Chloe stared at the photo in her hands, the symbol in the middle of the flower clear as day. She ran a hand through her long brown hair, her brow furrowed. 

Retributionem.

Retribution. The messages the bombers left came back to her: Retribution Comes, one each in French, Cantonese, and German. It had never sat right with any of them that these messages were left in different languages. Yes, there were exiles all over the world, but why use the same methods and leave messages from three different countries? Especially when they were so close together.

What she could say for sure was that Noah had found one of the last pieces of the puzzle that they had been painstakingly putting together for decades. All she needed to do was figure out where she was supposed to go now. She paced the living room floor, her eyes taking in every detail of the photo Arla took, turning it over and around, scanning for anything even the Master Healer didn’t see outside of the imprint of the wolfsbane flower and the Divine symbol.

She knew Havik already had a copy of this same photo and was already putting the next piece down, all she had to do was play her part. She had already been scanning the photo for over an hour, the spot on the floor where she paced getting more and more worn down. 

“If you don’t stop, you’re going to put a hole in my floor,” Elaine said from the couch.

“I haven’t done it yet,” Chloe mumbled. 

“Chloe Jane.”

Chloe sighed, plopping down in the easy chair, swinging her legs over the arm, crossing her ankles and leaning back over the other arm, the photo held high over her face as she groaned. “Uuugh, why does he have to be so damn cryptic?!” she nearly yelled.

“Because that’s his job,” her mother said, smacking her feet so she would sit properly. She held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Chloe passed it over, leaning her head on her arms. “I get the word, and the flower tells me who it’s from,” she said. “The question is why. Where is Arla telling me to go?”

“My guess is either to the Second Realm of Hell, or the Third or Eighth Realm of Heaven. That’s where the bombings took place, right? Where the messages were found?”

Chloe studied her mother’s young features, her mind turning over these options. “The Eight Realm of Heaven and the Second Realm of Hell were where souls were processed,” she said, thinking out loud. “The Third Realm was where Aunt Persi used to work. That courthouse stored all the exile cases. Most of them, anyway.”

“We all know why that one was hit,” Elaine said. “They wanted to destroy information regarding the exiles. I never understood why they went after the soul Realms.”

“Same,” Chloe said, sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest. “That never made any sense to me. If the sole purpose was to place the blame on the exiles, why go after the souls?”

Elaine frowned. “Red herrings?”

“Could be,” Chloe agreed. “Which then leads back to the Third Realm, I guess. Were they targeting the courthouse in general simply because that’s where all the cases were handled? Or were they going after something specific?”

Elaine turned the photo upside down and around, just like Chloe had done. She tilted her head, bringing the photo closer to her face. “Hm,” she finally said at last.

“What part of the body was this on?”

Chloe’s eyebrow twitched. “His left hip I think. Arla doesn’t give details.”

Elaine shook her head. “No, I think it’s the right one,” she said. “Look.” She handed it back to Chloe who looked at it again. Instead of turning the photo around, she looked at the angle the body was positioned and how Arla had taken the shot. The way his spine was bent, and the folds in his skin…

“It is the right hip,” she said. She sat back, her arm dangling over the side of the chair, the photo in her fingers. “Why did he mark him on the right hip?”

“I don’t know, but I need something to drink.” Elaine got up from the couch and headed across the living room to the kitchen. “You want something? Coffee? Juice? Liquor?”

“I don’t drink, Ma,” she called back. Nor can I right now.

“Coffee it is, then.”

Chloe could hear the familiar sounds of the coffee machine being prepped, the click and clack as the pod was inserted and the machine set to brew. It was a minute later when she heard the stream of the beverage pour into her mug. She stared at the ceiling, using it as a mental white board. 

Noah never did anything without cause, everything had a meaning. Ynda had told her once that Noah refused to tag a body because there had been no significance to them. When Chloe asked why he had been marked in the first place, Ynda had shrugged.

“You’d have to ask him that. He knows why even if the rest of us don’t.”

It had turned out that the body was that of a pedophile angel, one who had never been found out and exiled. Noah didn’t take a liking to those kinds of scumbags and had no compunction about taking their lives. Most of his marks had been men, good looking and usually important. Doctors, cops, lawyers, even a couple of teachers. All of them had been a part of the Rogue factions in one way or another. Ynda’s marks had been low-level runners, but still highly valuable. She also used more covert methods, whereas Noah was ridiculously overt. She’d told Ynda once that if he wasn’t careful, someone would catch him.

Ynda snorted. “First, they’d have to actually catch him. The boy is fast and more flexible than a bendy straw.”

“Do I want to know how you know that?”

Ynda rolled her eyes. “I trained with him, how else do you expect me to know?”

Chloe had been almost hysterical when Ynda told her she was going to the same facility as Noah to train to be an assassin, begging her not to go, that it was far too dangerous. But Ynda had been firm in her decision, her blue eyes hardened by what she had gone through. Losing Toji, Lukas’ betrayal, being shut off from Natsu, Finn, and Ava…it had all contributed to her wanting to do more in the fight against the Rogue Divine, in wanting to break the barrier all to hell. Now she was one of Kayla’s flowers, Lily of the Valley, beautiful and deadly in equal measure. When she had peaked, she ensured that her features remained young, her body lean and light so she would be able to get in areas others couldn’t.

Hawk had hated it. He had begged her to reconsider, to use her training for something else, but Ynda wouldn’t be swayed. She’d apologized but said that it was the least she could do for her brothers. Hawk had relented after that. Their family was far more devoted to each other than any of them had ever given them credit for and Hawk wouldn’t be the cause of another tear in the fabric that made up the Helman household.

When Chloe thought of all she had learned about Noah’s skills and the marks he had either been assigned or chosen, she couldn’t help but recall the fact that most of them had been into young boys. She knew for a fact Noah had never been abused so using that as an excuse to go after these pervs wouldn’t hold up. Still…

“Youth and beauty, the two most deadly weapons in his arsenal,” she muttered. That thought made her sit up, bringing the photo back to her face. “Hey, Ma?” she called.

“I know, two second pour of creamer and three sugars.”

“No, not that,” she said, hopping out of the chair, she darted around to the kitchen, slapping the photo on the counter. “Do we have a magnifying glass or something?”

Elaine raised one eyebrow, her blue eyes questioning. “I don’t know, why?”

“I have a hunch and I want to know if I’m right.”

“Check your father’s office, he might have something.”

“Awesome.” She raced down the hall, bursting through Jordan’s office door without bothering to knock. He wasn’t home anyway so she wasn’t worried about disturbing him. Not that it would have mattered, she still would have done it. She searched over and through his desk, rifling through his bookshelves, and digging through his closet. Finally, she stood in the middle of the room, her fingers holding her chin, lips pursed to the side. She glanced around the room one last time, her eyes finally lighting on the object of her search. “Sweet,” she said, grabbing up the small square she had seen her father use dozens of times over.

She hurried out of the office and back to the kitchen where Elaine stood with two hot cups of coffee. “Table, child,” she said. Chloe grabbed the photo and sat down heavily in her usual spot, Elaine placing the mug in front of her, just out of the way of the photo as Chloe scanned the area of interest.

“Mind filling me in? Or is this a new guessing game?” Elaine asked, watching her daughter as she stared intently through the glass.

“Noah never picks a mark with no meaning,” she said.

“Uh huh?”

“Even if they’re not incredibly relevant to the work we do, he still has reasons. However, the ones that are relevant, he marks.”

“Old news, but okay.”

“He never marks them in the same spot,” she continued. “Every place on the body has some sort of significance, even if we don’t think it does. The only place he never marks is the feet.”

“Why?”

Chloe looked up at her mother, her expression steady. “He hates feet.”

“Oh, well, that makes sense, I guess.”

“Anyway, the last few bodies he’s sent to Arla all have one thing in common, outside of them being involved in the Rogue factions. They were involved in the attacks that happened fifty years ago to some degree. I’m not sure why that didn’t hit me before, but whatever. Anyway, there was a rumor that a lawyer had been involved, even going so far as to get another lawyer exiled for not doctoring some files.”

Elaine nodded. “I remember that. Natsu and the others captured that guy during a rescue mission.”

“Ee-yup,” Chloe said, her eye still to the glass. “We never found out which files, and the twerp never coughed up a name, only that he had a scar on his back.”

“How would he—never mind.” Elaine shook her head, sipping her coffee. Chloe reached across without looking for her own mug, taking a sip before returning it to its original spot. She tilted her head. “This guy doesn’t have a scar.”

Chloe smiled. “Healing magic is a beautiful thing,” she said. “It can erase just about every scar and owie you ever receive, but if not done correctly, there’s still a residual mark. And that’s if you don’t ask to keep the scar in the first place.”

She slid the photo over and handed her mother the glass, her finger pointed at a spot directly under Noah’s mark. Elaine hovered the glass over where Chloe indicated, and after a moment, her eyes went wide. “Holy shit,” she said. She looked up at her eldest daughter who was grinning from ear to ear.

“Mommy, can I go visit Aunt Persephone?”

“When?”

“Right now.”

Elaine didn’t even blink twice. “Let’s go.”

-*-