Whispers in the Dark
The night pressed down on Ashgrove like a suffocating blanket, thick with mistand the damp rot of fallen leaves. Mara sat in her SUV outside the precinct, hands still on the steering wheel though the engine had been off for nearly an hour. Her reflection in the windshield looked foreigneyes bloodshot, lips drawn tight, face hollowed by too many nights of unrest.
Jonah’s words still rang in her ears. “You don’t know the half of it, Mara. You never did.”
She wanted to believe he was bluffing, manipulating her like always. But the way his gaze had flicked toward Chief Hale when he said it that had been real.
Mara finally forced herself out of the car. The precinct loomed ahead, its fluorescent lights buzzing faintly against the stillness. She squared her shoulders and pushed inside.
Chief Hale was waiting.
The older woman stood near the coffee machine, silver hair tied back, posture stiff. “You’re late,” she said, but her voice lacked its usual edge.
Mara ignored the jab. “Where’s Ward?”
“In the interview room. With Lena.” Hale poured herself a coffee she didn’t seem interested in drinking. “She hasn’t said much since the ruins. Keeps repeating the same phrases.”
Mara’s jaw tightened. “Then maybe she’ll talk to me.”
She didn’t wait for permission. The interview room was dimly lit, the single overhead bulb humming like a wasp. Lena sat at the table, kneestucked up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. Her eyes flicked up when Mara entered wide, raw, desperate.
“They’re coming,” Lena whispered. “They never stop once they’ve chosen.”
Mara pulled out the chair across from her, sitting with deliberate calm. “Who’s coming, Lena?”
“The Circle,” Lena said, voice trembling. “The Ashen Circle. They watch. They wait. And when they burn, it’s not just fireit’s memory.”
Ward leaned against the wall, arms folded, face unreadable. His gaze lingered on Mara, as if silently asking if she was hearing what he was.
Mara leaned closer. “Why do they want me?”
Lena hesitated, then reached into the pocket of her hoodie. Hale stiffened in the doorway, but the girl only pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. She slid it across the table.
Mara unfolded it carefully.
It was a photograph.
Black-and-white, edges singed. A group of figures in dark robes stood in front of a fire pit, their faces obscured by masks of bone and ash. And at the center of the group, hand in hand with one of them
Mara’s breath caught.
It was her.
A child version of her, no older than seven, clutching a burned feather like it was a toy.
Her vision blurred at the edges. Ward stepped forward, his calm voice cutting into the haze. “Where did you get this, Lena?”
The girl shook her head violently. “It came in the mail. No return address. Just… just that. And a note.”
“What note?” Mara demanded.
Lena’s lips quivered. “It said: She was always ours.”
The words landed like a blade sliding between Mara’s ribs.
She pushed back from the table, pacing to the far wall, her fingers digging into her temples. “No. This is a setup. It has to be.”
Ward’s voice softened. “Mara”
“Don’t,” she snapped, turning on him. “Don’t you dare look at me like I’m one of your case studies.”
For a moment, silence hung heavy. Even Hale said nothing.
Finally, Ward stepped closer, lowering his tone. “Mara, we need toconsider the possibility that whoever is orchestrating this isn’t just targeting you they’ve been tied to you from the start.”
Mara’s heart pounded. She wanted to argue, to deny it, but her mind betrayed her with flashes of firelight, smoke, the sensation of holding something warm and brittle in her small hands. A feather.
Lena’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts. “You don’t remember because they made you forget. That’s what they do. They burn until the past is ash.”
Mara gripped the edge of the table, forcing herself steady. “If that’s true, Lena, then I need names. Faces. Anything.”
The girl’s eyes darted to Hale, then to Ward, before lowering again. “I only know one name. The one they whisper when they talk about the one who betrayed them.”
Mara leaned in, her pulse racing. “Say it.”
Lena’s voice was barely audible. “Elias.”
The room froze.
Mara turned sharply to Ward. His face remained composed, but a flicker of something fear, maybe cracked through his mask.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hale snapped from the doorway. “This girl is traumatized. You can’t l”
“Is it true?” Mara cut her off, eyes locked on Ward. “Did you know them?”
Ward didn’t flinch, but his silence was damning.
Mara’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “What the hell aren’t you telling me?”
Before Ward could answer, the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then the room was plunged into darkness.
Lena screamed.
Mara yanked her flashlight from her belt, beam cutting through the black. The bulb in the ceiling buzzed weakly, trying and failing to come back to life.
On the one-way glass, words had been scrawled in ash, letters smeared across the surface from the other side:
“SHE BELONGS TO US.”
Mara spun toward the door, but Hale was already shouting orders into her radio. Officers scrambled in the hallways, but Mara knew whoever had been there was already gone.
Ward stood still, eyes fixed on the message. His jaw was tight, his hands clenched at his sides.
Mara’s voice cut through the chaos. “You’re going to tell me everything, Ward. No more secrets. If you knew them, if you were part of this”
“I was never part of them,” he snapped, finally breaking. His voice cracked with something raw, something almost desperate. “But I treated someone who was. Years ago. A patient who believed in the fire, in the rebirth. She told me things I never should’ve known.”
Mara’s skin prickled. “Who?”
He hesitated.
“Who?” she pressed, nearly shouting.
His eyes met hers, haunted and reluctant. “Your mother.”
The word detonated in Mara’s chest. She staggered back as though struck, her throat constricting. “That’s not possible. She died in the fire. She”
“She was my patient before that,” Ward said, voice low but steady. “She came to me because she was afraid. Because she said the Circle wanted to use you. And because she wasn’t sure if she could stop them.”
The room tilted. Mara gripped the back of the chair to keep from collapsing. Images flickered in her mind her mother’s hands, her mother’s lullabies, and behind it all, the faint smell of smoke.
“She knew,” Mara whispered. “She knew and she didn’t save me.”
Ward’s voice softened. “Maybe she tried.”
Mara wanted to scream, to hit something, to erase the truth pressing down on her. But Lena’s trembling voice cut through the storm inside her.
“They’re coming back for you. And this time… they won’t fail.”
Mara turned to the glass again, staring at the smeared words. The ash seemed to pulse under the flashlight beam, like it was alive.
She felt the weight of it settle over her.
The Ashen Circle wasn’t just a case.
It was her blood, her history, her curse.
And now the walls were closing in.
