I knelt to mark the second corpse, which had rolled beneath a scrubby little bush, and said, “I think this is Glen Farley.”
Chance didn’t answer. I stilled, scenting danger like a living thing all around us. Scarcely moving a muscle, I glanced up to find Sandra Cheney, filthy and bloody faced on the rise above. The wind whipped at her clothing and lifted her platinum hair in a way that made her look utterly mad—and terrifying. She held no weapon, but she didn’t look as though she had mind enough left to remember why she’d come out here in the first place.
Her hands curled into claws as she screamed for her daughter. “Shannon! Shannon!” She threw back her head, wailing in wordless grief.
I heard the crunch of approaching footsteps, and then I saw Jesse and Shannon approaching from the southwest. Sandra hadn’t noticed them yet, keening like a bereaved woman from ancient times. The gale amplified her pain, and all around her, the shadows gathered. From my angle, they looked hungry, swollen with sharp anticipation.
I didn’t know if the deaths of those responsible would be enough to give the phantoms rest or if they’d passed beyond the human afterlife—and were now feeding on pain, terror, and grief. They had been paler wisps, facsimiles of those they’d known in life, but we’d turned them into something else, and I didn’t know what exactly they could do.
Shannon had called them. Perhaps she could send them away too.
“I’m here, Mother.” The girl stepped forward, but not close enough for Sandra to sweep her over the edge, and Jesse stood within a safe distance.
“I did it for you,” Sandra moaned above the rising wind. “I didn’t want them to know you were Gifted. If only you’d listened to me—”
“So this is my fault? You could have warned me. Instead, you plotted and schemed, fucked that filthy old freak, and made Dad miserable. He loves you, though God only knows why.”
“It was for you,” Sandra said again. But she didn’t sound as sure as she had. “I didn’t want to let them take you.”
Shannon snapped. “Right. And when exactly were you going to get me out of here, Mommie Dearest? When did you plan to save me, if you couldn’t convince England with your bodily charms?”
“So you will not forgive me?” It was such a melancholy question, but I knew the answer before Shannon spoke.
“Never.” The girl’s tone echoed with ice.
To my absolute horror, Sandra did a swan dive then, landing in a broken heap near where we stood. I shuddered . . . because I was pretty sure she’d died in midair. That image would haunt me—the shadows closing in on her, swallowing her as her flesh fell and then passed into an inert state, before she touched the ground.
“Are you guys okay?” I managed to call out.
“A little beat-up from playing Survivor,” Jesse answered, “but nothing serious.”
“There’re only two left,” Shannon said.
Harlan Cooper and Augustus England.
“Should we go hunting?” Chance asked as he helped me climb out of the gully. I think he knew I’d go nuts if we stayed down here a minute longer.
Jesse nodded, offering me a hand to tug me the last few feet. “It’s about time.”
As much as I wanted to run, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the job unfinished, not after all we’d been through. If I didn’t put an end to things, once and for all, I’d likely never forgive myself. Especially not when we were so close.
I raised a brow. “Any idea where we should start?”
Shannon raised her antique radio, looking cool and remote. “They’ll find the last two for me, if you want me to ask.”
Something about her expression made me shiver a little. I glanced at the guys to get an idea what they thought. Chance was nodding; Jesse looked unsure. Would it warp her gift, asking spirits to do her bidding instead of merely communicating with them and offering information? She’d asked Rob Walker to find his own body, but that had the whisper of altruism attached. This, most assuredly, didn’t.
Since the alternative was knocking around the woods all night—and it was already starting to get dark—I gave a curt nod. “Let’s finish this.”
The girl powered the radio on and fiddled with the dial until the hissing static coalesced into a comprehensible, inhuman whisper. “Thank you,” it said. “Thank you, Shannon. They’re almost all gone. We made them pay. And . . . I’m not so cold anymore.” It gave an awful little giggle.
Shit. That couldn’t be good.
“Tell me where England’s hiding,” she bade it.
The rest of us stood stock-still, distrusting the give-and-take between Shannon and the thing on the radio. I was afraid to move. I sensed the shadows pooling all around us, drawn to her like a lodestone. She almost seemed to glow with a dark, unholy light, feeding them even as she conversed.
I exchanged a look with Jesse. We really had to get a handle on her gift before something terrible happened. Shit, it might have already.
The whisper lapsed into a soft sibilance that the rest of us couldn’t understand, but Shannon nodded and responded as if the thing made perfect sense. It was eerie as she led us along the gully to the south, skirting the slippery edge. A soft rain began to fall, making progress more difficult.
We came upon England from behind. He was crouched in a blind, trying to be patient, but I could sense his fear like a living thing. He just had more control than the rest of his people. And he held a hunting rifle with the surety of someone who knew what to do with it. If he hadn’t been so distracted by the swooping shadows and the icy wind, he would have heard us approach.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I was supposed to end this. If I were really the instrument of vengeance I’d tried to become, I wouldn’t hesitate to end him. In the distance, thunder rumbled, but no lightning accompanied it.
How fitting, I thought, disgusted with myself. All sound and fury.
Chance broke the stillness, going after England with such speed I could have blinked and missed it. My heart clenched until I remembered he had his luck back. He wrapped an arm around his neck and knocked the rifle out of England’s hands. To his credit, England didn’t even struggle.
He stilled, eyeing me with pure hatred. “Shoot me,” he spat. “You’ve won—and destroyed Kilmer in the process. Now it will fill up with franchise stores, fast food, Internet cafés, and pornographic bookshops.”
I’d tucked Ms. Pettigrew’s pistol into my bag, and now I drew it out slowly, as if it were a snake about to bite me. Could I really do this? Execute a man in cold blood? I knew he was responsible for my mother’s death, but I’d never felt any closer to her here, never felt she was watching with approval. Now he was beaten, broken at my feet, and I cringed to think of putting a bullet in him.
Darkness flooded the woods, carrying that particular scent of dying vegetation. The wind kicked up, full of echoing whispers of murdered souls. Though I knew I had nothing to fear from either the cold or the dark, I couldn’t help but shudder. The demon had come to witness this moment.
England set his jaw, straining against Chance’s hold. “We should’ve killed you when you were a kid,” he told me. “I wish to hell we had. But mark me, only one of us will walk out of here, Corine Solomon. I don’t make the same mistakes twice.” He slammed his head into Chance’s chin, loosening his hold, and then kicked backward.
Chance went sprawling, and his luck tablet bounced out of his pocket when he hit the ground. It tumbled into the underbrush, shrouded in darkness. We couldn’t take our eyes off England long enough to go searching for it, and I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Chance.