The Artist Leaves The Woman And Goes Down The Hallway.

  No Creaks.

  So Quiet It Hurts The Ears.

  The Bath Stops.

  The Artist Goes Into The Bedroom.

  Silent. Silent. Silent.

  The Bathroom Door Is Open.

  The Art Is In The Bathtub.

  The Art Has Closed Eyes.

  The Artist Imagines A Pose. A Pose For The Art.

  A Bathtub Pose.

  The Art Will Bathe For Eternity.

  Not Slippery Slippery Slippery. But Dry Dry Dry.

  The Artist Reaches Into Dusty Overalls, Takes Out The Syringe.

  The Artist Moves Closer.

  Silent Silent Silent.

  Closer Closer Closer.

  The Artist Hears The Art Breathing.

  The Artist Steps Into The Bathroom—

  —And The Artist Sees The Gun.

  The Gun Is On The Sink, Next To The Bathtub, Next To The Art.

  The Art Could Grab It.

  The Artist Pauses.

  The Artist Thinks.

  The Artist Thinks.

  The Artist Thinks Some More.

  The Artist Is Strong.

  Is The Art Strong?

  The Art Always Fights If It Can Fight.

  Surprise Is Better.

  The Artist Has An Idea.

  The Artist Will Hide.

  The Artist Will Hide And Wait.

  Wait Wait Wait.

  The Artist Hides.

  The Artist Waits.

  SAM

  Outskirts of Destiny, Colorado

  My name is Samantha Adams Troutt-Daniels, though sometimes I go by Samantha Adams Daniels-Troutt because in school we get called alphabetically and I would rearrange my last names if it worked to my advantage.

  People call me Sam. And I’m not a big fan of camping.

  I liked hiking. I liked nature. I liked spending time with my dad.

  But I don’t like the dark.

  That wasn’t exactly true.

  More specifically, I don’t like what might be hiding in the dark.

  I’m only nine, but my mom used to be a cop, and while it wouldn’t be nice to say she was unlucky a lot, if she asked me I’d tell her to avoid gambling. And lotteries. And bingo.

  When Mom worked for the Chicago Police Department as a Homicide Lieutenant, a lot of bad people tried to kill her.

  When she left the police department the bad people didn’t get the memo, because they kept trying to kill her. And Dad. And, sometimes, me.

  It wasn’t Mom’s fault. It was just… luck.

  The way to improve your luck is to know your odds. That meant to know what you were facing.

  But in the dark you never know what you’re facing.

  “How many flashlights did you bring?” Dad asked.

  He was going through my backpack while we sat around a fire I made, though he helped with the flint striker to light the tinder.

  “Eight,” I told him.

  My marshmallow on my stick was on fire, but I liked the burnt carbon taste so I kept it in the flames.

  Dad took out one of the flashlights. “Doesn’t that seem… excessive?”

  “Batteries could die.”

  “So just bring extra batteries.”

  “I did. They’re in the inside pocket.”

  “So why do you need eight flashlights?”

  “That way, even if I lose seven, I still have one left.”

  Behind Dad, eight point six kilometers away, was Destiny, Colorado, where we lived. It wasn’t a big town, but it had a lot of houses and a lot of business and at night a lot of lights were on, so it glowed in the distance like an artificial constellation.

  Dad had tried to get as far away from town as possible. He called it light pollution.

  For me, the more light the better.

  “Did you remember to bury your poop?” Dad asked.

  I sighed. “Yes, Father. After I dug the hole and pooped in it I buried it.”

  “When you were younger the word poop made you laugh.”

  “I’m more mature now,” I stated.

  “Which plant did you bury it behind?”

  “That one,” I pointed.

  “Ew. Yucca.”

  Dad said that because it was a yucca tree. He thought he was funny.

  “It’s a yucca plant,” he explained.

  “I know.”

  “Maybe I should take you to a doctor. Get your funny bone checked out.”

  “Maybe it isn’t me,” I said. “Maybe you’re not as funny as you think.”

  “I’m the funniest person you know.”

  “Uncle Harry is the funniest person I know.”

  “Uncle Harry is a dickweed.”

  I laughed, just a little bit.

  Dad laughed too. “Really? My genius yucca pun doesn’t move the needle, but saying dickweed is worth a chuckle?”

  “Swear words are still funny,” I said. “Dad jokes aren’t funny.”

  “Dad jokes are hysterical.”

  “That’s because you have the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old,” I explained.

  “I’m a guy. All guys have the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old.” He waited, then added, “You fartknocker.”

  I put my hand on my mouth so I didn’t giggle.

  “Look at all the light pollution,” Dad said, putting another marshmallow on his stick. “Ruins the whole horizon.”

  I blew on my marshmallow and waited exactly nine seconds for it to cool off enough to eat it. Nine seconds is the perfect time to wait when you’re roasting marshmallows.

  “Can we call Mom?” I asked.

  “She texted me. Said they don’t have service at their bed and breakfast.”

  “She went with Aunt Val?”

  Dad shook his head. “No. She went with Chandler.”

  “Who’s Chandler?”

  “She’s like Jason Bourne. Except she’s more dangerous. And prettier.”

  “You’re married to Mom. You can’t call other women pretty.”

  “You’re pretty. Can I say that?”

  “I don’t think people should be complimented or shamed for something they have no control over. Like looks.”

  “That’s because you’re super butt-ugly.”

  I giggled. “You’re infinity butt-ugly.”

  “You’re double-infinity butt-ugly.”

  “You’re infinity-infinity butt-ugly,” I said, then added, “to the square root of infinity.”

  “You know, we should do some sprinting.”

  I didn’t get it. “Sprinting?”

  Dad nodded. “Yeah. Sprinting runs in our family.”

  I didn’t laugh. Dad looked away and put his face in his shoulder.

  “Dad? Are you actually pouting?”

  “I am. But not because you didn’t laugh. I’m sad because I tried to teach a class at your school, about the wonders of the human eyeball.” He looked at me. “But I only had two pupils.”

  I made a face. “Ugh. Stick with the swear words.”

  “Okay, asshole breath.”

  I laughed. Because, c’mon, that was funny.

  We were quiet for a little bit, and we each ate another marshmallow.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, fart muncher.”

  That was also the height of comedy, but I didn’t laugh. My eyes had strayed to the dark desert around us, and all the things I couldn’t see in it.

  For the most part I liked being a kid. But not knowing things meant dealing with a lot of uncertainty.

  “If something happened to Mom, would you marry Chandler?” I asked.

  “What? No. Hell no. And nothing is going to happen to Jack.”

  “Something could happen.”

  “But it won’t.”

  “She’s really unlucky, Dad.”

  “Are you kidding? She’s very lucky. She has you. She has me. We’re all lucky to have one another.”

  “But bad things happen to her. A lot.”

  “Bad things happen to everyone, pumpkin. That’s part of life.”

  There was a shooting star in the sky. They weren’t really shooting stars. The were meteors. Twice a year the Leonid meteor shower peaked when Earth’s orbit went through its stream.

  Usually I got excited by shooting stars. But the dark was making me worry about stuff.

  “I’m not talking about regular bad things like getting sick or getting in a car accident or getting robbed,” I said. “Mom is unlucky because at least twenty people have tried to kill her. That shouldn’t be part of life.”

  I waited for Dad to rebut my point.

  He didn’t.

  “Why aren’t you telling me that I’m overreacting and I don’t have to worry about it?”

  “Because I agree with you.”

  I didn’t like that. Not at all.

  “But you’re an adult. You’re supposed to lie and say it will all be okay and to not worry about it. You’re supposed to say I’m being silly so I feel safe. You’re supposed to protect me and Mom.”

  “I would die for you and your mother, Sam. But I can’t protect you from life. You’re smart. Maybe too smart. If I lied to you, you’d know it was a lie.”

  “Maybe I’m too smart, but I’m still only nine. Maybe I need my parents to lie to me sometimes.”

  “Right now you’re safe. And your mother is safe. And nothing bad is going to happen to any of us.”

  Dad was right. I was too smart to believe him.

  And in the dark, scary desert I could swear I felt bad people staring at us.

  THE PALADIN

  She didn’t need night vision. Their campfire was bright enough to see them both through the rifle scope.

  A daddy-daughter camping trip.

  Enjoy it. It’s your last.

  It slightly irked the paladin that the witch was getting her ledger cleared first.

  As if your revenge is more important than mine.

  But the wizard made the rules. And they both owed the wizard their lives.

  Or our second lives. Or rebirths. Or whatever you want to call whatever this is.

  We were dead. Now we’re not.

  It was complicated. But also simple.

  Like the plan was complicated, yet simple.

  First we kill Jack and Phin and Sam and Harry.

  Then we can go after Herb and Tequila.

  Then the wizard and the golem can find Sara Randhurst and her husband, Frank Belgium.

  Three servings of vengeance, eight dishes, all served cold.

  And then?

  The paladin wasn’t sure.

  She would have to deal with the witch at some point. New alliances don’t automatically settle old scores.

  But that wouldn’t be for a while.

  In the meantime, the paladin watched the father and child through the rifle scope, imagining over and over again the gorgeous red explosions of their heads popping with well-placed .30-06 rounds.

  JACK

  The bath wasn’t relaxing.

  At first I didn’t want to take a bath. But Chandler was getting belligerent.

  And even stoned she proved she could handle herself.

  And as long as I had my Colt nearby I figured my reaction time would only be slowed down by throwing on a robe.

  And in case of a true emergency, the robe was optional.

  Seemed like a lot of excuses. But it had been a really long day and I really wanted to have a soak and Chandler pushing me was all the excuse I needed.

  So I filled up the luxurious tub, complete with bath salts and bubbles that either our hosts or previous renters had graciously left in the medicine cabinet, and I slid into the water and closed my eyes and tried to relax.

  But of course I couldn’t relax.

  The tub wasn’t long enough, so to keep my knees underwater I had to bend them to the side, which was uncomfortable because I had old spine injuries.

  Plus something was nipping at my subconscious. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe something to do with the incident at the Fall Down Inn. Maybe something to do with the Bed and Breakfast. Maybe something to do with the scavenger hunt. Maybe something to do with my traveling companion, who seemed to be a powder keg of pent-up neuroses ready to blow.

  Or maybe the edibles I took earlier were still making me paranoid. Or the booze I drank was making me overreact.

  I forcefully pushed all of that aside, immersed myself right up to my chin, closed my eyes, and tried to enjoy the deep, hot, silky, bubbly water.

  But my damned brain wouldn’t stop nagging me.

  I felt like something was wrong.

  I felt like something bad was going to happen.

  I felt like…

  I felt like I was being watched.

  Alarmed, I opened my eyes and abruptly sat up.

  Of course I was alone in the bathroom. I leaned over to look into the bedroom, and saw—

  Nothing. The bedroom was empty.

  Still feeling unsettled I got up, put on my bathrobe and tucked my revolver into the front hip pocket, and walked down the hallway into the kitchen, where Chandler was on the floor.

  I hurried to her, immediately feeling for the pulse in her carotid, watching as her eyelids fluttered.

  She whispered, “Death.”

  No kidding. I told her six gummies were too many.

  I tried giving her a pull to see if I could get her upright, but she was a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight.

  No problem. If I couldn’t bring her to the bed, I’d bring the bed to her.

  I padded over to Chandler’s room, grabbed a pillow and blanket, and walked back into the kitchen, spending a minute to try to make her as comfortable as possible.

  At least with pot she wouldn’t have a hangover. I figured she’d wake up in a few hours, confused but unharmed.

  Then I headed back into the bedroom and stepped on something small and sharp. I checked the bottom of my bare foot.

  Rock salt.

  I looked around and found more of it sprinkled around the hardwood. It looked like a sparse trail.

  I was sure it hadn’t been there when we first arrived at the B and B. Which meant it was recent.

  Did we track in in when we got back from the bar?

  I followed the salt into the great room, each step creaking on the wooden floor, and saw salt sprinklings all the way to the front door.

  We must have brought it in on our shoes.

  I double-checked to make sure the door was locked—it was—and then turned and saw a small, grey rock on the welcome mat.

  I crouched, picked it up, and rolled it in my fingers. Mushy. Holding it up to my nose, I recognized the smell of cement.

  I didn’t recall anything recently paved. And my unspecific paranoia kicked up a few notches. I went back into the kitchen and checked the bottoms of Chandler’s shoes, and found some dirt in the treads but no rock salt.

  I was almost certainly overreacting, but I drew my weapon and kept it at my side, pointed downward.

  I needed to search the house for intruders. It was unlikely, but I had to check.

  First, I held my breath and paid attention to the ambient noise of the house.

  Intuition, and sensing my environment, specifically crime scenes, was something I did a lot when I was on the force. Places had a feel, a vibe. When Chandler and I arrived earlier, the house told us what kind of space it was. What I meant specifically was hard to describe, but sometimes you just knew something was off. When you tuned in, you realized something was wrong.

  I tried to use my nose, my ears, the air on my face and bare skin, to figure out if anything changed from earlier.

  And I couldn’t sense a goddamn thing. So much for my cop instincts.

  Instead I did it the old-fashioned way, moving slowly and carefully, acutely aware of every potential hiding spot.

  I started in the kitchen. I checked the panty. I checked in the cabinets under the sink. Perversely, I even checked the refrigerator, because Harry and I once found a suspect scrunched up in his fridge during a domestic disturbance call a zillion years ago when we both walked a beat.

  The nearby bathroom was next, the door already open. The shower had a privacy-glass door, dark and shadowy. I flipped on the light.

  Empty.

  Then I moved on to the great room, keeping my core centered, acutely aware of my surroundings. The open floor plan didn’t allow for many hidey-holes. No feet protruded from the bottom of any curtains. The sofa didn’t have enough room under it to fit a person. I approached the closet with my gun raised, opening the door fast with my finger on the trigger.

  A moth fluttered out.

  I went into the hall, moving in a crouch and using balanced movements and rolling my steps heel to toe SWAT-style so I didn’t bob or sway. The crumb-trail of rock salt pinched the soles of by bare feet.

  I’d already been in Chandler’s bedroom, but I checked it again. The bed had no dust ruffle and nothing beneath it, and the closet held only old wire hangers.

  Her bathroom, also empty.

  The game room came next. No closet, no real place to hide. I walked in anyway, doing a slow and steady examination of everything.

  It all appeared okay. Maybe this was just residual weed paranoia after all. Or just plain old paranoia that wasn’t weed-related, but experience-related, because of all my bad experiences.

  The only room left was my bedroom. That big king-size bed with the princess mosquito netting likely had a lot of space under it. There was also another closet.

  I walked back into the hallway—

  —and froze.

  I had the prickly flesh sensation of being stared at.

  I did a slow three hundred and sixty twirl, weapon up.

  The hall was empty.

  Was I missing something?

  When clearing an area, the rookie mistake was to forget that the world was three dimensional and had an up and down. But I’d been checking the floor for salt and hadn’t noticed any seams for trap doors or discoloration in the boards. And the ceiling was high.

  At least, it was high in the open floorplan entry great room. The hallway had a much lower ceiling, and it was conceivable that a crawlspace could be—

  Noise from behind me and I spun to see a large, old, filthy man stretch upside down from the attic hatch, grabbing my wet hair with one hand and stabbing me with something in his other hand, right between my clavicle and shoulder blade, just as I raised my gun and fired twice before he dropped out of his hole and pinned me to the ground.