I Only Summon Villainesses

Chapter 337: Seventeen Unfair Deaths

We burst through the front door of the Company building looking like we’d crawled out of a sewer.

Well, we kind of had.

Odelia was at the reception desk. She looked up from whatever she was cataloging, took in our appearance — soaked, filthy, Milo’s glasses cracked on one side, my arms still faintly steaming from residual flames — and blinked once.

"You smell terrible."

"Get everyone," I said. "Now."

Something in my voice must have cut through her usual indifference, because she didn’t ask questions. She stood, disappeared through the back door, and within two minutes the available members of the Black Snow Company were filing into the main room.

Cressida came in first, mid-bite of something she’d stolen from Ophelia’s kitchen. She saw us and the food stopped halfway to her mouth.

"What happened to you two?"

Ophelia was right behind her, wiping her hands on a cloth. She took one look at me, then at Milo, then went to get water without being asked.

Milo dropped into a chair and removed his cracked glasses. Without them, his face looked younger. More tired.

I stayed standing and looked at Milo.

"You want to take it?"

He shook his head slowly. "You were the one who checked the bodies. You tell it."

Cressida had stopped chewing entirely. Ophelia returned with two cups of water and set them on the table. Nobody touched them.

I told them.

The waterway. The drug user on the barrel. The tunnels. Milo standing at the far end of the junction, not moving. The girl in the shallow water, fifteen or sixteen, eyes open. And then the rest of them, stretched out in the dark like someone had arranged them for display.

I kept it flat. No drama, and just what we found.

"Seventeen bodies. All of them had shackle marks. All of them had brands that had been partially removed using acid."

The room went quiet.

Milo put his glasses back on, despite the crack. His hands were steady but his jaw was tight.

"The removal pattern," he said, "is the one Kassie taught to the freed slaves after the Manhattan operation. The same acid solution. The same method."

Ophelia’s cloth stopped moving in her hands. Cressida set down her food.

"Those were our people?" Cressida asked. Her voice had lost all its usual volume.

"Kassie’s people," Milo corrected gently. "The ones she freed."

Cressida looked at me. Then at Milo. Then at the floor.

"How did they die?"

"Clean cuts," I said. "Throats and chests. No defensive wounds. No signs of struggle. They didn’t fight back, which means they either couldn’t, or they trusted whoever did it."

Ophelia sat down. It was the first time I’d ever seen her sit without something to do with her hands.

"Seventeen," she said quietly. "Out of how many?"

"Kassie freed over a hundred from Manhattan," Milo answered.

And those were just the ones dumped in a drainage tunnel under Waterwind. The ones someone wanted us to find.

"There’s more," I said.

I told them about the ambush. The ten professionals who’d been waiting at the tunnel entrances. The suppressed spirit essences. The fight. I told them how Milo and I had put all ten of them down in the first exchange.

Then I told them what happened next.

"They got back up."

Cressida frowned. "What do you mean, got back up? Like, recovered?"

"No. I mean I slashed a man across the chest, deep enough to see bone, and he stood up like nothing happened. The wound was still open. He wasn’t healed. He just stood."

Milo leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"I crushed one’s sternum. I could see the collapse in his chest. He got up and came at me again."

Cressida’s frown deepened. Ophelia and Odelia exchanged a glance.

"I cut the big one’s arms off," I said. "Both of them. He tried to stand up using just his legs."

The room was very still.

"That’s not a summoner ability," Milo said. "Not one I’ve ever cataloged. They weren’t healing. The damage was real and stayed. They just didn’t stop."

"Their blood was wrong, too," I added. "It didn’t spray. Didn’t pool on the ground. It sat in the wounds like something was holding it inside them."

Ophelia’s brow creased. "Holding the blood?"

"That’s what it looked like."

Cressida pulled her knees up onto the chair and hugged them. "And you think this is the Blood Mage."

"That’s the obvious answer," I said. "But I’m not sure it fits. Everything I’ve heard about the Blood Mage is brute force. Overwhelming power. This wasn’t that. This was organized. Patient. Seventeen people collected, killed clean, arranged in a tunnel, and then ten soldiers positioned around them as a trap that resets itself."

"Resets itself?" Odelia asked from the doorway.

"When we escaped, they didn’t chase us. They went back to the junction. Back to the bodies. Waiting for the next person to come looking."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"So either the Blood Mage is more versatile than we thought," Milo said, cleaning his cracked lens with his thumb, "or he’s working with someone who handles the precise work while he handles the destruction."

"Either way, we have a problem we can’t solve by hitting it harder." I leaned against the wall. "I hit them as hard as I could. They got up. White flames, frost, chains, it didn’t matter. Whatever is keeping them moving doesn’t care about damage."

Cressida was quiet for too long. That was the tell. Cressida was never quiet. When she finally spoke, her voice was small.

"Does Kassie know?"

The question settled over the room like a weight.

I looked at the far wall.

"No."

"She needs to know," Ophelia said. The gentleness in her tone wasn’t for me. It was preemptive. Whatever Kassie’s reaction was going to be, Ophelia was already bracing for it.

She was right. Kassie needed to know. And putting it off wasn’t going to make it easier.

I closed my eyes. Reached inward. Felt the familiar tug of spirit essence and pulled.

Red sparks gathered in the center of the room, coalescing upward, and then Kassie was there.