The Sinner. Amanda Stevens

any number of reasons, I can’t get involved. It would be better for both of us if no one finds out that we’ve talked.”

      “That hardly instills me with confidence,” I said, still with that forced bravado. “Give me one compelling reason why I should believe you, let alone help you.”

      I expected him to remind me of the bargain we’d struck at Devlin’s deathbed, but instead he said, “The key you wear around your neck belonged to your great-grandmother, did it not?”

      My hand flew again to my chest where the key was still concealed by my shirt. “How did...”

      “The key is special,” he said. “Blessed by a divine hand. Like hallowed ground, it offers a temporary reprieve from the ghosts. But they’re irresistibly drawn to the light inside you so they’ll keep coming back, more and more, until you no longer have the means or the fortitude to protect yourself. You’ll likely suffer the same fate as your great-grandmother unless...” He trailed away tantalizingly.

      “Unless...what?” I held my breath.

      “There is another key, a lost key. A key that would lock the door to the dead world forever. Think of what that would mean. No dread of twilight, no fear of ghostly visitations, no riddles of the dead to solve. Eventually, your gift would wither like one of your cemeteries and your calling would become nothing more than a distant memory.”

      His words drew an irresistible picture, one that I had been painting in my head ever since the night Devlin had stepped out of the mist to confront me. Darius Goodwine had tapped into my innermost dreams, my deepest desires, and I would be a fool to fall for his manipulations.

      But he wasn’t the only one who had spoken of the lost key. I had known of its possible existence since my visit to Kroll Cemetery. If the key really could lock the door to the dead world forever, how far was I willing to go to find it? What risks would I take to possess it?

      “How do I know the key is even real?” I asked. “Or that you can help me find it?”

      He said nothing as he continued to scrawl in the dirt. I glanced down to see a series of numbers in the same formation—I could have sworn—as the ones my great-grandmother had painstakingly scribbled on the walls of her sanctuary. I still had no idea what they meant, but I’d wondered for over a year if they were positions on a map. Ethereal coordinates that could lead me to the location of the lost key, either here or on the other side.

      My adrenaline surged at the notion, but before I had time to commit the arrangement to memory, Darius erased the numbers with the palm of his hand.

      I glanced at him with a gasp. “Why did you do that?”

      “Unmask the killer,” he said. “And I’ll help you find your great-grandmother’s key.”

      He rose gracefully and I followed, lifting my gaze to take in his full height. He towered over me by almost a foot, and for a moment I stood with tilted head, studying his remarkable features—the prominent nose, the magnetic eyes, the full, sensuous lips that parted slightly as he became aware of my survey.

      He lifted a hand and beckoned. I took a reluctant step toward him as though I were a marionette responding to a puppeteer’s commands. I caught myself and turned away from him. His hold on me diminished, but before I could celebrate another small victory, I realized my freedom hadn’t come from my own strength and resolve, but from Darius’s lack of focus.

      Something in the woods had caught his attention. He knew something lurked in the shadows, hiding among the trees. Like me, like Detective Kendrick, he could sense a presence.

      Shifting my gaze to the woods, I emptied my mind once again, trying to detect a hint or a clue of the lurker’s true nature. The barrier came up once more. Whatever skulked in those woods was unlike anything I’d ever come up against.

      “You feel it, too,” I said, but Darius didn’t answer. His gaze remained fastened on the trees. He lifted a hand to trace a symbol in the air as he muttered something in a language I didn’t understand.

      Out over the sea, clouds gathered and I heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. As my eyes adjusted to the aberrant twilight of the woods, I saw something white and nimble darting among the tree trunks.

      My breath quickened as I reached for Rose’s key. As I lifted the talisman from my shirt, Darius’s attention shifted again. He was still looking at the woods, but I could feel a tingle across my scalp, as though one of his beetles had buried itself in my hair.

      “What’s out there?” I whispered.

      He lifted a hand, trailing blue sparks. “Tread carefully,” he said. “And trust no one.”

Five

      “Miss Gray? Amelia? Are you all right?”

      The voice had a distant, tinny quality as though someone were calling up to me from the bottom of a very deep well. I wanted to respond, but at the moment I was too busy fighting my way out of a no-man’s-land of cobwebs and mist.

      I shook myself slightly and the fog thinned. I was still in the cemetery kneeling beside a gravestone, a bucket of water before me and a soft bristle brush in my hand. The inscription carved into the face of the marker was starting to peek through the grime, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember scrubbing the surface.

      I glanced skyward where the sun still hovered in virtually the same position as when I’d last checked. Very little time had elapsed, but those lost moments frightened me because I couldn’t recall anything beyond my conversation with Darius Goodwine.

      Darius!

      Quickly, I scanned the graveyard and then peered into the shadowy arches of the ruins. Was he there, hiding behind those ancient brick walls so as not to be discovered by Detective Kendrick?

      Or had he even been here at all?

      I shivered in the heat as more and more of our conversation came back to me. Whether the discussion had taken place in the cemetery or inside my head, I couldn’t be certain, but I had no doubt Darius Goodwine had paid me a visit. I hadn’t imagined our encounter. I hadn’t made up his proposition. His parting warning still echoed: tread carefully and trust no one.

      An icy breath blew down my collar as my gaze fastened onto Detective Kendrick’s. It would be better for both of us if no one finds out that we’ve talked.

      Kendrick canted his head, looking puzzled. “Can you hear me?”

      “Yes.”

      “Why didn’t you answer me just now?”

      “I’m sorry. I was... I guess I was lost in thought.”

      He scowled down at me. “Are you all right?”

      “Yes, why?”

      “You look flushed. Maybe you need to get out of the sun for a while, have something cold to drink.” He nodded to the grove of cottonwoods near the entrance. “Is that your cooler?”

      “Yes.”

      “Let’s move over there and talk.” He offered his hand, but I pretended not to notice as I hurriedly rose and peeled off my work gloves.

      His focus was still so intense that I felt as if I had stripped off a good deal more than the gloves. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, given that he was a complete stranger and I still didn’t trust him.

      I tried to ignore the unwelcome tingle, assuming a casual tone as I dusted off my jeans. “You didn’t happen to see anyone else when you came up just now, did you?”

      “Why? Was someone here?” His inquisitive gaze swept the cemetery and the road beyond the gate before snapping back to me.

      “I thought I heard something. Probably just voices drifting up from the clearing.” I wanted to know if he’d caught sight of Darius Goodwine,