“He did, Grammie. Then I made myself wake up.”

  “It’s best if you don’t go back there, have this happen again. So we’ll work on that today. But here’s something to remember, Thea. You were in charge, start to finish. I’m thinking he’s scared of you.”

  Maybe, Thea thought, but she wanted to work on never, ever going back.

  Unless she chose to go back.

  Lucy showed her how to make a little bag out of two pieces of cloth, needle and thread.

  “While you make the pouch, think pretty thoughts, happy ones.”

  Since she’d never sewed before, Thea found the process very cool, so happy thoughts came easy. One minute you had nothing, the next you had a little bag. And after weaving the bigger needle with a skinny cord, you had a way to tie it up.

  Then Lucy put cloves and cardamon and salt in a little wooden bowl, and lit a white candle.

  “This is a mortar, and this is a pestle. Use the pestle to grind that up into a powder. And pretty thoughts.”

  More cool as she heard the pods and tiny balls crunch under the pestle.

  “That’s good! You’ve got a fine hand at it. What we do now is add some rosemary and some peppermint from the garden, and this dried lemon peel.”

  “It smells nice.” Rem took several sniffs. “Can I make one, too?”

  “Sure you can. Thea’s going to finish this up, then you can make one for yourself.”

  “You make one for you, Grammie. Then we all have one.”

  “You know what, Rem. I believe I will. Fill the bag, Thea, and put your intent and your faith with it. They count just as much as the rest. That’s good, that’s fine. Now, when you hang it by your bed tonight, you’ll say this, three times:

  “Sleep, peaceful sleep, be with me tonight, and stay with me till the morning light.”

  Thea repeated it, nodded. “How do you know how to do all this, Grammie?”

  “My mama taught me, like her mama taught her and on back a long, long ways. Kitchen magic. It’s part of these hills. It’s part of who we are.”

  She helped Rem make his, then made her own.

  “Tonight, at tuck-in time, we’ll hang them and say the words. But now, I think the three of us and the three dogs should take a walk. Summer doesn’t last forever.”

  The days passed, as days will, and every night Thea said the words three times. Her sleep stayed peaceful.

  They went to the town park to watch fireworks on the Fourth, and Thea got to hang out with Maddy, and some other girls. Rem found some boys his own age, and ignored her. And that was fine with Thea.

  On the last days of summer, Maddy came to visit, or she went to Maddy’s house. Rem’s new friends Dwayne and Billy Joe did the same.

  They took walks and paid calls. They made peach ice cream and gathered black walnuts.

  Lucy hired a man she called Knobby, who had more hair on his face than on his head, to fix up the attic.

  “It doesn’t have to be fancy, Knobby. I want the kids to have this space. You’re gonna need to pull electric up here, and the internet business so they can do the game console.”

  He scratched his impressive brown beard. “Gotta insulate, Miss Lucy, or those kids’ll fry in the summer, shiver all winter.”

  “You do that. But I want the beams showing. Got character that way. Floors are fine, and solid with it. I’m getting one of those TVs that go up on the wall, so I’m going to want you to hang that when I do.”

  With a grin, he shot a finger at her. “Sounding fancy now.” And she laughed.

  “Just fancy enough. I’ll have the kids pick out the paint color once you start on the Sheetrock. There’ll likely be some lively debate on that.”

  “Lucy, Modeen and I, we think about you. You know how fond we were of Cora, and of John when he came along.”

  “I know you were. I feel those thoughts, Knobby, and they comfort me.”

  “How’re those children doing?”

  “They’re getting through, Knobby. They’ve made some friends, and I’m so thankful for it. Don’t get much quiet around here now, but I don’t mind that a bit. They’re good as gold. I’m biased on that, and it’s not like I don’t have moments when I think: How can they argue about anything under the sun? They’re good as gold.”

  “And how’re you doing, Lucy?”

  “Getting through, Knobby. We’re all getting through. Now, how much do you think this’ll set me back?”

  He scratched his beard. And they began negotiations.

  July blurred right into August, and Knobby and his helper got things going. Lucy drove the kids clear into Pikeville for back-to-school shopping.

  She’d had both of them put on long pants and jeans from their dressers and closets. It didn’t take long to see every pair hit high-water. And Rem’s feet, when she checked, were squeezed into his shoes.

  They spent an afternoon putting donation boxes together. And a good portion of the next in Pikeville at the mall.

  They loaded up on school supplies.

  Thea loved new school supplies, with everything fresh and clean and neat. Rem didn’t care about them, and cared even less about new clothes.

  But he did like the new sneakers.

  “You need to get him two pair, Grammie. He’ll get one pair all wet or full of mud, so he needs another while the first get dry or cleaned up and dry.”

  “How’d I forget that?” Smiling, Lucy tossed back hair she’d left loose today, and the white streak shimmered like a wave in a black sea.

  “Your uncle Waylon was just the same. Caleb, he could play just as hard, and his shoes would look fresh from the box. Pick another pair, Rem, then this old grammie needs some lunch and sit-down time.”

  As they drove home, Thea thought about starting school. She’d made a couple friends—Maddy for sure—but she’d still be the new girl.

  She’d never been the new girl in school before. And Redbud Hollow had a small school. Everyone knew each other already.

  She didn’t think she was shy, but she didn’t want to wear the wrong thing, or do her hair the wrong way. She just wanted to fit in, and she was already taller than most of the boys her age.

  So she stuck out.

  And she barely had breasts. They’d come out a little, but not like Maddy’s.

  “What’s on that mind of yours, darling?”

  “Oh, I’m just thinking about starting school. I don’t know how any of it works here, or if I’ll fit in.”

  “My girl fits in anywhere she wants to. And she happens to be friends with Madrigal McKinnon. You trust me, Maddy’ll breeze you right through the first awkward day.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You know how I say your granny’s a force of nature? Maddy’s pint-sized, but the same.”

  “I’m a force of nature.”

  Lucy flicked a glance in the rearview. “Oh, you are that, Rem. You are all of that.”

  At home, Lucy helped Rem put his new things away because he didn’t care where anything went. Thea cared, so it made her feel better about school starting to put everything in its place. She hung tops and shirts the way her mother had liked to: by color. Then pants that weren’t jeans. She’d have hung her jeans, too, because she liked to, but she didn’t have room for those and for skirts and dresses.

  In Virginia her closet had been a walk-in with an organizing system. When she thought of it, grief for her parents rose up sharp and quick.

  She sat on the floor of the skinny closet and cried until the worst of it dulled.

  As it lessened, she stood on a hard floor with terrible sounds echoing.

  Some men walked around her, men in uniforms, but didn’t see her. She saw big cages. A man in prison blues paced in one, muttering to himself.

  And his thoughts, thoughts that pelted her like little rocks, were dark and bitter.

  Riggs, small, skinny, so white he looked like a ghost of a man, sat in another big cage on a bench.

  Riggs didn’t see her, he didn’t feel her, not while he pushed his mind toward the other man, toward those guards.

  He zeroed in on a guard named Douberman, so she piggybacked on what he read.

  His wife’s knocked up with their third kid, and he heads over to West Virginia every other Tuesday on his day off. He’s got a regular whore over there he hires to meet up with him in a motel. He gets off on the dominatrix thing.

  Maybe, maybe find a way to use that, shake him down.

  Bored, Riggs glanced toward the other inmate. Crazy bastard. Pacing, screaming the other twenty-three hours a fucking day. Always getting his meds adjusted.

  Maybe I can get him to kill himself. Maybe I’ll just take a mind walk tonight and get him to strangle himself with his sheets.

  That’d be fun.

  Then, to boost his mood, to revisit that indescribable rush of power, he thought about the people he’d killed.

  * * *

  She came back to her room, a little shaky, a little breathless.

  Others? There were others, like her mom and dad? Curling up, she hugged herself, struggling to stop the shakes, the rise of panic.

  She was in her own room, sitting in the closet of her own room. She could see the sunlight on the floor and hear Rem laugh across the hall.

  Riggs couldn’t touch her. He sat in a cage, and he couldn’t see the sunlight.

  He’d killed more people, and he’d thought of each one like, like trophies in a case.

  Did the police know?

  He wanted to do it again, kill again. For the fun of it, she realized.

  Could he do that? Could he somehow push someone to suicide?

  Could she stop him?

  While her grandmother worked with Rem, Thea went downstairs to the kitchen phone and looked up Detective Howard’s number in her grandmother’s book.

  “Detective Howard.”

  “Um, Detective Howard, this is Thea Fox.”

  “Hey there, Thea. How are you?”

  “I’m … okay. I … Detective Howard, there were others.”

  “Others?”

  “More people, like my parents. Riggs killed more people before. Before. And there’s another inmate at the prison, Jerome Foster, and Riggs wants to kill him, and—”

  “Thea. I need you to slow down. Take a breath. Slow down.”

  “I’m—I’m going to get some water.”

  She poured some out of the tap, chugged it down. Then nearly sicked it back up again.

  “Okay,” she managed. “Okay.”

  “Have you been in contact with Riggs, Thea?”

  “Not exactly. I just know. And he knows about a guard who’s cheating on his wife and wants to try to use that for something. Um. Douberman. I just know. He knows things, too. He has what I do.”

  “You’re saying Riggs is psychic?”

  “It’s why he took my picture. He knew there was something. He knows I helped put him in prison. He killed other people before my parents.”

  “We linked him to a double murder in Maryland.”

  “Before that, before. Three—three—three—”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, bore down. “Three times before.”

  “Three other murders?”

  “Five people. Two like my parents, and one a girl. He was thinking about them. He was in a big cage, and he was thinking about them. One was … something, some place like Brinmaw, and she—the woman, the wife—was thinking about the alarm code. He got into the big house because she had to think about it, so he knew the code. He used a knife, he killed them with a knife. Oh God, oh God, so much blood.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Thea, I want you to sit down. Sit down and put your head between your knees.”

  “Okay.” It felt like trying to breathe through a collapsed straw. But the weird gray at the edges of her vision faded.

  “Where’s your grandmother?”

  She sucked in the next breath, and felt some of the weight lift from her chest. “Upstairs. He got the gun there, at the Brinmaw place, the one he used to kill the people in Maryland, then my parents. But before, I think before … Albany.”

  “New York?”

  “Yes—no. New Albany. He was older, the man. Terrance. No, no, a terrace. Summer, night air. I don’t know. I can’t think right now. My head hurts.”

  “All right, Thea. This is enough. I want you to sit until you feel steady, then go get your grandmother.”

  “He wants to try to kill this other prisoner this way because … he’s bored. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Okay, Thea. We’re going to look into this, all of it.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes, and I want you to do me a favor. I want you to stay as far away from Riggs, in every way, as you can.”

  “I’m trying.” A tear spilled out. “I didn’t mean to go there. I saw the big mesh cages. And all the blue doors, but I didn’t mean to.”

  This time, she thought. The first time, she had. At least a little.

  “It’s all right. You leave this to me now. I want you to tell your grandmother what happened.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  After hanging up, she straightened, and saw Lucy.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Shh.” Lucy hugged her in, hugged her tight. “It’s all right.”

  “I was upset, thinking about Mom and Dad. And it just happened. Grammie, there were more people. He killed more people, and I saw … He has the gift, too. He used it, he used it to kill people. He’s still using his gift to try to.”

  “And he’ll pay a price for it. Did he see you?”

  “No. He was too busy looking for people to hurt, and thinking about the ones he had.”

  “And you did what you could to try to help.” Brushing Thea’s hair back, she waited until Thea’s eyes met hers. “Because that’s what the gift is meant for. Helping. So you put this away now, darling.”

  “Grammie. I could see how awful it is, how awful he feels. I was glad to see it.”

  “Do you think I’d blame you for it?” Lucy eased back, brushed tears off Thea’s cheeks. “Blame you for it when I’m glad to know it? Why didn’t you come get me?”

  “I was going to tell you after, but I … I wanted to do this part myself.”

  “Growing up on me already?” Lucy pressed a kiss to Thea’s forehead. “Try not to do it too fast. I’m proud of you. This took courage, and it shows what you’re made of. It honors what you’ve been given.”

  “I don’t want to go back there. I’ll try not to.”

  “Good, and I’ll try to help you. But if you do, Thea, remember you’re in control. You’re free. He’s not, and never will be again. You’re stronger, and you always will be.”

  * * *

  A few days later, on a hazy Saturday afternoon, the detectives knocked at the door. When Lucy saw them, her heart sank. She had to remind herself Thea’s courage had opened this door, and she had no right to close it.

  “Ms. Lannigan,” Musk began. “We’d like to speak with you and Thea. A follow-up on information she provided.”

  “Yes.” Lucy opened the screen door. “She’s twelve. She’s only twelve.”

  “Ma’am.”

  Howard put a hand on his partner’s arm to stop him.

  “Phil and I drove down on our own time. We took personal time for this, Ms. Lannigan, because it is personal. And part of why we’re here is to thank her for contacting me.”

  “It’s Lucy,” she said, and sighed. “Come on back. She’s out on the porch working on her drawing. Rem’s over at a friend’s, and that’s probably for the best. I’ve got fresh lemonade.”

  “That’d be welcome.”

  When the back screen opened, Thea studied the sketch on her pad. “I think this one’s better.” Then looked up. Stood up.

  “You came. Did he kill that man?”

  “Jerome Foster’s on suicide watch,” Howard told her. “It’s the best we can do there, right now. Thea, I want to thank you for calling me. You didn’t have to take that on.”

  “Yes, I did.” She looked over as Lucy came out with a tray. “Grammie.”

  “Let me take that for you.” Musk took the tray with the pitcher of lemonade and glasses, the plate of shortbread cookies.

  “You did what was right, Thea. The detectives drove all this way on their own time to thank you for it.”

  “And because we think you deserve to know what we know because of it, and what’s being done. Okay if we sit?” Howard asked her.

  “Yeah. Yes. It was Bryn Mawr. I looked it up.”

  “That’s right. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. James and Deborah Cohen. About a year ago. It’s still an open case. That means—”

  “You didn’t know who did it,” Thea finished. “He did it. Ray Riggs.”

  “That’s right. We couldn’t trace the gun he used to kill your parents because it wasn’t registered. With the information you gave us, we could do a little digging, and we’ve confirmed Deborah Cohen had a weapon of that make and model, unregistered. Her brother got it for her at a gun sale. It was never recovered, and initially not reported as missing.”

  Musk cleared his throat, accepted the glass Lucy offered.

  “New Albany, Ohio,” Musk said. “Stuart and Marsha Wheeling, another open case. The, ah, investigators concluded the killer climbed a trellis onto a second-story balcony and entered the unlocked doors to the main bedroom. Eighteen months ago.”

  “He killed the woman first because the man was old. He used a hammer on her. He meant to just knock her out, but he hit her too hard and couldn’t stop.”

  Saying nothing, Lucy sat next to Thea on the swing, took her hand.

  “Because he used different methods, different methods of entry, he took time to do considerable property damage in the Cohen home, the cases weren’t linked.”

  Musk looked at his partner, who nodded.

  “Now, due to a high-confidence tip from an anonymous source, those cases are getting a closer look with Riggs as the prime suspect. I want you to know we’ll never use your name as that source.”

  Relief, the flood of it, had Lucy closing her eyes.

  “He knows. Riggs knows I saw, with my parents. He knows I told you everything.”

  “You said he has what you have.”