The Sinner. Amanda Stevens

it years ago.”

      “So you are French?”

      “A quarter on my father’s side.”

      “Is that where you grew up? In France?”

      “I was born here in Beaufort County. We lived on Port Royal Island until I was nine, and then after my parents split, my father moved us to New Orleans. When I was thirteen he sent me to Paris to live with his mother. Once I turned eighteen...” The slightest hesitation. “I moved around a lot. Prague, Istanbul...” Another hesitation. “Ghazni.”

      I wondered if he’d been in the service. That would explain the way he carried himself, but the eyebrow piercing and body art was at odds with what seemed to be a military bearing.

      “What brought you back here? Do you still have family in the area?”

      “I’m told my mother lives around here somewhere.” He was silent for a moment. “What about you? Native Charlestonian?”

      “I grew up in Trinity. I’ve only lived in Charleston for a couple of years, but I feel as if I have roots in the city. My mother and aunt were born there.”

      “Roots are not always good,” Kendrick said. “Sometimes all they do is drag you down.”

      “Yes, I suppose that’s true.’’ I gave him another quick study. “How long have you been back here?”

      “Apparently, not long enough to lose my accent.”

      He seemed amused, which emboldened me. “Can I ask you another question?”

      “You can always ask.”

      “You said yesterday that the house I’m renting has a history. What did you mean?”

      He lifted a hand to scratch the stubble on his neck. “Are you sure you want to know?”

      “Yes, of course. And it must be something you think I should know or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

      “I only brought it up because I found your choice of living arrangements...odd.”

      “Why?”

      His gaze darted to the church ruins and to the woods beyond. “People say that place is evil.”

Six

      Kendrick’s words faded away, leaving a sinister silence. I thought instantly of that shadow moving through the trees, quick and furtive. Then I thought of the inked skull on Kendrick’s hand. The triskele that Darius had drawn in the dirt. The curlicue of a tattoo on the inside of the dead woman’s wrist.

      A pattern was starting to form. I felt the tiniest prick of a dark premonition.

      “It’s not haunted,” I said, and then realizing he might find my definitive tone curious, I hurriedly added, “At least, I haven’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary in the nearly three months I’ve been living there. My stay has been quite peaceful, in fact.”

      “Maybe that has more to do with you than the house,” Kendrick suggested.

      “So what happened there?”

      He seemed to measure his response before answering. “I’ll tell you what I’ve heard on one condition. If you’re still curious once we’re done, you’ll limit your research to the internet.”

      “Why?”

      “It’s not a good idea to go around talking about that house. People here don’t particularly like it when strangers start asking questions and they get more than a little defensive about the town’s past.”

      “I’ll be discreet. You have my word. But now you have to tell me.”

      He turned back to the woods. For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed ill at ease. He twisted a silver ring on his finger, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he scanned the trees. I followed his gaze, peering intently into the deepest part of the shadows, but nothing glided among the tree trunks. Nothing floated up into the branches. Whatever I’d glimpsed earlier had fled with Darius Goodwine’s disappearance. Or perhaps Detective Kendrick had once again chased away the watcher.

      I glanced up at him, my gaze settling unexpectedly on his mouth, which was not as aesthetically pleasing as Devlin’s. But the bloom of his bottom lip cast an intriguing shadow in the hollow of his chin and softened the harsher line of his upper lip and jaw. It was a purposeful mouth and there was sensuality in the resoluteness of its lines.

      I tore my gaze away with a shiver. Where on earth had that come from? I didn’t like having such thoughts about Lucien Kendrick. They were foreign to me and I didn’t trust they were my own rather than another of Darius Goodwine’s manipulations. Why he would want to foster an attraction between Detective Kendrick and me, I couldn’t imagine, but I put nothing past him. Maybe he wanted to prove how easily he could control me, or more likely, he wanted to drive a deeper wedge between Devlin and me so that I would be more receptive to him. I could be reaching, but it was the only way I knew to explain my feelings.

      Unless the manipulation came from Kendrick himself. For all I knew, he was as masterful at head games as Darius. He was certainly no ordinary cop. My instincts had warned me from the start to keep a safe distance, and now that I knew he had a connection or at least an acquaintance with Darius Goodwine, I would be even more careful.

      Darius’s negative reaction to Kendrick’s name should have fostered a kinship with the detective if for no other reason than the old adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But Kendrick was just a little too slippery, a little too mysterious, and I couldn’t shake the notion that he had already known about those cages before he arrived on the scene.

      His stillness now was so absolute, his silence so intense, that I couldn’t help wondering if he was trying to slip past my defenses. Was he inside my head even now?

      It seemed as though the quiet had stretched on forever, but only a few seconds had passed before Kendrick turned back to me. “A couple by the name of George and Mary Willoughby once lived in that house, along with their young daughter, Annie. By all accounts, they were a close family. God-fearing, church-going, salt-of-the-earth types. Then seemingly overnight, George became delusional. He told his neighbors that his wife was not who she seemed to be. She’d gotten involved with some very bad people. Satan-worshippers, he said, but there was never any evidence of the practice in this area. He insisted he’d caught them conducting the devil’s business right in his own home.”

      “What did he mean by the devil’s business?”

      “Séances. Rituals.” Kendrick’s gaze darkened. “Who knows what else? He claimed they were trying to raise the dead.”

      Raise the dead.

      I felt the dart of cold apprehension in my veins. I wanted to take all this in calmly, but it was hard to keep a neutral expression in light of my conversation with Darius Goodwine.

      “Raise the dead...how?”

      “There were ceremonies. Certain spells and incantations. The leader of the group was a root worker named Atticus Pope, who claimed to have descended from a powerful witch doctor. Willoughby swore he saw Pope change forms right before his eyes. From man to beast and back. Like the loup-garous my grandmother used to tell me about when I was a boy.”

      “Loup-garous? As in werewolves? Shape-shifters? You don’t believe that, surely.”

      “People see what they want to see,” Kendrick said.

      Or were persuaded to see by the likes of Darius Goodwine. I thought about how easily and subtly he had planted the notion of corpse beetles in my subconscious so that I’d manifested one on my arm and another on my neck. If the root doctor named Atticus Pope had been half as cunning and powerful as Darius Goodwine, he could have made poor George Willoughby see almost anything.

      “I assume there’s