"Name."
"Melia."
"Age."
"Twenty-four."
Twenty-four?
Gordon looked up at the woman sitting across from him. With her sagging skin and dry hair, she looked considerably older than she claimed. In fact, he would have put her at close to forty.
"You want to file a report? You said you have information about the Court of Owls?"
Gordon asked as kindly as he could, though to him, this was simply routine. Despite the official press conference announcing that the investigation was still ongoing, the public's enthusiasm had only grown. People kept coming to the Police Department with all sorts of stories, true and false, declaring that they had discovered the real Court of Owls.
"I... I don't know. Maybe."
The woman hunched in her chair, her hands folded over her knees, her nails digging into the backs of her hands and leaving pale marks. She nodded, then shook her head, as if trying to confirm something for herself.
"But those people... they wore owl masks. I saw them."
"What kind of masks?"
"Metal. Copper-colored. The eyes were empty, black holes, like... like a dead person's eyes." Her fingers began to tremble. "Every one of them... wore one."
Gordon wrote down "copper-colored owl masks." He did not look up, merely setting his pen back against the paper and waiting.
Sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones, like a skeleton that had not quite died yet. He had seen far too many faces like this-meth, cocaine, or both. His instincts told him she was an addict, a woman ruined by drugs, someone who might invent any story for money or another fix.
"You said earlier that someone took you away. When? Who took you?"
"Ten years ago." Melia's lips moved slightly. "I was fourteen. Back then, I... I was on the streets. I'd run away from