They arrived at the Lucky Duck inn before Theo and Killian. Choosing a table in an inconspicuous corner of the inn’s tavern, they sat down. 

“Let’s hope that they’ve found greater success than us,” Lilac said after placing an order of chrysanthemum tea and five servings of the dinner special for the table. 

“Just to confirm, we can all agree that what happened back there was all really weird, right?” Hale said, looking around the tavern suspiciously as he searched for another soulless individual.

“It was certainly strange,” Lilac agreed. “What was the clerk writing, Caelin?”

“Just ‘help’ in red,” Caelin said.

“And the lettering,” Lilac said. “Was it all relatively uniform or were there a few iterations that were different from the rest?”

Caelin carefully recalled what she had seen, a smile forming on her face. “They were all the same. He had very neat handwriting.”

“And the mayor…” Lilac said, trailing off as she looked at Caelin expectantly.

“Underneath the alcohol, his breath smelled like rotten flesh,” Caelin agreed. “I wonder if there’s something in that room he wouldn’t show us.”

Lilac nodded thoughtfully with her gloved hand on her chin. “So it’s like that.”

Hale looked between the two ladies in confusion. “What is it like?”

“All the clues are too obvious,” Caelin explained. “Someone’s trying to lead us astray.”

“Who’s leading us astray?” a voice asked from behind Caelin. 

Looking up, Caelin saw Theo. He had just arrived at the inn with Killian. As he sat down beside her, Caelin caught herself staring at him for a moment too long and quickly looked away before he noticed. 

“I hope you two were more fruitful in your investigation than us,” Lilac said. The tea and meal had arrived, and she helped herself to a cup while Killian distributed a plate of the meat and vegetable pie to each person. “Mayor Hadden proved to be of no help.”

“The townspeople weren’t keen on talking to strangers either,” Theo said. “But we did hear of a rumor concerning strange sounds heard at night near an old house on the top of a hill. One person described it as the sound of wooden spoons clanking together, as well as a mechanical saw.”

“A saw?” Hale’s face turned pale. “Is someone cutting up the victims' bodies to hide them?”

“There was also another victim last night,” Theo added. “A young woman.”

Lilac’s face darkened. “Another thing that Mayor Hadden failed to mention. This case is turning out to be more troublesome by the minute.” She turned towards the brown haired young man, who was stroking the leaves of a parlor palm beside his seat. “What did you discover, Killian?”

“The plants around town didn’t have much information. The disappearances primarily happen at night.” Killian’s brown eyes widened slightly as he seemed to glean something from the tavern’s plant. “This is interesting. Apparently there’s a folklore passed down for generations in this town about a Reaper that would spirit away the townspeople at night. It was said that the Reaper used to be human, working on one of the nearby farms during the day, while putting on puppet shows for the town at night. One day, he met a kind girl, and they fell in love. 

“Unfortunately, after only a few years together, she died. Her cause of death is uncertain, though. The stories range from chronic illnesses to landslide accidents to being murdered by a jealous ex-lover to drowning in the river. After her death, the Reaper went mad and created a puppet in her likeness. The puppet was apparently so lifelike that it actually came to life, and the townspeople destroyed and burned it out of fear of witchcraft. So to take revenge, the Reaper would visit the town at night to reap the souls of the townspeople and trap them in wooden bodies, turning them into puppets themselves. Some townspeople think that these recent disappearances are related to this story.”

“A farmer turned serial-murderer-puppeteer?” Lilac said, raising an eyebrow.

“Why is this mission turning more and more into a horror story?” Hale looked at the meat in his half-eaten pie uneasily and shuddered.  “Does anyone else feel cold or did a ghost just pass through me?” 

“Shhh they’re getting to the good part,” Caelin said, kicking Hale’s leg under the table. She leaned in closer to the center of the inn’s tavern, where a group of burly farmers were gathered over their ales.

 “Wait what are they saying?” Hale asked before earning himself another kick.

The farmers’ had been discussing their concerns about meeting their share of crops for the upcoming harvest. They needed enough to supply the upcoming coronation in a month’s time. Caelin had nodded empathetically along with their complaints regarding the recent beetle infestation that had ruined a great deal of their melons. Though she knew nothing about agriculture, Caelin sympathized with their desire to exterminate pests. However, their conversation slowly warped.

“Heard it was John’s daughter this time,” said a man with a tattoo of a blue-tailed siren on his upper arm.

“Baker John, with the fresh flowers in his shop window?” another man in the group asked.

The tattooed man nodded gravely. “Won’t be any more flowers now that she’s gone.”

“Such a shame,” someone in the group said. “She had beautiful red hair like her mother. It was like fire. Or pig’s blood.”

“And the brightest green eyes. Like a pair of emeralds.” 

“Isn’t this the eleventh one now? Honestly, what is Mayor Hadden even doing?”

“I actually heard something very interesting the other day. John, the butcher one, said that he noticed all the ones who disappeared had gone to the city hall just days before vanishing.”

“You think Mayor Hadden is kidnapping them?”

“Don’t say that aloud!” Someone quickly shushed him, and the group grew quiet.

“It’s a curse,” the tattooed man spoke again. “This whole town’s been cursed by the Reaper.”

“Aye,” the other men agreed with him and drank their lukewarm ale solemnly. 

The group’s conversation eventually steered away from the disappearances to discuss the latest gossip instead. They discussed how one of the princesses of Diaskia had her tiara stolen by a thief. The daughter of a marquess in Balsum had eloped with a man who held no title. 

“I didn’t know you were the type to be interested in idle gossip, Theo,” Caelin remarked, seeing him lean in closer towards the farmer’s conversation, still interested.

“Not surprising, considering we just met yesterday,” Theo quipped.

“Fair enough,” Caelin agreed.

The gossip had turned towards discussing the recent ascendance of the new king of Astilbe. Since the passing of the previous king at the end of Dagann Wars, Lunaria’s rival kingdom had experienced a great amount of infighting as each of the kingdom’s various political factions advocated for a different prince to claim the throne. After disposing of his brothers, an eighteen year old boy had finally emerged victorious as the next king.

“Hopefully this new one will be better than the last,” Hale commented on the gossip. “Although, it’s probably very unlikely. I mean all Astilbeans are just power-hungry, war-mongering—” He paused as he remembered that there was a half-Astilbean in their group. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you, Theo.”

“No offense taken.” Theo shrugged.

“Besides, you’re only half and from Galencia,” Hale tried explaining himself. “I’m sure the actual citizens are normal and only the royal family and nobles are the war-crazy ones. Like your mother, who was a maid and…not an aristocrat and totally normal.”

“Stop talking before you hurt yourself, dear,” Lilac said, patting Hale on the shoulder.

They finished the rest of their meal in silence before heading upstairs to the rooms Lilac had reserved for them. 

“You three boys will stay here,” Lilac said, unlocking the door to reveal a room with two beds and a couch.

 Theo and Killian immediately placed their bags down, each claiming a bed. 

“Oh come on, that's not fair,” Hale said, realizing what had happened.

“Sorry, but you’ll just have to be faster next time,” Killian said with an apologetic smile.

“Are you two staying here as well?” Hale asked, seeing Caelin and Lilac enter the room and closing the door behind them.

“No, we’ll be next door,” Lilac said. “But we need to discuss our next course of action. Killian?”

Killian touched the potted ivy beside the door and nodded after confirming that no outsider was listening in. “We’re cle—wait.” He frowned. “Someone’s coming.”

They waited with bated breath as the silence transformed into the sounds of shoes against wood, growing louder as someone approached. 

Caelin tilted her head, noticing that the weight of the soles sounded lighter than that of a full-grown adult.  

The footsteps stopped right outside their door. After a moment, a hesitant knock rang out. Nobody made a move to answer it. Lilac had already instructed the innkeeper to not disturb them. 

Exchanging a glance with Lilac, Killian maneuvered the vine of the ivy to an offensive position, ready to capture the intruder as he opened the door with a tug. 

What revealed was not a hired assassin, but a young boy with tears running down his pale cheeks. His eyes wide with fear. 

“Please,” the boy begged with trembling lips. “Please stop my Papa.”