Just to be extra safe, they’d buried their witches’ bottle in their sacred circle. They’d originally made it a year earlier, and Raven had stored it on the shelf in his closet. Full of dark essences, the special herbs-chamomile and sage, belladonna and mandrake, peppercorns and rosemary-for protection and balance; shavings of their favorite Criixshadows CD; crushed eggshells and the discarded claw from Fane’s cat; tacks and nails, razors, the shards of a broken plate. Once the pieces were in place, they’d filled it to the brim with first-morning urine collected from both of them. Raven added in his semen, then they’d cut their arms and dribbled their blood into the bottle. Sealed tidit with black wax and then electrical tape, it was an incredibly powerful deterrent of negative energy.

They’d been forced to make the bottle after one of their classmates had beaten Raven up. That threat was neutralized now, soon to be rotting in the earth, but it seemed sensible to charge the bottle and bury it, deep into the earth, far away from their daily lives, to draw any negative forces away from them.

Wiping sweat from her brow, Fane asked, “What are we going to do if it doesn’t work?” Raven turned to her, drank in the beauty of her face, shining in a sliver of moonlight. “That’s easy, my love. We’ll kill them.”

Thirty-Two

Nashville

November 2

7:00 a.m.

Taylor woke with the sun, her mind already deep into her case. She’d dreamed of the dead last night, the ghosts of the children sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her.

Eight dead. How would a troubled teenage boy mastermind such a crime? Her gut told her he hadn’t, that there was someone else, someone older, more devious, who was the guiding hand behind this. The vampire king, Barent? The so-called witch, Ariadne?

She wondered when the funerals would begin.

That was enough to drive her out of the bed. She showered, dressed in her most comfortable pair of Tony Lamas and Levi’s, pulled on a black turtleneck against the chill. She wound her wet hair in a bun, taking care that all the strands were caught back from her face. The nightmare washed from her body, she went downstairs to make some tea.

She sipped the fragrant Earl Grey, staring out into the backyard. It was raining; the soft pattering on the leaves of the river birch made her want to go right back upstairs and get into the bed. She poured some cereal in a bowl and ate it without tasting, peeled a banana, knowing she’d need energy to get through the day.

She had just attached her gun and badge to her belt when the phone rang.

Baldwin.

She answered with a smile, just happy for a chance to hear his voice.

He caught her up on his hearing in the most general of terms. She could tell there was something bothering him.

She filled him in on the killings in Nashville, expecting him to be more interested. She finally said, “Hey, what’s wrong? You are a million miles away.”

“No, I’m right here. I just have to tell you something. I got a call from North Carolina a few minutes ago.”

Fitz. She felt the dread course through her. She missed him so much. Not having Fitz around was like having a piece of herself missing. He’d always been the grounding force in her cases, the sounding board. He kept her focused, and stable. She wanted to throw everything to the wind, get in the car and drive to North Carolina, help search for him. God, if something had happened to him…

Baldwin was quiet, and she felt the agony begin to build, her heart racing as adrenaline showered her system, the very real sense that her blood pressure had spiked, the pit of her stomach gone to water. She heard her heartbeat in her ears, felt it in the back of her throat. She swallowed, hard.

“No. Please, no. Tell me they didn’t find his body.” Her voice sounded far away, not her own.

“I’m so sorry I can’t be there with you right now, Taylor. I know this is hell for you. They didn’t find his body, honey. But they did find something. It’s relatively recent, within the past week. An RV, left unattended in a campground up near Asheville, They’re tracking the rental records right now.”

She spoke between clenched teeth, ‘What did they find, Baldwin? Tell me.” ‘They found a note. Addressed to you. It said, ‘Ayin tahat ayin.”^r “What’s that mean?”

“It’s Hebrew. It means an eye for an eye.”

“An eye for an eye? Do you think it was from the Pretender?”

“He signed it that way, yes.”

“What the hell kind of game is he playing? An eye for an eye?”

“I don’t know.” He stopped talking again. Taylor heard him swallow, followed suit herself, trying to contract the muscles of her throat to force the gorge down.

She felt a calm steal over her, that sense of disbelief, the out-of-body feeling she got when she was about to receive bad news. “What is it, Baldwin? I can tell you’re leaving something out. What else did they find in that RV?”

“Honey, it’s… They found an eye, Taylor. They found what they think is Fitz’s eye.”

Thirty-Three

Once she calmed down, she’d forced Baldwin to call his friend at the NCSBI back so she could talk to him directly, gleaned every tiny detail she could from the man. They were changing the scope of the investigation, were on a search-and-rescue mission now, tracking the man they only knew as the Pretender. Hoping they could get Fitz back in one piece, instead of twenty.

We have a strong team in place, ma ‘am. We promise, we’ll find him, ma’am. We’re sorry we went in the wrong direction for a while there, ma’am.

She had to believe them. Baldwin assured her his friend was one of the best.

The thought of Fitz in pain, being tortured, made her want to scream, to tear her hair out. But that wasn’t going to solve anything. It wouldn’t bring him home.

Baldwin was quiet on the other end of the phone, letting her work through her thoughts without interruption.

‘Tell me the quote from Exodus again,” she said.

He shifted toward her. “Exodus chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-three through twenty-seven-‘If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

She moaned softly. “He’s going to kill him.”

“I don’t know, Taylor. The verse goes on. ‘When the slave owner strikes the eye of a male or female slave, destroying it, the owner shall then let the slave go, a free person, to compensate for the eye.’”

“What are you saying? You think he’s been set free? Then where is he? Why hasn’t he been in contact?”

“I don’t know what to think, Taylor, The Pretender is still hell-bent on you, that’s for sure. He’s doing things he knows will hurt you directly.”

“I have to focus on these murders in Nashville. But as soon as I’m done, I’m going to go join the hunt.”

“Do you think that’s wise, Taylor? These men and women know what they’re doing.”

“It’s not like I’m going to get in the way. I’m a law enforcement officer, too. I know the protocols. I can help.”

Baldwin sighed deeply. “Taylor, that’s what he wants. That’s what the Pretender is counting on. He knows you, too damn well for comfort. He knows that if he leaves you a bit of bait, you’re going to run headlong toward it.”