They had passed miles of cornfields before finally reaching the empty scrubland where the ground was too thin and rocky to support corn or any other crop. He had noted that the barren lands began when they made a turn less than half a mile past Eric Rolfe’s house, which indeed seemed like the beginning of the end of the world. There was one small cornfield, and then, for miles and miles, nothing but bracken-filled land, with occasional outcroppings of granite.
He stopped the car when the road ahead narrowed and turned to rutted dirt, and sat for a long minute staring out at the desolation surrounding them.
“What are you doing?” Brad asked.
Jeremy left the car, walking to the edge of the broken pavement, where the high grass, thorns and brush began. He shaded his eyes with his hand and stared toward the fields and the houses to the southeast. The dirt road meandered on, disappearing in the distance. He started walking, his eyes scanning from side to side.
“I’ll walk back the way we came and see if I can find anything we missed,” Brad said.
Jeremy nodded and kept going.
A needle in a haystack, Jeremy thought. Hell, that sounded easy, compared to what he was trying to find.
It was so overgrown and wild here that any sign of a body, a shack, an old cellar, would be almost impossible to find. But he moved doggedly forward anyway, searching the brush nearest the road for any sign that it had been trampled or otherwise disturbed. At first he couldn’t find so much as a bent leaf or a cracked twig. He felt the hard-packed dirt of the road beneath his feet, and despite the coming winter, the sun beating down on him was hot, burning. It was already beginning its descent, but here, away from tall trees and taller buildings, its rays were still strong.
“Hey!” Brad called out to him excitedly, his voice barely carrying from the distance.
“What?” he shouted back.
“Come here!”
He turned and ran back to Brad, who didn’t say a word, only pointed.
Brad had found a place along the road where a wild cherry bush had been all but flattened, though clearly the damage had happened some time ago. The bush was struggling to straighten itself, but it still grew at a slant—like a palm caught in a hurricane and bending to its will.
Any footprints in the area were long gone, erased by rain and wind, so Jeremy didn’t worry about obliterating evidence as he followed the trail marked by damaged brush, as if someone had dragged a wagon or a wheelbarrow through at some point.
The trail kept leading them back.
Back to the edge of the last cornfield.
The door to the library opened. Rowenna looked up, expecting Daniel.
She was stunned to see Adam standing there.
“Adam!” she said, surprise quickly succeeded by alarm. “Is something wrong? Is Eve all right?”
For a moment he didn’t speak or move. He just stared at the table, at the books, his eyes empty, as if he had blacked out while standing.
“Adam?”
She felt her skin crawling, because there was something so odd about his eyes—and the situation didn’t help. She was alone with him in the back of a museum, with a wax murderers’ row just beyond the door.
And Adam—her friend whom she had once thought she knew so well—was reading books on Satanism and spells to let the Devil into his own flesh, so he could become immortal through the blood sacrifice of women.
Atmosphere and Adam were kicking in. Goose bumps began to form on her flesh.
She longed to jump up and run, but he was blocking the door.
“Adam?” she said quietly, reassuringly. “Let’s go outside. I’ve been in here too long—I need a break.”
Should she scream? Maybe someone would hear and come help her. Was there anything here she could use as a weapon?
Books. All she had were books. She almost laughed as she supposed she could do her best to beat him over the head with a priceless volume on Satanic ritual. At least there would be a certain poetic justice in that, she thought.
He seemed to snap back to the present. His eyes cleared and focused on her. “I came for you,” he said.
“What?” she breathed.
He shook his head. “I mean I came to see you. I…I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“You don’t always have to be completely honest with people,” she said uneasily.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I told you I love Eve, and I do. But something’s wrong, really wrong. She’s afraid of me.” He moved farther into the room. She shrank back, and he paused, frowning. “You’re afraid of me, too,” he said bitterly, then pulled out a chair opposite her at the table and sank into it, looking worn and dejected.
He wasn’t going to hurt her, Rowenna realized.
Not there and not now, anyway.
“Adam, go on. Talk to me,” she said.
“Blackouts.”
“What?”
He shook his head, then looked at her, his eyes bleak. “Rowenna, I’m having blackouts. I’ll find myself standing somewhere, and I won’t have any idea how I got there. And then Eve gets mad at me for taking off. Ro, I’m afraid.”
You’re afraid? she thought.
Could a man kidnap, rape, torture and then murder a woman in the midst of a blackout? Or was this just a clever act?
“Adam, if you’re having blackouts, you need to see a doctor,” she said.
He looked at her and shuddered. “I don’t like doctors,” he told her.