(no subject)

Athos has a map of Darrow laid out before him on his kitchen table. On it, he has marked with a pen a series of locations where young men and women have recently gone missing, along with the dates; most are clustered near Barton University, but a few appear in scattered locations - near the Necropolis, as one might expect, but also on the relative peace of the boardwalk, and the middle of Petros Park. As Athos had explained to Aramis a week ago, all those missing were young university students. The police have blamed the disappearances on gang activity, but Athos suspects something more.

And he is desperate to find a pattern.

Admittedly, his focus is not entirely selfless. After dragging himself from his bed, ashamed and miserable, he had thrown himself into any scrap of work he could find. If he stops, he might think, and if he thinks, he might remember the disgust in Porthos’ eyes, and the smell of Anne’s perfume that he is told he followed all the way to England, and the horror of the future laid out to him. As his red-rimmed eyes prove, that despair still waits dangerously close.

Neither drunk, nor quite sober, he pours more brandy into his glass as he looks over his notes on each of the disappearances, gleaned through a few well-placed bribes to the police. He must be missing something.