“I don’t know,” Angela said. “Sad. But it happens all too often.”
“Poor thing,” Jane murmured. “But I was noticing, as I’m sure you did, that there are only a couple of general similarities between the dead women. Age doesn’t seem to factor in―Melissa Wilson was seventeen, Carly Henderson was thirty-two and the M.E. says our Jane Doe was somewhere in between—but they all had the same approximate size and build.” She paused and produced a copy of the drawing she had done earlier, only enhanced with color and shading. “Take a look. This is the woman Mina Lyle saw—a spirit trying to help, though whether she was an actress or a genuine Puritan, who knows. But if you compare all four women, there’s something similar in their faces. Not eye color, obviously, but the fine-boned structure. They all have a slightly fragile appearance—an innocent appearance.”
She was right. They didn’t look like sisters, but there was a similar quality about them.
“I saw her again tonight,” Rocky said, nodding at the drawing.
“Where?” Sam asked. “Did she speak to you?”
Rocky shook his head. “She was watching the tour. Devin wound up giving most of it—her friend was sick. Kept coughing. I think she was watching Devin.”
“If so,” Sam said, “we just have to hope Devin will communicate with her.”
“She will,” Rocky said.
“And we’d better hope we’re not putting her in danger,” Angela said.
Rocky tensed, heat flushing through him.
He should have stayed away from her. He should have told her to call Jack Grail for reports, if she wanted updates. He shouldn’t have gone to her house.
Or maybe he was berating himself for nothing. Maybe she wouldn’t have been as careful if he hadn’t insisted that she stay in, that she keep her doors locked. She might have gone off for a walk in the woods....
Bur the killer wasn’t just biding his time in the woods. He was going about his daily life; he was blending in with the crowd.
A crowd that just might include people Devin knew. People she considered friends.
“There are five of us. We’ll keep an eye on her,” Sam assured Rocky. “And if we need more manpower, you can call your buddy on the force.”
“I’ve got those numbers you were looking for,” Jenna told Rocky.
“And?”
“Dark SUVs? There are hundreds. People who own a dark SUV and fit the age range? Over half the group. But that dwindled down a lot when I looked for people who were here thirteen years ago and within the age range then as well as now. Then I took those names and looked into who we know has an athame.”
“And?” he asked again.
She looked over at him. “Down to eighteen people.”
Startled, Rocky got up to stand behind Jenna and look over her shoulder at the computer screen. Most of the names she pulled up meant nothing to him.
But there were several that did.
Jack Grail himself was on the list—along with their old buddy Vince Steward.
And Renee.
But they weren’t the only ones.
Theo Hastings was also on the list.
As was Devin’s old friend, the intrepid tour guide Brent Corbin.
*
“Ghosts appear in many different ways. There’s no way to fight it. Sometimes ghosts are the remnants, the souls, of those who’ve passed on. Sometimes they’re the remnants of knowledge in our minds. They’re there, but we can’t quite connect with them.”
Aunt Mina was talking to Devin. Except she wasn’t, not really—not even her ghost. She couldn’t be, because Devin was asleep. She knew she was asleep, and she even knew she was dreaming. But the dream was so much like life. It flowed, and she was trapped within it, unable to stop time or step outside it.
They were standing on a hill. Gallows Hill. But it wasn’t the Gallows Hill of the witchcraft trials, because no one knew exactly where the executions had taken place. The town fathers had stipulated that the hangings were done outside of Salem proper. It wasn’t the Gallows Hill of today, either. What the city had designated as Gallows Hill was a recreational area.
But none of that mattered in the dream. She simply knew she was on Gallows Hill on a long ago day. There was a cart track that led to the hill, winding through heavy trees. She saw that a path had been created to lead the condemned to the heavy branch of a certain old oak.
Panic seized her. She was floating in the air and still some distance away, but she could see what was happening. And she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to see people dying horribly by strangulation or a snapped neck. She didn’t want to hear the tears—or the silence of those who had come to see their loved ones’ passing and yet dared not protest.
People were arriving by cart. Five, she thought. She tried to turn away. And then she heard the whispers. She didn’t know where they came from, couldn’t tell if they were male or female. But there were two of them.
“She’ll be the death of us all.”