“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Jeremy said. And then he stood and helped Rowenna to her feet.
“It was Billy,” she said softly, and then fell against him, shaking.
Epilogue
“I swear, I’ll never understand it,” Joe said, shaking his head and frowning. “Why?”
“Well,” Jeremy said, helping himself to a slice of turkey, “Ginny had heard the legends all her life. She believed that if she was Satan’s handmaiden, she would be restored to youth and beauty and live forever, so she was more than happy to help Mie become Satan. She was the one who planted the idea in his mind.
“It probably started years ago—when he was eating cookies and milk in her kitchen. They’re both completely crazy, of course, but their delusions fed each other, and five women died.” And two more almost did, he thought, looking gratefully at the woman sitting by his side.
“It’s still so creepy to think that people we’ve known our whole lives are killers,” Eve said, then smiled tentatively at her husband. He hadn’t had another blackout since starting his medication, so the two of them had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
He smiled in return. “I’m still trying to piece it all together.”
“I have it figured,” Rowenna said. “Dan targeted tourists, women just passing through. He met them in bars or at the museum. He picked women who wouldn’t be missed for a while. Until it got close to Halloween. Then he had to speed it up, so he took a chance and grabbed Mary, even though Brad was right there to call in the cops. He knew about Adam’s blackouts—he’d been watching you,” she said to Adam. “So he got one of your cards and stuck some of your gum to the back, and planted it by one of the bodies. That way, if someone looked suspicious, it would be you. Ginny tried to make Doc look guilty. Poor guy. He’s still in shock.”
“Okay, I understand all that,” Joe said. “And I get Dan could come and go from the museum at will through the tunnel, while anyone working the desk would swear he’d never left, because as far as they knew, he never had. But…Mary said she was on a hill, and then in a cornfield and then tied up in the basement—and she didn’t know how she got to any of those places or even if she was really there.”
“Dan studied hypnotism,” Jeremy explained.
“But can anyone be that good?” Joe demanded.
“He was very good,” Rowenna said quietly. “He could plant things in your mind. Mary and I even saw our names on a tombstone. But…there are some things we’ll probably never really know or understand. Maybe that’s what life and death are about.”
She was thinking about her dreams, he knew. And about Billy. How could anyone explain those things?
He still had questions, too. Questions he could never ask, because most people would think he was insane.
Not Rowenna, though. She smiled at him, and he remembered arguing with her about the possibility of the paranormal really existing. He had been convinced that the world was whatever you could see and touch, hear and taste and smell. Earth and sky and sea. Evil was flesh and blood. Goodness was the same.
And that was true, as far as it went. Dan and Ginny were flesh and blood, certainly. But at the same time, he couldn’t help believing that some evil from the past had slipped into their souls. The Devil? Maybe.
So did that make Billy an angel? He didn’t know and didn’t care. He was just grateful for the boy’s help in saving the only woman he would ever love.
Did the paranormal exist? He couldn’t prove it, not the way his cop training insisted things needed to be proven, but he sure as hell couldn’t discount the possibility.
Rowenna had always known, of course.
“There’s another question,” Joe said. “How the hell did you get out there so fast? You were in the museum, then in the tunnel. How the hell did you beat us out there?”
“Without a car,” Zach said beneath his breath, then looked at Jeremy and shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “I honestly don’t know.”
“I do,” Eve told them, gripping Adam’s hand tightly. “It was the power of love. Evil can be strong, but love is stronger than any other power on earth.”
Jeremy was pretty sure he was blushing.
“So what about it?” Joe demanded.
“Pardon?”
“She is practically my child,” Joe said. “So I think I have a right to know.”
“He wants to know your intentions, bro,” Zach said, laughing.
Joe looked into Rowenna’s eyes. Magic. There were so many facets to the human mind, the human heart, and she had touched him on every one of them. She was more important to him than life itself. She believed they could touch the unknown.
And she was right. They could.
If she suddenly decided to wear long green robes and chant to the sea gods, he simply wouldn’t give a damn.
“My intentions—if she’ll have me, of course—are to love and cherish her until death do us part…and beyond,” he said softly.