“When he was still on the force in Portland, Cain ended up working the Judas Irwin case.” She looked at me like I should know who the heck that guy was. I just frowned and shrugged and she gave me a little impatient look. “Irwin was a serial killer who targeted women in their homes.”

  An unpleasant crawling sensation dragged up my spine, like a drawn-out shiver. Murdered broads gave me the jitters, go figure. This case was probably gonna draw up a lot of memories I’d rather not deal with.

  Taliyah drank from her bottle of water. Her fingers were steady as she screwed the cap back on, but her peepers were far away.

  “He’d break in, strangle his chosen victims, and then pose their bodies to be found later.” Taliyah’s lips twisted like she’d bitten into something sour. “The media called him the ‘Curtain Back Killer’.”

  Well, wasn’t that just charming?

  I’d definitely made the right decision about dinner. The thought of eating anything now made my stomach do a triple somersault.

  Taliyah put her water down with a click of plastic that seemed too loud in the silence of Cain Morgan’s kitchen. Everything was still for a second, and then Taliyah reached for a second spring roll and the eerie moment shattered.

  “Cain was part of the squad that apprehended the Curtain Back Killer. He testified as an expert witness during the trial where they put Judas Irwin away for life.” She looked up and locked peepers with me. There was fierce determination in that look, almost a demand. “Five years later, and there’s a killer who appears to be using Judas Irwin’s M.O.”

  “Oh… wow. That’s really… well, that’s terrible.” I cleared my pipes. “But.. um, why am I here? The case happened up in Portland, ya follow? Not here in the Hollow. So… shouldn’t the folks up in Portland handle it? What’s it got to do with us?”

  Taliyah’s face was grim, her features cold. It was like watching winter close in, the first few flakes of snow drifting down from the sky. “There have been two victims in Haven Hollow… So far. The first happened earlier in the week, the second just this morning.”

  My stomach twisted, and I had to swallow hard to keep from bringing my dinner back for an encore performance.

  There was a murderer in town?

  Why hadn’t this information made the news? I asked as much.

  “We’re keeping it under wraps, for now,” she answered as she drew in a breath and gave me a look that said she didn’t want to further discuss her reasons why. I figured it wasn’t my place to prod and Taliyah was kinda scary, for a dame.

  “I need to talk to Cain before this information gets out and all the stations pick it up,” Taliyah continued. “I need to know what Cain knew about Irwin before whoever this bastard is realizes we’re onto him.” Then she sighed, real pronounced like. “I questioned the rest of the force already, but they were no help.” She shook her head and seemed like she was overwhelmed by it all. Not that I blamed her. “Cain was closer to this case than anyone else. He may have information he never shared with the others—information I can use to stop this killer.” Taliyah met my eyes, and I couldn’t look away.

  Really good performers, the ones that people remember forever, they tend to have a kinda aura around them. I’ve heard it called ‘charisma’, ‘magnetism’, ‘personal charm’, but I’ve also heard it referred to as ‘glamour’. That force of will, that invisible allure that made people want to watch them, to fall in line and smile and do whatever they wanted just to be near them, that was glamour. It made sense that the next queen of Winter would have that same pull. Not that she had any idea who or what she really was.

  Taliyah slumped back and ran a hand through her hair. The illusion dissipated and she just looked like a tired, grieving broad again.

  “We’ll bring you in as a psychic consultant so you can survey the scene. That way, Cain gets a good look too.”

  She hesitated, playing with her water bottle for a moment before reaching into the inner pocket of her jacket. Then she looked over at me again. “You said you needed something of Cain’s.”

  “Right,” I answered.

  Taliyah placed a heavy gold ring on the table in front of me with a decisive click. “This is… was, his class ring.”

  I swallowed hard.

  The whole situation made me feel like a Peeping Tom, watching something way too personal that I wasn’t meant to see. But there was no window between us, no barrier; I was about to be as in it as they were.

  Taliyah Morgan, the next queen of Winter, met my eyes and held them. “I need to figure this case out yesterday,” she continued. “Before someone else gets killed.” She paused and there was something heavy in her peepers. “Will you help me solve these murders, Darla?”

  The metal of Cain’s class ring was cool when I closed my fingers around it. It felt heavy in my hand, as weighty as the task that lay before me.

  I gave her the only answer I could.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Seven

  Back in my day, séances were kinda “the thing to do”.

  It was just berries, getting a group together to hold hands around a table in the dark while a psychic called out, in a ringing voice, for the spooks to answer.

  After actually being a ghost and meeting a lot more people on the spooky side since becoming a medium, it was obvious that all those séances from the past were just a bunch of bunk. Just grifters working the psychic angle to make some quick dough off hopeful rubes.

  Some of them had been really exceptional, even knowing they were fake. The instruments that played themselves, the floating tables, the echoing knocks when the “spirits” responded, it all felt so real, so spooky. We’d all squeal and clutch each other’s hands in the dark.

  It had been easy to play the seance off as a lark as we giggled and whispered around the table. We joked about the spooks and the truths we might find out, but under all that pomp, there had always been a burning curiosity, almost a need.

  We wanted to know what more was out there.

  We wanted spirits to rap on tables and write messages in chalk, and thrill us with their presence. After the World War, it became fairly clear that life wasn’t fair. It could end real quick and real cheap and for no good reason at all. So, wasn’t it better to drink, laugh, dance, and enjoy what little time you had? And maybe, just maybe, someone could pull back that curtain and promise us there was something more.

  Haunting a house in Silver Lake, with the ghost of your murderous ex, wouldn’t have made my top fifty guesses about what that “something more” entailed, but there you have it.

  I set the last of the four candles anointed with Enchanted Spirit Oil on the corner bookshelf, drifting in memories of happier times. I’d set the other three in the furthest corners of the room and now we were ready to start.

  Taliyah waited for me at the table we’d set up in the center of the room.

  Cain’s ring lay in the middle of the table, a brilliant circle of gold against the navy tablecloth I’d laid over the scarred wood. Taliyah’s fingers twitched, like she wanted to pick the ring up, but was holding herself back.

  The final candle, shining white and almost as thick as my wrist, was next to go on the table, beside the ring. Piercing the veil didn’t smell like I thought it would. Less grave dirt and more lilies. There was a hint of something underneath the delicate floral scent that I couldn’t place, something acrid.

  Regardless, I lit the candles round the room, building up protection against unwanted spooks. I really didn’t want to accidentally summon every ghostly Tom, Dick, and Casper, and I definitely didn’t want anything else to show up.

  Last was the white candle.

  Its flame blazed up several inches, releasing the pale scent of lilies and jasmine into the room.

  “That’s all she wrote,” I said, hoping I sounded a lot more confident than I was. I sat down opposite Taliyah and extended my arms on either side of the candle. I wasn’t sure how much theater Taliyah was expecting with this whole song and dance, but I hoped the black, velvet cape I was wearing, along with the black box hat with the attached dotted veil (also black) was meeting her expectations.

  When I looked at her, I said in a very deep and dramatic voice… “And thus it begins.” It came out real funny—not my voice at all, but also not someone else’s. Taliyah gave me a real puzzled look but then we clasped hands, forming a circle with our arms. Taliyah’s fingers felt like ice in my sweaty palms. I wasn’t sure if that was from nervousness or just a Winter faerie thing.

  Bailey had told me what to do, the incantation to draw a spook to you, like a lighthouse leading ships back to harbor.

  I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, breathing in real deep. Then I started to hum because I thought that might add a special touch to our little gathering. After another second, I opened my peepers as wide as they’d go and held Taliyah’s hand even more tightly as I raised my chin to the ceiling and called out, “I adjure you, dead spirit, to coooooome to meeeeee! Cain Morgan, upoooon this day, this niiiiiiight, agree to this act of service to meeeeee.”

  And then I remembered this scene from one of them real spooky movies I’d watched a while back about a priest expelling a demon from some little girl. Boy, had that one given me the jitters. But figuring priests definitely knew what they were doing, I figured it couldn’t hurt to borrow a line or two from the old git. Especially ‘cause the last thing I wanted to do was end up summoning a demon, instead of Cain Morgan.

  “I commaaaaand you to depaaaaart from this servaaaaant!” I called out in that real deep voice I was using, but then I realized what I was saying and fixed it real quick. “Er, I commaaaaand you to impart into this servaaaaaaant!” I took a deep breath and clutched Taliyah’s hand even harder and then thinking it might help things, I started to shake all over—like a quake was centered right in my stomach and ricocheting outward. “The pooooower of Christ compeeeeels you!”

  I repeated that line a few more times, thinking I was definitely plunging into that old priest’s power, when Taliyah cleared her pipes.

  “Um, Darla?”

  I turned to face her, making sure to keep my peepers real big—like I was seeing over to the other side and wasn’t sure what to make of what was coming through. People at seances—well, they liked that sort of thing.

  “You know… you don’t have to do all that,” Taliyah continued, and looked real shy about it. “I mean… the part from The Exorcist. I think we can skip all that.”

  “Oh,” I answered on a shrug and frown. “Oh, sure, okay.”

  “And, you really don’t have to do that thing with your voice, where you make it sound really deep and loud. I’m sure that doesn’t feel good in your throat.”

  She didn’t know the half of it—I had a feeling my pipes were gonna sting from here to kingdom come. But, getting back to it, if she didn’t want none of the special stuff that went along with this kinda thing, then that was fine by me. I gave her a quick shrug and then stuck to the script Bailey had given me.

  After a few minutes, I stopped hearing myself. I knew I was talking, but I couldn’t hear what I was saying. My voice droned on repetitively, becoming white noise in the background. My awareness narrowed down to that one candle flame, Taliyah’s hands in mine, and the veil.

  When people talk about the veil between worlds, they act like it’s a curtain that separates the living from the dead. Some places sound like they’re real thick, other places threadbare.

  For me, the veil didn’t feel nothing like either of those. It felt more like water. In some places, like the cemetery in my backyard, it felt like a river—cold and fast running, but you could see the bottom of it.

  Some places were like white water rapids, churning, dangerous, and ready to dash you to bits on the rocks if you didn’t pay attention.

  But, that night, during the summoning, the veil felt like the ocean. Deep, dark, fathomless. The surface tossed and heaved, but deeper down wasn’t any safer, with dark undercurrents waiting to swallow you up if you gave them half a chance. For the first time since the job was given to me, I wondered if the spirit side could pull people through, just like the human side could pull spooks through. It didn’t give me a good feeling, so I shook it off.

  I called out to the spirit of Cain Morgan again, but without any of the pomp from before.

  For a long time, I wasn’t sure I was gonna get an answer. Nothing but the echoing crash of the sea responded to my plea. I floundered around, reaching out for something, stretching as far as I dared into the depths. It was murky, and cold, and empty feeling. Then, breaking through the darkness like a glimmer of silvery fish scales, I felt him.

  “Oh,” I said, not able to conceal my surprise.

  “Is everything okay?” Taliyah whispered.

  But I wasn’t able to answer her ‘cause I was too busy throwing my awareness forward, reaching across that impossible distance, stretching out to grab hold of my target. Cain didn’t make it easy for me, either. He dodged me, fighting, like a fish that wanted to stay underwater, resisting every attempt to call him to me.

  I cast my power toward him, wrapping him in gossamer threads while he bucked and writhed. I didn’t let go, just rode it out as breath by breath, I drew him down, out of that storm-wracked sea. The scent of lilies filled my lungs with every heaving breath. My energy spun out, the lines fainter and fainter, until I wasn’t sure I could hold him. I wasn’t sure I was good enough to pull Cain free.

  Doubt ate at me.

  I never shoulda agreed to do this summoning. Bailey shoulda done it. At the very least, she shoulda been there to make sure I didn’t mess up our one chance to pull this crapshoot off.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if I failed, would there be a way to try again? Or would Cain retreat so far, we’d never catch a glimpse of his silver-bright presence again?

  From very far away, I felt Taliyah’s cold fingers clutched in mine.

  Two dames dead in their homes this week! Who knew how many would follow?

  We needed Cain.

  Cold wind buffeted me, stealing the warmth from my body as I yanked on lines of power flowing around me, pulling them tight.

  Slowly, carefully, I wrapped those glittering threads round the ring on the table. I tugged them taut, binding that glittering bright essence back to the material world. With one last crash of freezing waves, it was done.

  The candles guttered out, plunging the room into darkness. Icy sweat beaded at my temple, trailing down my cheek, but I didn’t wanna move to wipe it away. My lungs heaved like I’d just gone three rounds in the ring. Taliyah’s hands in mine were the only thing that felt real.

  “Did it work?” Taliyah’s whisper was as loud as a gunshot in the silence of the room. “Is he… did it work?”

  I swallowed, cracking one eye open to peer at the ring between us, half expecting it to be radiating the silvery light of Cain’s spirit. But it wasn’t glowing. It was too dark to see at all without the candles. It took me a couple of times to answer. My pipes was so dry, it felt like I’d dragged the words out across a desert. “Only one way to find out.”

  I groped for the ring, my fingers brushing over candle wax and soft fabric before finally closing over cool metal.

  Cain musta had really big mitts, ‘cause my thumb was the only finger that had a hope of fitting his ring. I slid it into place, the metal slipping over my knuckle to rest against the base of my thumb.

  And that was when Cain Morgan’s screams flooded my head.

  Chapter Eight

  Not being in control of your own body is a weird experience.

  And I don’t mean like being zozzled, where your body moves at a different speed from your mind. I mean, like your body is a motorcar and you’re in the back seat with no idea who’s steering the thing.

  Cain seized control of my body.

  It was a good thing the candles had gone out on their own, ‘cause he managed to knock the whole table over just standing up. That woulda been great on my resume, burning down the client’s house on my first summoning.

  He shouted something, but I was too busy trying to hold us together to hear what it was he was saying.

  Cain was big, too big.

  I was squashed aside, like a small glove being filled by a too-large mitt. He thrashed around, tripping over chairs, his movements all wrong for my body.

  It was alien, strange and unbalanced.

  Our connection was precarious, as if one sharp movement would tear him free and I’d never catch holda him again. The physical sensation of him in my head was like a bull thundering around in a china shop while I balanced stacks of priceless vases in my arms, trying to save them from his rampage.

  I was vaguely aware of Taliyah speaking, low and soothing, like she was trying to calm a spooked animal.

  “Cain?” she said, looking at me with peepers that were wider than they’d ever been. “Is that you?”

  “It’s him!” I managed, even though I still couldn’t get control of myself.

  “Cain, please, calm down,” Taliyah continued as she took hold of my arm. “You’re here with me… I’m your sister, Taliyah.”

  My kisser parted, but it suddenly wasn’t me talking.

  “What is this? What the hell is this?” It was Cain saying the words, but he was saying them in my voice.

  “It’s okay, Cain, you’re not going crazy. Just calm down and we can talk this through. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” Taliyah continued and I could see the tears shining through her peepers.

  My hands patted my face, rough in their examination of my features. When they slid south and then back up to grasp my bubs, I finally snapped, “Hey! Hands off, Buster!”

  Cain launched backward, slamming us into the bookshelf as Taliyah cried out. Wood dug into my spine and I groaned.

  This night just kept getting better and better. I was gonna end up black and blue all over.

  “I’m hearing voices! Where are they coming from?” he yelled.