who understands the jewellery.”

“Vesper knows the designs, but Marrow Sable seems to know more than he's willing to say.”

“Then we should speak to him.”

Imani closed the folder.

“I'll arrange it.”

Elian looked at her.

“And Vesper?”

“She wants answers. She's not going to sit quietly while we investigate her family.”

“Then don't ask her to.”

He gathered the documents into a neat stack.

“If someone is targeting her, she needs to understand the risks. But she also needs access to the evidence. Otherwise, we're just another pair of people deciding what she should be allowed to know.”

Imani smiled faintly.

“You're becoming almost pleasant.”

“Don't spread rumours.”

---

Across the city, Vesper was discovering that independence could be an expensive principle.

She had spent the morning contacting clients to explain the delay in her work. One commission had been postponed without complaint. Another customer had demanded a refund, insisting that she could not trust a jeweller whose workshop had been broken into.

Vesper had refunded the deposit.

It was the responsible decision, but watching the money leave her account had hurt more than she expected.

By lunchtime, she had completed a small silver setting, answered six messages, and accomplished almost nothing related to the mystery consuming her attention.

She was considering closing early when a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.

“You look as though you've been fighting with your accounts.”

Vesper looked up.

Marrow Sable stood at the entrance, carrying a narrow wooden case.

“I'm fighting with several things,” she said. “The accounts are simply the least interesting.”

He entered and placed the case on her workbench.

“I've been thinking about the mark.”

“And?”

“And I believe I can help you understand part of it.”

Vesper closed her ledger.

“What changed your mind?”

“Nothing. I still believe you should leave the matter alone.”

“Then why are you here?”

Marrow opened the case. Inside lay a collection of old metal dies, each engraved with a different symbol. Some were worn nearly smooth; others had been preserved with unusual care.

“The mark on your ring belongs to a system of identification used by a small number of jewellery houses,” he explained. “The symbols were incorporated into designs so that certain people could recognise an agreement without having to write its terms down.”

“An agreement between whom?”

“Families. Patrons. Sometimes institutions.”

“Vampires?”

Marrow's hands stilled.

Vesper watched him closely.

“I didn't say vampires,” he replied.

“You didn't need to.”

He closed the case halfway.

“You have been speaking to Lucien Varr.”

“He invited me to meet a collector. The collector never appeared.”

“And what did Lucien tell you?”

“That the Gilded Ledger exists. That the designs are connected to it. That his family was involved in the agreements.”

Marrow looked towards the window.

“Then he told you more than I expected.”

“Do you know what happened to Eleanor Quill?”

“No.”

“Do you know who Mara Quill was?”

This time, Marrow's silence lasted too long to be accidental.

Vesper stood.

“You recognise the name.”

“I recognise the date.”

“October seventeenth, 1999?”

His expression changed.

“Where did you see that?”

“In a photograph. And in a document I haven't yet been able to verify.”

Marrow shut the wooden case.

“You need to find out who sent you that photograph.”

“That's what I'm trying to do.”

“No,” he said. “You're trying to find out what happened to your family. Those are not necessarily the same thing.”

Vesper disliked how easily people seemed to turn her questions into warnings.

“Then tell me the difference.”

Marrow picked up the case.

“Sometimes the person who wants you to uncover a secret is just as dangerous as the person who wants you to keep it.”

He left before she could ask another question.

Vesper remained beside the workbench, looking at the space where the case had rested.

Her phone vibrated.

A message from Imani.

Elian found Mara Quill in a company record dated October 1999. We're meeting him tomorrow. There's a connection to the clinic and the missing people.

Vesper read it twice.

The mystery was no longer confined to her relative's designs or the ring that had disappeared from her workshop. Names from the past were appearing in financial records, charitable organisations, and the lives of people who had vanished without explanation.

She opened the old design book again.

On the page beside the thorn-and-circle symbol, Eleanor Quill's name remained written in faded ink.

Vesper ran her finger along the letters.

For years, she had believed her family's silence meant there was nothing left to discover.

Now she wondered whether the silence had been the only thing keeping the truth hidden.

And somewhere in Gloamspire, someone had begun to realise that the names they had erased were being written down again.