The earth.
She was lying with her hands folded corpse-fashion over her chest, and she had the sense that she was in the graveyard, on a grave. She blinked and realized it wasn’t real, and yet she could feel the grass beneath her, she could smell roasting chestnuts at a stand not far away.
She felt rather than saw the shadow coming.
“You’re not real,” she said. Her voice was weak, and her head was pounding.
Then he was there. She knew him, even though he was wearing a turban, makeup and a magnificent cloak. He looked so different. Handsome, which was funny, she thought hysterically, because she had never thought of him as at all good-looking. “Dan,” she breathed.
“Not Dan,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Damien, the Harvest Man, and I’m about to rule the world. I won’t just worship Satan, I will be him in the flesh.”
She was amazed to hear herself laugh, but all the time, her mind was racing. She had to buy time, had to keep him talking, had to find a way to throw him off balance. “Damien. Dan Mie. It’s an anagram. Was that what made you think you were supposed to be the Devil’s heir? When you figured out that you could turn your name into his? Or was it the fact that you were always a nobody? You needed something to make you feel important, so you decided to be the Devil?”
She could tell from his expression that she had found his weak spot. She was making him angry. Good. Angry people got careless. They made mistakes.
Right. Like there was any salvation for her now. She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t really be in the cemetery, because there would be people around, so somehow he had created an illusion.
So where was she?
She fought with her own mind, trying to dispel the fantasy he had created and let reality in.
She felt the breeze, and suddenly she wasn’t lying down. She was running. She was in a cornfield, running for her life. The stalks bent as she forced her way through them. The sky overhead was steel-gray, and the very heavens seemed to rumble and roar.
Crows screamed, dive-bombing her, their calls deafening as they darted around her, chasing her.
Leading her to the stake where her life would end.
No!
It was another illusion. She had to fight it.
She closed her eyes, ignoring everything but her sense of touch. She felt the ropes that were binding her arms. She felt the cold, and felt the dankness of the air. Felt the hard-packed earth beneath her.
She was somewhere…underground. In a grave?
Had she been buried alive?
No, that wasn’t the Harvest Man’s way. She opened her eyes and looked around her.
Damien was gone. She could hear him, though. He wasn’t far away. He was talking to someone. She could hear a low, muted voice replying to him. A feminine voice.
Mary Johnstone?
But then she heard a low, sobbing moan, and it was very close, but outside her line of sight.
She strained to hear past it to what Dan and the woman were saying.
“You’ll ruin everything,” the woman said. “You have to kill the first one now—quickly—or they’ll find you before you finish. You cannot be the true king of kings, Satan on earth, unless you complete the ritual perfectly.”
That voice…
As Rowenna tried to shift into a more comfortable position, she realized that she was dressed in her harvest queen costume.
And she recognized the female voice.
Ginny MacElroy.
Her mind fought against such an absurd possibility, but she knew Ginny’s voice too well to be mistaken, and she knew what she was wearing, knew that the nearby sobbing had to be coming from Mary Johnstone.
She began to test the ropes that were binding her. How long did she have? Minutes?
No, longer. Because Mary…
Mary had to die first.
Desperation and hopelessness nearly overcame her as she realized that the ropes binding her were too tight for her to slip free.
Then she went dead still, terrified, certain she was losing her mind.
There was a little boy standing by her feet. Just a regular little boy in jeans and a T-shirt, looking at her so sadly.
She started to say something to him, but he raised a finger to his lips to warn her to be silent.
And then he faded away.
Rowenna was nowhere to be found. Joe and the police had torn the place apart, a tearful June hovering nearby and trying to help.
Finally Jeremy had explored the library and found the shelf that was really a false door, opening into a tunnel.
He didn’t know how Eve had managed to follow him, how she had gotten past Joe and the other policemen. But she was next to him.
“Go back and tell Joe I’m checking this out,” he said.
Zach had already gone to pick up Brad and then head out to the old Brisbin land.
Eric had gone with him, because he knew the area and had the best chance of finding the foundation of the old house.
“I’m going with you,” Eve insisted.