"All right, then explain something to me. What exactly do you mean by a natural death?"

  Ivy could already feel a headache coming on.

  She crouched beside the dead man and examined the body carefully. There were scrapes on his arms, and according to Ethan, those had happened when Chloe dragged the corpse back to the cabin. But that still did not explain the amount of blood he had lost.

  Meanwhile, suspect Ethan had dragged over a little chair and was sitting off to the side eating the bread and milk Ivy had brought.

  He had even shared half the bread with the eagerly waiting Chloe.

  "It means this man was walking down the road, suddenly coughed up blood, fell over, and died very naturally."

  That was Chloe's version of events.

  By the time she had run over to help, the man was already dead.

  Ethan had to admit that the night before, he had privately judged followers of the Society of Enlightenment as cold-blooded lunatics.

  But everything had two sides.

  As long as your conscience was clear, then no matter how shaky your testimony sounded, they would still do everything they could to prove you innocent.

  Truth above all. That was the creed every seeker of truth lived by.

  Ivy seemed to think of something.

  She rolled the body over until the man was lying flat on his back, then pulled the dagger she carried from the inner pocket of her coat and said, "Help me."

  An uneasy feeling instantly crept over Ethan.

  "Help with what?"

  "Cut open his stomach."

  "That... feels a little extreme."

  "He's already dead. If we find the truth, at least his death won't be meaningless."

  "I meant I'm eating breakfast."

  Ethan lifted the bread in his hand a little, but Ivy looked at him like that excuse made no sense at all.

  She clearly did not understand what one thing had to do with the other.

  So Ethan had to explain.

  "Blood's going to get on the bread."

  "Just think of it as cherry jam."

  The earnest look in her eyes, the utterly matter-of-fact tone, Ethan had been ready to scold her, but then a horrible thought hit him.

  "You... have actually tasted it?"

  "That's normal. Back when I was studying at the Society, we sometimes had to spend entire days around corpses. Blood tastes a lot like cherry jam. As for brain tissue, you can think of it as..."

  "Stop. Right there."

  There was something deeply wrong with this girl, and Ethan meant that sincerely.

  Suddenly the bread in his hand seemed to have picked up a bloody smell.

  Noticing Ethan drag his stool back a full yard, Ivy gave him a look of pure contempt and said coldly, "Useless."

  Then she drove the dagger straight into the man's swollen abdomen and sliced it open in one clean motion.

  Blood came gushing out in a heavy surge and splashed her entire face red.

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  "See? I warned you."

  At the sight of that, Ethan picked up his little stool again and made a strategic retreat of another three yards.

  At the same time, he quietly added another thought in his head. There was something wrong with this corpse too. Normally, when someone got cut open, the blood was not supposed to spray out like a fountain.

  He had expected Ivy to scream or curse.

  Instead, she simply wiped the blood from her eyes with her sleeve, pulled the incision open with both hands, took a moment to look inside, then reached in and started stirring around.

  That completely destroyed Ethan's appetite.

  His whole face twisted up as he handed the half-eaten bread he had only taken a few bites from over to Chloe.

  Chloe, on the other hand, refused nothing.

  Judging by the way she swallowed the bread in one gulp, she might actually have found the whole scene pretty appetizing.

  "His organs were liquefied. Most likely witchcraft. So no, you didn't kill him."

  Ivy turned her blood-covered face toward Ethan.

  She looked exactly like an actual serial killer.

  And even then, she still remembered to correct him.

  "That said, your defense earlier was terrible. If you'd run into someone who didn't care to dig for the truth, you'd have talked yourself straight into prison. Don't say something like that next time."

  "Wise as ever, Sheriff."

  The tuft of blond hair on top of Ivy's head shot upright and pointed accusingly at Ethan like a finger.

  No flattery. Finish your milk.

  "Already did."

  "Then come help and move him inside somewhere flat."

  Ethan took one long look at the corpse from a safe distance.

  The man's eyes were still wide open. It was obvious he had gone through terrible pain before he died. Those bulging eyes seemed to be staring straight at Ethan, and on top of that there was the mangled mess inside his stomach...

  "Chloe, could you give me a hand?"

  He immediately called for outside assistance.

  Ivy gave him a look that said beyond saving.

  As always, Chloe moved fast, and she was strong.

  In less than a minute, she had dragged the body into the cabin. The only problem was that her fine motor control was not great, so she left blood all over the floor. His new home now looked even more like the scene of a murder.

  Ivy had already moved on to the next step.

  Using the corpse as the center point, she drew a circle around it, then carefully filled the inside with symbols Ethan could not understand.

  Watching from the sidelines, Ethan felt a deep sense of concern.

  At first, the scene had only looked like he and Chloe had robbed and murdered an innocent traveler.

  With Ivy's arrival, it had successfully evolved into what looked like a sacrificial site for cultists of the Old Gods.

  "Ivy, I have something to say, though I'm not sure I should say it."

  Still crouched beside the corpse, Ivy did not even turn around.

  "Then don't."

  "I think I should say it anyway. Just to confirm something. We aren't cultists of the Old Gods, right?"

  "This isn't how an Old God sacrifice circle is drawn. This is for making him talk."

  "Making the dead talk?"

  Ivy clearly could not be bothered to explain any further.

  She quickly finished the last few symbols, then pulled a small parchment scroll no bigger than her palm from inside her coat. She murmured something under her breath, her eyes sharpened, and then she slapped the scroll against the man's forehead.

  A dim green glow spread over the entire corpse.

  An invisible force lifted it up from the floor, and a low, hollow resonance filled the cabin until the whole place felt like a haunted house.

  She asked, "Who killed you?"

  "The water... something's wrong... be careful... everyone's dead... have to warn Willo... Willow..."

  Thud.

  The force holding the corpse up vanished, and the body collapsed back onto the floor.

  Ivy frowned hard.

  After a long moment of thought, she murmured, "Someone cursed him through the water supply. Where did you find him?"

  "On the road."

  "Then he came from Riverbend."

  Ethan could tell Ivy was thinking as hard as she could, because he noticed steam rising off the top of her head like she was venting heat.

  At the same time, Chloe suddenly grew agitated.

  Flapping her wings, she warned the two of them, "Cluck. Cluck cluck."

  Footsteps were approaching from outside, getting closer and closer.

  Ivy, however, seemed not to hear a thing.

  "Hide first."

  The moment she got the order, Chloe darted behind the cabinet and crouched there like an ambusher waiting to spring.

  Ethan's heart climbed straight into his throat.

  He stood by the door and waited as the messy jumble of footsteps stopped outside.

  There was more than one person out there.

  Through the door, he heard swords being drawn.

  Then a familiar voice cracked through the air like thunder.

  "Don't move. We're the Willowbrook town guard. You... Sheriff, why are you here?"

  The shout cut off abruptly.

  The burly man who had burst through the door froze the moment he saw Ivy.

  Only then did Ivy finally snap out of her train of thought.

  She looked up, stared at the guard captain for a second, then stood.

  Apparently she had completely forgotten she was covered in blood.

  She walked straight toward him like some demon dragged out of hell, and the big man actually stumbled backward several steps.

  "Good. You're here."

  Ivy asked, "Did any of you see anyone suspicious on the way here?"

  Every guard in town looked as though lightning had just struck them.

  They exchanged glances, silently confirming they had all reached the exact same conclusion.

  The next moment, more than ten fingers rose at once and pointed straight at Ivy.

  Including the little tuft of blond hair on top of her own head.

  "Mr. Ethan."

  At her young age, Ivy was beginning to suspect she was developing high blood pressure.

  While being pointed at by everyone in sight, she instantly identified the primary target for retaliation and snarled, "Point at me one more time and I'll hit you."