“No! No! Only one master. He has those of us who love and follow him—”

  “And charm and kidnap young girls for him, dress up in costumes, and kill for him.”

  “He only kills evil!”

  “But you failed him, so … well, he could see you as evil now. And if what you’re saying is the truth, why doesn’t he let the world see him? Why doesn’t he spread his word on television or through the Internet?”

  “Because people are stupid! They’re sheep. Something has been believed, so they just keep on believing it. He very carefully chooses those to teach, to give the gift to, the gift of truly divine life, truly forsaking the devil!” Nick announced. “And just because you find the pickup spot, that doesn’t mean you’ll find him!”

  Skye sat back, shaking her head. “Here’s something you should think about. You believe there are witches—or whatever—who truly dance with the devil in the darkness of the woods. Well, here’s the thing. Think about it. If the poor innocents tried for witchcraft in 1692 really were evil, all cozy with the devil, why didn’t they just call on him to save them from the ropes? Maybe the devil and the master are the same! People believed those in cahoots with the devil deserved to die. Maybe this person convinces others that there are people being evil along with something like the devil and therefore, they deserve to die, too.” Skye leaned close to him. “I have it on good authority that the master does kill if he senses someone might betray him in any way, shape, or form. You got any friends back there with the master? Even they could be in danger. Or you could see that they’re safe now?”

  She stood then, smiling at him.

  “Think about it, Nick, please. Just think about it.”

  She turned and left the room. Nick Sandoval just stared after her.

  And Zach knew. She had gotten to him. In a few hours, they just might get something from him that would lead them in the direction they needed to go.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Every once in a while, I wish that torture were legal,” Gavin said stoically.

  Skye smiled. As little time as they’d been working with Gavin, she knew that he would never go beneath the law. He wouldn’t torture anyone. But she could understand he was frustrated.

  They had someone who could probably give them what they needed in order to find the children and the missing people.

  But they could get nothing from him.

  The interesting thing was he hadn’t asked for an attorney yet, though he had been read his rights more than once.

  “For some reason, we’ve been big on quotes lately,” Zach said. “‘Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.’”

  “And someone out there is practicing tyranny,” Gavin said. He chuckled softly. “We’re into quotes? These people are practicing a different quote. ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.’”

  “Thomas Jefferson,” Zach said. “Except that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation says the quote was never from him. But true or false, no real difference in a world where the Internet has given everyone the right to belief without facts. And then again, we, as human beings, have always believed what we want to believe.”

  “True,” Gavin said with a sigh. “So, now—”

  “We’re off to the hospital to talk to Cathy,” Skye reminded him.

  “Okay, I’m with you,” Gavin said.

  “We’ll take both cars,” Zach told him. “That way, we can divide and conquer, if need be.”

  Minutes later, they were on the way to the hospital.

  The officer on duty, watching over Cathy’s door, assured them that no one had been in her room except for her parents and the two friends who had been with her on the tour, Sheryl Dunn and Melinda Seymour. Gavin told his officer he’d hang by the door; the officer should go grab a cup of coffee while he could.

  The officer was happy to do so.

  “I’ve already spoken with Cathy and her folks; I’ll wait here, not cloud the talk, mess up any mojo, and give that guy a break in the meantime!” Gavin said quietly as his officer walked away.

  “Sounds good,” Zach said, and he and Skye walked into the room.

  Mr. and Mrs. O’Hara, Cathy’s concerned parents, Joe and Marlene, were in the room with her, anxiously looking over their daughter. Skye wondered if she was putting pressure on law enforcement resources by asking that Cathy be guarded—the teen’s parents might have been the best possible watchdogs themselves.

  They were determined that they would be with her until they were able to take her home.

  Cathy was awake, pale, and worried as she saw Skye and Zach chat with her parents, explaining that first, they wanted to make sure Cathy was doing well, and then, naturally, to find out if there was anything she could tell them about Nick Sandoval—and what he had told her.

  “People—cops—have already been in here to speak with our daughter,” Mr. O’Hara told them. “But you are the two who saved her life! Cathy—”

  “I’d be happy to tell you anything!” Cathy told them, sitting up on her bed, but leaning back against a pile of pillows. “As I told my parents, I swear—this might have even been good in an odd way—I will never, ever take drugs again!”

  “Nick Sandoval supplied the pills, right?” Skye asked.

  Cathy nodded solemnly. “Yeah, he told me that he could take us to a really cool party after the tour and that we just needed to be a little bit happy for it! But everybody thinks that I took too many. I didn’t. Just a couple. And I guess … when the trolley kind of careened into the embankment, I felt sick! But Nick took my arm, looked back at Sheryl and Melinda, and then just shook his head and told me it would be just the two of us, that we needed to get away before someone came for the trolley and got us all involved in something that would last all night. But I … I could barely walk. And it was so dark, and I was so confused … and finally … you helped me.” She glanced over at her parents. “And I know how close I came to dying, and I’m really grateful to be alive. I do want to live! So, thank you, thank you!”

  “Cathy, we’re just grateful to see you doing well,” Zach assured her.

  “Before you caught up with us,” Cathy continued, “he kept telling me that we just had to go a little farther, and that I was going to wind up so happy. We weren’t just going to have a good time; we would learn ‘the way’ for the rest of our lives.” She shook her head, glancing at her parents again. “This has all been my fault! I’m a lucky kid. My parents are super people. They taught me all about stranger danger, and the real downside of drugs, but … Nick didn’t seem like a stranger, and it just sounded as if this party he was talking about was going to be amazing!”

  “But your friends didn’t want to come?” Skye asked.

  Cathy sighed. “Sheryl has an older sister, who has had some trouble with drugs, and I know she just held on to the pill that Nick gave her, and I think Melinda was trying to make sure that she watched over her.” She hesitated, frowning. “And while he offered the pills, I don’t think that Nick ever wanted them to come, and maybe they thought that he wanted me especially, or … honestly, I think he intended that they not go all along.”

  Skye glanced at Zach. “Sheryl’s sister has had trouble with drug addiction? I’m sure it’s in the records from the events last night, but has her sister been in any rehabs? Has Sheryl seen her sister lately?” she asked.

  “Um, I don’t think so. Her sister is twenty-three years old and has been coming and going for years, but … Sheryl’s parents are good people and love her to pieces; they’re always trying to help her, so I’m assuming they’re expecting her home soon. I’m sorry, but does that have any, um, relationship to this, to what happened to me?” Cathy asked.

  “We don’t know, but thank you,” Zach said honestly. He handed her a card and added a second one for her parents. “If you guys think of anything—”

  “Wait!” Marlene O’Hara said. She looked confused and concerned. “I’m not really sure that I know the relevance, either, but I can call Loretta Dunn and find out if she’s seen Bella—that’s Sheryl’s sister—lately.”

  “Sure, that would be great,” Skye said. “And if you don’t mind, can you find out where she was going to rehab?”

  “Of course,” Marlene O’Hara assured them.

  She put through her call. Everyone else in the room watched her. They could hear a nervous voice on the other end talking before Mrs. O’Hara could talk.

  Marlene O’Hara sweetly tried to calm down the woman on the other end of the line, assuring her Cathy was doing well and then asking about Sheryl and then Sheryl’s older sister, Bella.

  Marlene O’Hara listened, and then tried to assure the woman on the other end of the line that everything would be all right.

  She didn’t look so confident herself when she ended the call, then looked at Skye and Zach.

  Marlene shook her head. “Bella was supposed to have come home last night. They spoke to the rehab, but found out that Bella had lied to them. She’d checked herself out more than a week ago.”

  “Oh, no!” Cathy moaned.

  “Apparently, Bella is an adult, and she has the right to check herself out. She was in there for help, not because she had been court ordered,” Joe O’Hara said. “She could be fine; she could be trying to make it on her own, or … Well, addicts—she could be off doing drugs again.”

  “No, I really don’t think so,” Cathy said. “Dad, we’re all friends with that family. You know Bella, and she’s not a bad person.”

  “Honey, sadly, lots of good people fall prey to addiction,” Mr. O’Hara said gently.

  “Not Bella!” Cathy insisted. “If she said that she was coming home, she meant to do so! Maybe she meant to surprise her parents, coming early, and got swept up, instead, by the monster doing all this!”

  Maybe indeed! Skye thought.

  “Please don’t fret. We’ll put Bella Dunn on our list of missing people,” Zach promised, “and we’ll do everything we possibly can to find her.”

  “Thank you!” Cathy whispered.

  “And thank you, Mrs. O’Hara, you’ve given us information that may help save Bella, and give us other answers as well,” Skye said.

  “Right. Again. Thank you! We’ll do everything that we can to find Bella,” Zach said. “And get to the bottom of it all.”

  Cathy spoke from the bed. “Please, please, do! She’s had trouble, but she’s not bad, I swear it! She just gets depressed, and so she tries to take stuff to cheer herself up. She’s so talented, a super singer with a beautiful voice. She gets jobs easily enough, but she never feels that she’s good enough. She did need help, and … oh! Now I’m worried about Sheryl!”

  “Cathy, don’t worry, thanks to you and your family, we’re on it,” Zach said solemnly. “And thank you. Thank you so much for your help and feel better.”

  “I’m better already,” Cathy told them. “I’m alive!”

  They smiled at her, nodded another silent thanks to Joe and Marlene O’Hara, and headed out of the room.

  The officer on guard duty had returned. He and Gavin were speaking softly, casually, Skye thought, and they broke off as Skye and Zach emerged, ready to move back into business.

  But apparently, while Gavin had seemed to be friendly with the young officer on duty, he didn’t want to talk in front of others.

  “All right then,” Gavin said. “Time for us to head out. Thanks, Trevor.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant! My giant coffee is great!”

  The man nodded at Skye and Zach, and then they and Gavin managed to head for the elevator and exit the hospital.

  “You don’t trust that man on duty—but we’re leaving him to watch over a young girl?” Zach asked.

  Gavin shook his head. “I trust Trevor completely. Good cop. I just don’t know who he might talk to and …”

  “And,” Skye finished, “you don’t want to admit it, but you’re worried that someone in your department might be involved.”

  Gavin looked completely uncomfortable. And miserable.

  “Hey,” Zach said softly. “More quotes. Not sure where it came from but ‘a few bad eggs’ doesn’t mean your force—”

  “If I’m right, it is corrupted,” Gavin told them. “And it means you might be right on several points, too. As in whoever this master is, he and his co-conspirators are planning something big. We need to figure out what it is. Okay, did Cathy give you something that we didn’t have before?” he asked.

  “Cathy O’Hara went on that tour with two other girls, Sheryl Dunn and Melinda Seymour. We just discovered that Sheryl has a sister who was at a rehab, probably among those your cousin discovered that had missing people, or people who disappeared after they checked out,” Skye said.

  “Makes sense,” Zach added. “If you’re creating an army of shields using pills and darkness to control them, where better to start than with a few addicts?”

  “So, did you want to head out to any of the rehabs? Which one was Bella Dunn at?” Gavin asked.

  “We didn’t push our luck with the O’Hara family. They were helpful enough; and when Mrs. O’Hara was on the phone with Loretta Dunn, Sheryl and Bella’s mother, the other was so distraught that … Well, she ended the call when she ended it. But—”

  “I can find out,” Gavin said. “So, should we head there—”

  “Here’s where we divide and conquer,” Skye said. “You get the information on the rehab and go talk to whoever is in charge, find out anything you can about Bella Dunn—and make sure they’re telling the truth. Zach and I will head out to the areas where we believe the witch brought Jeremy and Patricia to be picked up, and then to the place in the road where we believe Nick Sandoval was headed with Cathy and see …” Skye trailed off, wincing.

  “See if she can see the past and get a make on a car so that we can trace a person or maybe at least make a discovery on the vehicle through a traffic cam,” Zach said flatly.

  Gavin smiled. “Great, all right, attacking it all from different positions. We have Vince and Connie still working with rangers; you’re on the possible escape routes; and I’ll find out if there was anyone who came to see Bella, or if she said or did anything that would point to someplace she might have gone, or someone she might have wanted to see. Among all of us, we may get something, somewhere, that gives us a clue.”

  “Keep in touch,” Skye said, turning to head for the car.

  “Will do!” Gavin called, heading for his own vehicle.

  Then they were off again.

  “You’ve said a couple of times you wanted to get back to the costume shop,” Zach said as he revved the car into gear. “First, we’ll head to the road where Jeremy and Patricia were probably picked up. Going the other way, we’ll be closer to the costume shop, and we can get more done in the least amount of time.”

  “Sounds good,” Skye said. She grimaced. “And then again, maybe I’ll see a face nice and clearly, and we won’t need to go anywhere else!”

  “That’s a great ‘maybe,’” Zach told her.

  She shrugged and said, “It’s beginning to make sense in an odd way. Steal people and make them believe that even if they die, it’s going to be for a wonderful reason. The only problem being that reason is not the great wonder and reward they’ve been led to believe exists when you battle a world that’s been tainted and controlled by the devil in the woods, but rather making a few people incredibly rich or powerful or both.”

  “And,” Zach told her, “they’ve gotten too full of themselves, pushed it too far. In all of this, there’s a mistake. And we’re going to find it.”

  “Oh, speaking of which, I’m going to call Angela. Somewhere there will be a better notion if there’s going to be a huge event or a massive money exchange, or anything like that, in the Salem area,” Skye said.

  “Good plan,” Zach said. “And … we’re on the road, and I believe that orange tie on the tree ahead marks the spot the rang ers and detectives determined to be the exit through the trees from the Bolton house.”

  “Right. Okay, and …”

  “And?”

  “I was just wondering. Why kill Mike Bolton? He wasn’t even in the main house. He was too old to put up much of a fight—”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I know a few people about that age who could still flatten many a younger person,” Zach said. “But you’re right. He was in the back apartment, the in-law quarters, or whatever you call it. The witch could have gone in the main house and gotten away with Patricia and Jeremy without Mike ever having known about it. So—”

  “Maybe—despite the green makeup and costume, hat, et cetera—Mike might have recognized the person if he would have looked out a window, opened a door … done something. He was killed with drugs forced into his system, not a gun, not with a knife, not even with strangulation or suffocation,” Skye said. “I think he might have known what was going on—and that he did what he was told to protect his grandchildren.”

  “So now to add to the mix, we need to find out who was in town that Mike Bolton knew,” Zach said flatly, pulling the car over onto the embankment.

  “Half of Salem, probably. He was eighty!” Skye said.

  Zach nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Well, we’re here. Time for you to pop out and rise and shine.”

  She groaned. “Quotes and expressions! ‘Rise and shine’ is a good expression when you’re waking someone up.”

  “But you must rise out of the car and let your strange talent shine.”

  Still groaning, she exited the car. He did so, too, letting her sit on the hood of the car; then he stepped back and stood at a supportive distance.

  The day was beautiful, and the sun shone down on the trees and the road …

  She closed her eyes. She willed it to be night.

  At first … she just saw cars.

  She opened her eyes, closed them again, and concentrated on what she knew about little Jeremy and Patricia.

  She saw the green witch in her mind’s eye …

  The witch was emerging from the woods. Pushing Jeremy and Patricia ahead, toward …