Alex watched in horror as Juno, her eyes red with blood rage, sunk her fangs into the Skinwalker’s neck and felt a surge of relief to feel the fresh blood running through her system and pushed her fangs in a little deeper.

“Juno!” Alex yelled over the woman’s cries of pains.

The Skinwalker struggled to release herself, but Juno used her free hand to grab her elbow and bend it back. A loud crack rang in the air as the bone snapped and her arm went limp, dropping the gun.

“Juno! Stop!”

Juno looked at Alex and her eyes widened when they met Alex’s. She slowly lifted her mouth, with blood dripping from it, her fangs still protruded.

The Skinwalker used her good arm to reach for the gun, and Alex started to rush forward but froze as a hand burst through her chest, clutching her heart.

Blood spilled out of her mouth as Juno yanked her hand back, still clutching the heart, and she fell dead to the ground.

“What the hell did you do?” Alex asked in a stunned voice, staring at her.

Juno stared at the heart in her hands and felt a huge wave of strength come over her. She sucked in a breath as she noticed that her fingernails had extended slightly to sharp, pointed tips that were not there a moment earlier.

Alex felt his heart stop as the gold tint in her eyes disappeared quickly.

Juno opened her mouth to say something, but closed it when Jethro, Luca and Delissio rounded the corner.

All three men stopped, looking between the body, a bloody faced Juno, and the heart in her hands.

“Juno,” Alex said sharply. “Drop it.”

Juno felt her fingernails return their normal size and dropped the heart before she raised one hand to her chin.

“It was self-defense,” Jethro said, looking between them as he, Luca and Delissio approached them.

Alex nodded, feeling numb as he stared at Juno.

“Maybe just a tad bit excessive though,” Delissio muttered, looking between Juno and the body before he turned and walked away, shaking his head.

“I'm ready to leave,” Juno said, her tone dull and her face expressionless as she leaned against the windowsill, staring out at the pouring rain. It had started raining non-stop after Kevin's funeral, and she couldn't stand it

“Where do you want to go?” Luca asked, looking at her in surprise.

“Heaven.”

Luca blinked, thinking for a split second that she was joking. But the sound of her voice, the look of her eyes told him she wasn't.

“Juno-”

“Don't,” Juno said sharply. She sighed. “Just don't,” she said in a low voice. She shook her head, trying to keep her tears back. “I agreed to this, thinking I would come back and there would be something here for me, a purpose, but there's nothing.”

“Juno, you have purpose here, you have people you care about-”

“The people I care about are dead, or have moved on!” Juno shouted, turning around to face him as the floodgates in her eyes broke. “My son is dead, Kevin is dead, Melanie and Chia almost died, and Alex has moved on. Luca, what else am I supposed to do here? I mean, you said it yourself: I'm old news and I'm starting to feel too old for all of this.” She sighed wearily. “When I was gone, there was warmth, and there was comfort, and there was love. I was in heaven,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was with my parents. And then you bring me back here to this world, where every minute feels like hell and I have to ask myself, is it really worth going on to the next one? It's tiring to make plans that I don't want to make, it's tiring to do the everyday things that I need to do to function when I don't even feel like functioning. I just don't want be here anymore.”

“Juno, there are people here that need you,” Luca insisted. “There's still a life here for you.”

“A life that I don't want.”

“You idiot!” Lara shouted, punching him so hard that he fell backward onto the floor.

She moved forward, but Jacob rushed forward and pushed her back and stepped between them.

“Do you have any idea what you have done?” Lara screamed at Jethro over Jacob's shoulder. “You should’ve let me kill him when I had the chance!”

Jethro stood up and Lara felt a small sense of satisfaction at the sight of the blood on his mouth. She was ready to make him bleed some more. A lot more.

“You were about to murder him in cold blood,” Jethro said through clenched teeth.

“I already have blood on my hands and I’m fine with that!” she said defiantly.

“You may have killed before, but you do not want to be a cold-blooded murderer.”

“That bastard murdered my real parents in cold blood right in front of me,” she replied through clenched teeth. “I watched the life go out of their eyes, I watched them being carried out of that house in body bags and you’re telling me that I’m going to regret murdering the son-of-a-bitch who put me through that?”

“You’re a Buchanan,” Jethro said softly. “Like it or not, my blood runs through your veins and I’m your father and I will not let a daughter of mine-“

He barely got a sentence out before Lara punched Jacob and shoved him out of the way before tackling Jethro to the ground and straddling him. She raised her fist and punched him hard.

“You.” Punch. “Are.” Punch. “Not.” Punch. “My.” Punch. “FATHER!” She punched him again and grabbed both sides of his head and beat started banging it onto the floor a few times before she started punching him again, sobbing.

“Lara!” Jacob wrapped his arms around her stomach and yanked her back.

Lara elbowed him in the face, causing him to let of go her with one arm, but he held onto her with the other and the two of them fell backwards onto the ground.

“I will kill you, you son-of-a-bitch!” Lara shouted as she struggled to release herself from Jacob’s grasp. “You think you know me? You don’t know anything! You and that stupid Council that you work for, you’re all weak, incompetent entitled little pricks!”

Jethro coughed and sat up, giving Lara a clear view of his bloody, bruised face.

She stopped fighting Jacob and glared at Jethro. “I’ll make you a promise,” she said coldly. “I’m going to kill Huang and then I’ll come back and show you what a real murderer is.”

Chapter 2

2 Weeks Later

It was eight o’clock at night when Juno stepped out of the French Meadow Cafe and started walking home. With her first day of school being the next morning, Zoey insisted that she be home by eight thirty. The French Meadow Cafe was one of the first restaurants that Juno had discovered while exploring Grand Avenue, and she loved it. She loved the food, the atmosphere, the quietness in the afternoon, the busy bustle towards the early evening. On days when she wanted to get out of the house but didn’t feel like going far, the cafe was her spot. She could sit at one of the tables in the back, on her laptop, ordering tea after tea after tea and sometimes food. Their menu was almost all organic and she always felt lighter after leaving. Her favorite menu on the item was the blackened fish tacos.

The cafe was in the middle of the Macalester College campus, and less than a ten-minute walk to Zoey and Nathan’s. She preferred to walk along Grand Avenue to get to certain places, as being around the bustle of people made her feel better, and it didn’t hurt to see some of the college guys checking her out.

She had her headphones on during the walk home, listening to her mp3 player. As she turned off Hamline Avenue, she made to the alley and she felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck and she turned around but saw no one behind her. But there was a tree, a large tree in the grass near the curb of the street. A tree big enough for someone to hide behind. She took off her headphones and stuffed them in her bag and slowly walked toward the tree. She passed the alley and glanced toward it, but only saw one car parked behind a garage, dark and seemingly unoccupied. When she came to the tree, she took a deep breath and stepped forward, but found no one hiding behind the tree. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned back around, resuming her walk but at a brisk pace.

A figure wearing a hat stepped out from behind a fence in the alley and watched her turn the corner. The car Juno had glanced at in the alley suddenly started and inched forward quietly until it pulled up next to the figure, who got immediately got in the backseat. The car then pulled out into the street and when it passed a street light, the maroon paint of the car glowed in the light.

What do you get when you wake up every morning in house with two Hunters and five vampires?

Chaos and mayhem.

This is what Alex Buchanan was thinking as he ran down the stairs into his family’s kitchen and threw open one of the cherry cabinets and pulled out a box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. He set the box down on one of the titanium granite counters and then went and grabbed a bowl from another cabinet.

His adoptive brother, Trevor Buchanan, one of the vampires in the house, was already sitting on one of the high wooden bar stools, munching on a turkey breast at the island counter in the middle of the kitchen and his adoptive mother Ev, another vampire in the house, already had a pot of tea heating up on the stainless-steel stove.

When looking at both brothers side by side, there was no question that they weren’t blood related. Alex, with his light tanned skin and long, brown hair that went down to his middle back with some of it pulled back with a ponytail and standing at a five foot ten height and a leaner, muscle toned body and dressed in a black tee shirt and a olive cargo pants was a sharp contrast to Trevor, who was paler with shorter, brown hair and standing at six foot two with a burly build and dressed in a heathered gray tee shirt with a leather jacket and fitted denim jeans.

“Alex, Trevor, you’ve both got five minutes to get out of my house and be on your way to school,” Evelyn ‘Ev’ Buchanan said in her beautiful British accent as she walked into the kitchen, her two-inch heel pumps clicking loudly on the hardwood floor. She was carrying a chicken leg in one hand and the morning newspaper in the other. She glanced at them before she took a bite of the chicken and set it down on a small plate.

“Where’s Dad and Grandpa?” Alex asked. He tucked some of his half-dried hair behind his ears as he looked up at her. He had woken up late, forcing him to take a speedy shower. It would dry soon enough, and he didn’t have enough time to dry it completely before he had to leave.

“Father is still sleeping. His plane didn’t get in until three o’clock in the morning. Jethro is in his office, talking to Napoleon.”

“Napoleon?”

“The gargoyle that he met in when he was in Pakistan last summer,” Ev reminded him. “Remember? The one that almost ate him?”

“What are they talking about?” Trevor asked.

“Trying to work out a peace treaty between the Hunters and the gargoyles in Pakistan so that neither one of them goes extinct.” She paused, and then said, “Or rather, so that the gargoyles don’t go extinct. It’ll be a long while before you Hunters have to worry about getting out of the game.” She laughed.

“I thought the gargoyle tried to eat him,” Alex said, his mouth full. “I don’t know about you, but that kind of reception makes me kinda not trust them.”

Ev eyed him disapprovingly. “Don’t talk with your mouth, full, Alex. It’s very inappropriate. And Napoleon only tried to eat Jethro because he felt threatened.”

“Huh,” was all that Alex could say.

“Well, I still wouldn’t want to make a deal with anyone that tried to eat me,” Trevor remarked.

A swish and blur of red hair sped past them and slammed the door shut.

“Good morning, Marie,” Alex said in a sing song voice, grinning.

Ev chuckled.

Marie Buchanan ran back into the house at a normal speed and grabbed the rest of Ev’s chicken leg and finished it off with one bite.

“Hey!” Ev protested.

“I’m starving and I’m running late,” Marie shot at her in her native French tongue.

Ev raised her eyebrows at Marie’s overly defensive tone. “Didn’t get a good night’s sleep, Marie?” she responded calmly in English.

“How could I with Henri blasting his bullshit all night during his workout?” Marie snapped, calming herself back into her French tinged English. Living in France for nearly seventy years had forever instilled her native French tongue in her accent and twelve years in North America hadn’t diminished it. Not that Marie would let it. She made her plans to go back to France very clear as soon as she was graduating from Central the following spring and she’d already finished her Council training earlier that summer.

“That’s why you need earplugs, Marie,” Ev told her. “Then you wouldn’t hear it as much.”

“We’re vampires for crying out loud! We have super hearing! Why does the guy have to blast it that loud?”

Ev shrugged. “You two work it out. Trevor, I assume you slept just fine I assume after that daring kill last night.”

“Just fine,” Trevor said, moving to Marie’s side in two point two seconds. “The earplugs work great, by the way, Ev. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ev replied.

“We let him get away with everything so much,” Marie muttered. “That’s why he does all of this.”

“Marie, we let you get away with a lot too, you know,” Ev reminded her.

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that you failed math last year and almost failed it again this past summer?”

Marie sighed. “And how many sleepless nights did you get over that?”

Ev rolled her eyes and ignored Marie’s jab. “Work it out with him or use the earplugs, luv.”

Marie grinned and cracked her knuckles.

“Verbally, not physically,” Ev said warningly.

Marie’s face fell, and Alex nearly choked on his cereal to keep from laughing.

Marie turned on him and was about to snap a retort at him, but Trevor deflected her just in time by grabbing her wrist and holding it to his chest.

“Come on,” he said softly, guiding her out through the back door.

“Oui!” Jethro Buchanan said as he rushed into the kitchen. He quickly walked over to where Ev was and kissed his wife on the forehead before gently nudging her out of the way so that he could get into the fridge.

Trevor walked back in and pretended to gag and Ev and Jethro eyed him.

“Question,” Trevor said to distract them. “How come you two can pull off the British accent, and I can’t?”

“Because you were raised in here in the states and they were raised in England,” Henri said, speeding into the kitchen. “And so was I, but my accent is not as pronounced for some reason that still escapes me after all these years. By the way Ev, someone needs to go to the store and get some more meat,” he added. “Jethro, give me that last bag of chicken you’ve got in the fridge, will you?”

Jethro chuckled as he opened the fridge, grabbed the bag, and tossed it to Henri.

“Henri Deveraux, you can be such a bloody chauvinistic pig sometimes,” Ev snapped. “Just because I’m a woman, you expect me to do all the grocery shopping.”

Henri shrugged. “That’s how my family did it.” He pulled out the last raw chicken and started gnawing on it. He was the only in the house who wasn’t opposed to eating meat raw.

“Your family lived in the seventeenth century. This is the twenty first. Things are a bit different now.”

“Trevor, you look like you have something to say,” Jethro said quickly. “Something about our accents?” As Ev turned to Trevor, Jethro shot Henri a pointed look.

“But I’ve been with you guys for years and I still can’t do it right,” Trevor complained, picking up right where he had left off.

Jethro opened his mouth to respond, but Ev interrupted him.

“Bloody cow,” she commented as Henri pulled out the last three chicken legs.

“I’m still a growing boy, though,” Henri said. He threw the bag in the trash and took a bite. “Mm, that’s good,” he said with his mouth full.

Alex, Jethro, and Trevor all laughed at the reproachful look on Ev’s face as she watched Henri.

“You wish you were a growing boy,” she said. “Luv, you’ve been dead for more than four hundred years.”

“You’ve been dead for a three hundred and twenty. Come on, stop looking at me like that! You eat this stuff too, you know.”

“At least I have table manners,” Ev quipped.

“While this is all very interesting,” Alex cut in, “I am more interested in hearing about your little chat with the hungry little gargoyle from Pakistan,” he said to Jethro.

Jethro looked confused for a moment, then chuckled. “Oh, that, yeah.”

“Was there a treaty written up?” Alex asked.

“Yeah, well, we didn’t really get too much business done.”

“Stop beating around the bloody bush,” Henri said. “They didn’t get any business done,” he told Alex and Trevor, winking with a mischievous look in his eyes.

“Nosy bastard,” Jethro said ruefully to Henri.

“What happened, luv?” Ev asked, looking at her husband inquiringly.

“I brought up that happy little memory of him trying to eat me, just sort as a joke,” Jethro explained. “Well, he got mad about it for some reason that still escapes me, and he starts yelling at me and throwing insults at me, which in turn made me do it right back and I ended up hanging up on him.”

“Slamming the phone down on him, from what I heard,” Henri corrected.

Jethro gave him a look.

“Jethro, the bloody gargoyles are a sensitive lot,” Henri pointed out. “I told you to tread carefully when talking to Gorgon”

“Yeah, well, they’re a little too sensitive for their own good.”

“No treaty then?” Trevor said.

Jethro shrugged. “Let’s just say that it’s on hold now. Hopefully no more killings in the meantime.” A car horn sounded from outside and he glanced at his watch and then looked at Alex and Trevor. “Shouldn’t you lot be on your way to school by now?”

Trevor and Alex looked at the clock on the microwave, widened their eyes, dropped

their bowls and rushed out the door.

As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, Ev sighed. “What are we doing today boys?” she asked as she took Henri’s plate and stuck it in the dishwasher.

“I’m on call for the next sixteen hours, so I will be at the hospital until tomorrow morning,” Henri answered. “That vacation came with a price.”

“I still can’t believe you went to Hawaii by yourself,” Ev said, giving him a weird look.

“People go on vacations by themselves all the time, luv,” Henri pointed out.

Ev shook her head. “Not to Hawaii, they don’t.”

“Well, I do.”

“Sure you do,” she said sarcastically. “I will meet this woman eventually, though.”

Henri scoffed. “For the last time you bleeding romantic, there is no woman.” He looked at Jethro with a plea for help, but Jethro shook his head and backed away with his hands up.

“What are you doing today?” Ev asked her husband.

“Meeting with Delissio to work on that blasted animal case,” Jethro said, his mood suddenly dark.

“Well, at least Trevor got it and put it down,” Ev pointed out.

“Yeah, but how in the hell did it get around the cities without being seen?” Jethro complained.

Ev shrugged. “The thing is dead. So, go hand in your report to him and makes sure he thanks you and Trevor for wrapping up the case in a neat little bow for him.”

Jethro scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, luv.”

“Is he upset at how messy the carcass was?”

“He cursed a lot with that sweet mouth of his.” Jethro chuckled. “But I need to hurry up and shower. I’m supposed to meet him in an hour.”

“Then you better get going,” Ev said.

“What are you up to today?” Jethro asked, putting his arm around his wife.

She shifted uncomfortably but smiled into his face all the same. “I think I would like to get some fresh air, so maybe going to a park or something,” she answered.

Jethro raised his eyebrow. “I wish had your life.” He grinned and let go of her. “But then I remember that I like mine a lot better because I have you in it.”

“And I have you in mine, so I think I’m good,” she said, smiling. “You better get going. You have fifty-seven minutes left to meet Delissio.”

“Zoey,” Juno complained. “Come on, I need to get to school!” She gave her aunt an impatient look as she stood at the front door with her arms folded.

“Honey, you can always wait another week,” Zoey McKellen pleaded. “It seems like you’ve haven’t grieved long enough to poss-”

“You’ve had me stuck in this house for two weeks!”

“Because I feel that maybe we should-”

“I need something else besides wandering around and exploring this place on my own” Juno snapped. “I need something to keep me busy, something to fill my days. Something normal. Like school.”

“You haven’t spent that much time at the therapists!” Zoey protested. “What about all those hours that you’re out of the house and I don’t hear from you?”

“All I do is walk along Grand Ave to downtown and then back again,” Juno snapped. “And I’ve been doing it every day and found my way back home just fine in one piece. By myself. Stop fussing over it.” In actuality, she was exploring a lot more than Grand Avenue, but she wasn’t about to tell Zoey that. Grand Avenue was beautiful scenery with lots of interesting shops and restaurants, but she’d covered everything she wanted to see at Grand Avenue in just a few days.

“Why not just wait until next week?” Zoey tried again.

“Because you’ll say the same exact thing next week. At that rate, I wouldn’t be graduating until the next millennium. And besides, we already registered for me to start today. May I go now?” she snapped as she put her hand on the handle of the front door.

Zoey sighed and nodded reluctantly. “But you be sure to let me know if you need me to take you home at any point during the day.”

“I will,” Juno promised. She opened the door and was about to rush out when she frowned, sniffed and turned to look at the glass of milk in her aunt’s hands.

“What?” Zoey asked.

“Did you check the date on the milk carton before you drank that?”

Zoey shook her head slowly, giving her glass a once over. “Why?”

“I think it’s bad. Check the carton.” She slammed the door behind her before Zoey could reply.

Juno knew that her aunt couldn’t help but worry, but she could be so damn annoying sometimes she thought to herself as she walked to the bus stop.

There were a bunch of other kids milling around at the corner and she noticed that one of the guys was wearing a sweatshirt that said CENTRAL on it, so she figured that she must be at the right stop.

One of the girls, a pretty blonde, turned as she walked up, but she ignored the girl and stood off by herself as she waited for the bus to come. She didn’t have to wait long though; the bus appeared a minute later. She was the first one to get on the bus and grabbed a seat in the seventh row and pulled out her headphones and mp3 player.

Four other people got on the bus, including the sweatshirt guy and the girl who had been looking at her earlier. The guy immediately gave her a shit eating grin and to her disappointment, sat down next to her before she could put her headphones on.

“Hey,” he said. “My name is Kevin Stone. What’s your name? I don’t think you’re going to appreciate me calling you ‘new girl’ are you?”

Juno nodded. “Juno Jensen,” she said softly.

“Where are you from?” Kevin asked.

“Wisconsin. Milwaukee.”

“Really? I’ve been there a few times. They’ve got some great night clubs, but none of ’em beats First Avenue. I should take you there sometime. What do you say?”

Juno shrugged. “If it works out, it’ll work out.”

Kevin nodded in approval. “I like that about you.”

“Like what?”

“You just go with the flow, don’t rush anything. It’s very laid back. Very cool.”

“Thanks,” Juno said, even though that wasn’t really the reason why she wasn’t rushing anything; she just couldn’t see herself going on any kind of date with this guy.

The girl who had stared at Juno at the bus stop was sitting in front of them and must’ve read her mind because she turned around and quipped, “Hey Kevin, maybe she just doesn’t want to go out with you... Did you ever think about that?”

“If she didn’t want to go with me, I think she would’ve said so,” Kevin shot back.

“Maybe she’s too nice.”

“Melanie, maybe you should shut the hell up and mind your own business!”

Melanie shrugged and grinned. “I’m just warning you so that when she shoots you down, you’re not too surprised,” she said before she turned around.

As Juno exited the bus, she shoved her headphones on and walked quickly to avoid giving Kevin another chance to hit on her. Her bus had dropped her off in front of a parking lot, where she saw other students getting out of their cars. The sidewalk along the street was really crowded with other students getting off their buses, but she saw another pathway on the other side of the parking lot that didn’t have very much foot traffic.

She was walking through the student parking lot and looking around over at the tennis courts when someone came up next to her and to Juno’s relief, it was only the girl from her bus, whom Juno vaguely remembered Kevin call Melanie. Looking around and not seeing Kevin anywhere, she pulled off her headphones.

“You know, just because you’re new doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat,” Melanie told her. “Don’t spare his feelings?”

“Huh?” Juno said, confused.

Melanie grabbed Juno’s arm and stopped walking. “Listen, I’m not trying to be a bitch, but I’m just being honest.”

“What do you mean?” Juno asked, turning to face her.

“Kevin likes you for the way that you look. And that’s the reason many other girls like him too. But when you get to know him, he is kind of a jackass. I could tell that you didn’t like him the way you evaded his suggestion. A graceful way out would to be to hint that you like another guy and pretend you’re clueless to his advances. He doesn’t like girls that he thinks are stupid and he won’t go after a girl who he knows is interested in someone else because he’s not that desperate. Honestly, don’t let him push you into starting something that you don’t want to start.”

Juno nodded, making a mental note of it. “Thank you.”

Melanie smiled. “No problemo. So, you’re new, from Milwaukee? Why’d you move from there to this old boring place?”

“Needed a change of scenery,” Juno answered, evasively avoiding the main reason as to why she moved.

Melanie shrugged. “St. Paul wouldn’t be the first place I’d choose to get new scenery, but whatever floats your boat. It’s nice enough, though. Especially now, in the autumn. The leaves turning colors, falling off the trees. And the sun turning a little red when it sets. It’s very magical in a way, but I know there’s a little town in Canada that I visited that looks even better. And Halloween’s coming up next month. Plenty of stuff to do around here at that time.”

Juno nodded and started to reply until she saw a maroon car with tinted windows pass them and she stared at it with a startled expression.

Melanie followed her gaze to the car and then looked back at Juno. “Do you know who that is?” she asked.

Juno shook her head and started to walk after the car but then the car sped up suddenly and raced into the street, almost hitting a few students who were quick enough to jump out of the way.

“Whoa!” Melanie said. “Douchebag much? Wonder what the hell his problem was.”

Juno still stared down the path the car had taken, visibly shaken and then turned back to Melanie. “Yeah, what a douche bag,” she said quietly. Then she cleared her throat and shrugged, trying to shake off her fright. “Do you um, think you could maybe help me find some of my classes? I just want to find my way around school before I try to find my way around the city.”

Melanie nodded eagerly and held out her hand for Juno’s schedule. “Lemme see that schedule really quick.”

Juno gratefully handed it to her and they resumed walking while Juno listened as Melanie went about giving her advice about some of the classes and the teachers.

Alex had been grabbing his backpack from the backseat of the car when he saw the girl walking past him with headphones over her ears. She must’ve been new, because he hadn’t seen her before, but something about her would’ve made sure he’d never forget her.

“Did you hear anything about a new girl?” he asked Marie as she and Trevor came and stood next to him.

“No,” Marie said absently as she stared at the girl. “She’s got that look though.”

“What look?” Alex asked, not taking his eye off her.

“A jail bait look,” Marie said flatly before she started rummaging in her bag for something.

“Actually, I think I did hear about someone transferring,” Trevor said slowly.

Alex turned to see Melanie Richardson rush past the trio and he watched her as she caught up to the girl, causing her to pause and turn around as Melanie spoke to her.

Alex stared at the girl and could understand why she would be trouble for any guy. Her skin tone wasn’t too far off from his, though hers was a more olive complexion. Her lips were full, and red, just waiting to be kissed. She had a slim body, but he loved her legs. She was wearing a black over-sized beanie on over long, black hair that was partially hidden by dark rust colored cardigan and underneath the cardigan, he caught a brief glimpse of a grey Nirvana shirt. She had her legs covered with a pair of dark blue patterned stretch jeans and finished off with a pair of black ankle boots. The outfit was an interesting combination with Melanie’s own cream colored lightweight sweater poncho that covered a dark brown tank top and the top of her tight indigo jeans with suede olive green knee high boots.

He couldn’t see her eyes that well, but he thought they looked big and dark green. An unusually dark green, but it complimented her pale skin tone.

Suddenly, the girl turned, giving him a perfect view of her face, and watched a maroon car that was driving past with a startled look on her face. She started walking after it, but then it immediately sped up and Alex and Trevor had to quickly jump out of the way to avoid getting hit and watched it speed into the street and disappear.

Alex turned back to the girl, who wasn’t looking at him, but after where the car had been, a shaken look on her face for a moment before she turned back to Melanie and said something before they started to walk away.

“Alex!” Marie said sharply, getting in front of him and snapping her fingers in his face.

He blinked and backed away from her. “What?” he snapped.

“Let’s go,” she snapped back.

He glanced back at the girl, but she and Melanie had already started walking away.

Ev was just loading the dishwasher when Osmund Gilmore walked into the kitchen.

“Hello, father,” she said without looking at him.

“Hello my darling.” Osmund said as he opened the fridge. He pulled out the jug of blood and set it on the counter.

Ev finished loading the dishwasher and closed it, then turned it on and turned to her father.

“I heard a bit of ruckus in here earlier,” Osmund commented as he poured himself a glass.

“You hear ruckus every morning,” Ev said bluntly. Her father hated small talk; he only did it when he was trying to work his way up to a conversation he didn’t want to have, and she wasn’t having any of that nonsense this morning.

Osmund chuckled as he put the jug back in the fridge. “Right, right, I do.”

“You hear anything from James concerning that matter in Milwaukee?”

He sighed and took a long drink before answering. “No, I didn’t. James didn’t have any new information.”

“What about the girl who survived?”

“She’s safe. Nothing to worry about.” He took another long drink. “Have you told Jethro about the baby?” He asked the question lightly, already knowing the answer.

She shook her head and subconsciously put her hands to her belly, trying to get a feel for the life growing inside her. “No, I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

Ev threw her hands up wearily. “He’s said he’s not ready for a child yet. How am I going to break this to him?”

“He won’t be mad or upset at you or the baby. He may not have liked it this soon, but he will get over that right away and get ready to be a father to your child. His heart will melt when he holds that child for the first time. I know he will be delighted, and you should have more faith in him.”

Ev glanced down at her belly, not staying anything.

“He will find out sooner or later,” Osmund said. “I can’t believe Henri hasn’t found out yet.”

“I haven’t been going to his hospital,” Ev informed him. “I’ve been seeing a doctor at a private clinic.”

“Another doctor…?” Osmund looked concerned. “How could he possibly advise you-”

“A friend recommended him. He knows of my situation as well.”

“Well, despite your efforts, Henri spoke to me again last night when I came home. He continues to notice your changes.”

Ev’s eyes widened. “What kind of changes?”

“You’re paler than usual; you look a little unwell more often than usual for you, and then there’s your new diet.”

“He told you this?”

Osmund nodded. “Yes, he did. He came to me, trying to convince me to tell you to go to a doctor and get looked at. He’s not bloody thick, darling. Hasn’t he talked to you about it?”

She nodded. “He caught me throwing up one night. I thought I had deflected it though.”

“Well, obviously, you didn’t.” He gave her a look. “When you start showing . . . Are you going to use a spell to conceal the bump like you’re concealing the heartbeat?”

“Father, I’m not in the mood for these questions,” Ev said wearily, waving him off. “Don’t you have something else to do?”

“Well, I need to go give Devin a ring about something, so I guess I shall do that right now. I’ll see you later. Feel a little better.”

“If I felt better, there would be something wrong with the baby,” Ev said. “At least that’s what I read in some pregnancy books.”

He shrugged. “I hope everything goes well for you then.” He took her hand in his and kissed it, then kissed her forehead.

Ev held onto his hand tightly and pulled him back to her when he tried to walk away. “Father, I have a really bad feeling.”

“What kind of bad feeling?” he asked, frowning.

“Something’s coming, something bad.” She didn’t release his hand, only stared into his eyes with worry in her own.

He pried his hand out of hers and cupped her face in his hands. “Nothing is going to happen to us. We’ll all be fine. If something bad does happen, we’ll get through it. As a family, just like we’ve always done. Okay?”

She nodded slowly, still looking a little troubled.

He smiled and let go of her face. “Now, get some protein in you,” he said as he walked out.

Ev watched him walk out, then looked at a picture of Jethro on the fridge and bit her lip, looking worried. She thought back to when she had first met him. He had been so daring, so fired up, so passionate. And she’d hated him because they had been on opposite sides of the fence. He’d treated her like dirt, and then saved her life when she least expected it, despite all the horrible things she had done, even after she tried to kill him with her bare hands a few times. But in that moment when she looked into his eyes, she knew she was in love with him. She realized that she argued relentlessly with him to hide her true feelings from him, and Henri.

Henri was so damn perceptive. It was like he could read her mind. He could sense even before she did that she was in love. But the logic blinded her; Jethro was a Hunter, destined to kill vampires like her. When she realized herself that she was indeed in love, she was damn determined to prove it to him. Jethro had given her a purpose, a reason to change. She would always love him for that, for being her inspiration, her drive to be the person she was now.

Jethro settled himself in the chair in a small conference room across from Detective Eric Delissio.

“Any news?” Delissio asked.

“We found the dog and it has been taken care of.” He smiled at Delissio’s surprised look. “Where would you like us to leave it?” He passed a photo of the dead weredog to Delissio.

Delissio thought for a moment and then grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled something on it and slid it to Jethro. “When did you kill it?”

“Trevor got it last night. We’re fairly certain that if there were more, we would’ve found them by now,” Jethro said. “When there’s more than one in an area, they usually stay close by each other. Hunting pack.”

“Do you believe that one of these things are capable of being responsible for twelve deaths in such a short period?”

Jethro nodded. “Just one of these beasts is even more ruthless than the two man eaters of Tsavo put together. They have a ferocious appetite and are never full. They’re also quicker than leopards and stealthy hunters. They only grow with each meal they snag. But, I think that this was the only one and Trevor got him. I’ll have the body delivered to this address and your department will then have the men you need for the president’s upcoming visit.”

Delissio breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much this means to me Jethro.”

Jethro smiled and nodded as he stood up to leave.

Chapter 1

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Juno Jensen was sitting on the island counter in her kitchen dipping Oreo’s into Biscoff cookie spread, watching a rerun of Scooby-Doo on the small TV on the side table across the room. She turned her gaze away from the TV when she heard the lock in the back door click and her mother walked in a second later with two bags of groceries.

Juno popped the Oreo in her hand into her mouth and jumped off the counter. “What’d you get me Mom?” she asked, taking one of the grocery bags from her mother. She set the bag on the counter where she had just been sitting and started taking stuff out. She smiled approvingly at the rice milk carton and scrunched up her nose when she pulled out a bag of egg roll wraps. She turned around and held up the offensive item to her mother.

“I was reading a recipe online and thought I would try something different for dinner,” Wendy Jensen said, walking over to her and plucking the package out of her daughter’s hands. She stuck the package in the fridge and left the door open to put the rest of the groceries away.

“Well, you and Dad enjoy puking your guts out,” Juno replied, grabbing the cover of her cookie spread and recovering the jar. She put her Oreo’s in a plastic bag and stuck them and the cookie spread in the snack cupboard and then proceeded to begin unloading the second grocery bag.

“Where are you going?” Wendy asked, frowning. She walked over to the counter where Juno had taken out all the groceries and started grabbing the refrigerator items.

“Britney called me an hour ago and told me someone from Whitefish Bay was having an impromptu party,” Juno said. “She and Greg are picking me up any minute.”

Whitefish Bay High School was a local public high school within the Milwaukee city limits. Juno didn’t attend the school as her parents were wealthy enough to send her to a private school called University School of Milwaukee, or USM as people preferred to call it. USM was located in the Milwaukee suburb of River Hills, north of the Milwaukee city limits, but many of the students lived in Milwaukee. Both schools were a short drive away from each other, and students often comingled at some of the same spots in town.

“Juno, that’s the third party this week you’ve gone to,” Wendy said disapprovingly as she put stuff away and closed the fridge. She turned to look her daughter.

“It’s summer!” Juno protested. “Besides, senior year is coming up and I’m going to be too busy doing responsible senior stuff once school starts.”

“I don’t think activities like Senior Ditch Day and Senior Grand Slam will take up as much of your time,” Wendy said. She reached around Juno and grabbed the bread. “Especially Ditch Day young lady,” she added in a mock stern tone.

Juno grinned mischievously. “That’s going to be my favorite.”

“Why does Greg always pick you guys up?” Wendy asked. “You have your own car.”

“It makes him look good when he pulls up with two good looking single ladies riding with him,” Juno said. In actual truth, her friend Greg didn’t have much of a taste for alcohol, so he didn’t mind being a designated driver.

“Where is this party at?” Wendy asked.

Juno shrugged. “How should I know? Why? Are you going to come out for a drink or something?”

“No, but I would like to know where you are, especially if you’re going to be out late. And be quiet when you come home; your father wasn’t pleased the other night when he was woken up by you throwing up in the bathroom.”

Juno sighed. “I don’t know the address. I’ll text it to you when I get there ’kay?”

Her phone started vibrating and the voice of Charli XCX filled the room. Juno grabbed her phone and looked at the screen. “Greg and Britney are here,” she said. She pulled the phone off the charger and kissed her mom on the cheek. “Bye Mom, love you!” she said as she rushed through the house, grabbing her purse off the living room couch.

“Love you too!” Wendy yelled, smiling and shaking her head as she heard the front door open and slam shut thirty seconds later. She sighed as she glanced at a family photo sitting next to the small TV on the other side of the kitchen.

She walked over to it and turned the TV off and picked up the photo. It was from a family picnic the three of them had taken at the end of the previous summer before Juno had started her junior year. Juno had often called it a fluke that she had not inherited the classic Scandinavian looks of her mother and her father, Wendy’s husband Neil, who both had pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair whereas Juno inherited a more classic Mediterranean look with an olive skin complexion, dark brown eyes, and straight jet black hair and a shorter stature than her taller parents.

If only Wendy had the heart to tell her how far off Juno’s idea of the fluke really was.

She sighed and replaced the photo next to the TV, wondering where the time had gone in the past seventeen years.

By eight o’clock the sun was setting, and Wendy was in the kitchen wrapping eggrolls when she heard the front door open and her husband appeared a moment later.

“Hmm, that looks good,” Neil Jensen said as he set his briefcase down. He walked over to his wife and kissed her forehead.

“Yes, well your daughter isn’t very keen on trying them,” Wendy said with a bit of disappointment in her voice.

Neil shrugged. “She’s obsessed with pasta,” he said as he turned away to go to the fridge. “Is she here?”

“She’s at another party,” Wendy said, rolling her eyes. She gestured to the eggroll wrappers. “And this is pasta.”

Neil opened the fridge and grabbed a beer and then shut the door as he turned back to his wife. “Not to her. Wendy, she’s going to be leaving for college in a year. What she does after she leaves this house is not going to be up to you anymore. If she chooses to return to her roots, there is nothing you can do about that.”

“I know that,” Wendy said in frustration. “But the idea of her getting to close to her Italian heritage is not something I’m comfortable with. Especially since she doesn’t know anything about her roots.”

“Would it be so bad if we just told her she was adopted?” Neil snapped, finally losing his temper. He slammed his beer down on the counter and glared at his wife. “Would it be so bad if we started treating her like an adult, and not some mentally challenged child? She’s old enough to know the truth by now, and if she wasn’t, then we haven’t done our due diligence as parents.”

“We adopted the child of a witch who belongs to one of the most powerful magical bloodlines in the world, a child that family don’t know even exists,” Wendy said quietly. “If they ever found out about Juno, we would be helpless to stop them from taking her.” She took a deep breath. “Not to mention the others who would come for her just because she was unlucky enough to be born to the wrong mother.”

“We knew what we were getting into when we took her in,” Neil said carefully. “We knew the danger. But we also knew how much we wanted a child and that dream came true. I don’t care what bloodline she came from, she is our daughter, and I have enough faith in her to know that she will feel the same way even after she learns the truth.”

“But what if she starts looking for her birth parents?” Wendy asked quietly. “After what happened with Nathan, I don’t want anymore surprises.”

“What Nathan did was inexcusable,” Neil said. “However, he’s your brother and he was just trying to look out for us.”

“He put our child in danger!” Wendy shouted, slapping the counter. Her eyes were blazing now, and Neil took a step back. “Our baby could’ve been taken away from us and he didn’t even have the gall to acknowledge that, to accept any blame for that. I expressly told him to mind his own business and he didn’t. He’s only lucky that that man chose to leave us be, and that Clara gave us a second chance.”

Neil sighed. “Wendy, where is this all coming from? Why are you worrying about this now? What happened?”

“I have a bad feeling,” Wendy said promptly. “I just have this feeling that something terrible is going to happen, and that this life we’ve built for us and our daughter is going to blow up in our faces.”

Neil scoffed and picked up his beer. “This is not the first time you’ve gotten these feelings.” He stepped toward her and gave her a quick peck on the forehead. “I’m going to change my clothes and watch some football. Let me know when dinner is done.”

Wendy bit her lip as she watched her husband leave the kitchen. She waited until she heard him going up the stairs and then walked to the front of the house and stopped at the front window in the living room.

There was a car sitting at the end the end of the block. In the fading light, she couldn’t see the color that well, but she didn’t need to; it was maroon.

She normally wouldn’t have noticed the car except that the color was unusual to her, and it had suddenly appeared a few days earlier. She never saw it coming or going, so she had no idea what the driver looked like, but it was always in the same spot, with a perfect view of her house. And while whoever was in the car could clearly see Wendy and her family, Wendy had no way of seeing who was in the car as the windows were tinted, which told her the occupant had no intention of being seen.

She was nervous to tell Neil that the presence of the car was what had her on edge. Something about it was just nagging at her, but she couldn’t figure out what it was, and she couldn’t go to Neil with it just because of a ‘feeling’ because he would just blow her off.

A distant ringing pulled her out of her thoughts and she took a deep breath as she went to the secretary the main hallway between the living room and the kitchen. It wasn’t until she stopped in front it that she realized what it meant, and she felt the hair stand up on her neck and arms.

She turned around and opened the hallway closet that was opposite the secretary and on the floor in the back corner was a little black safe.

After unlocking the safe and pulling out a key, she went back to the secretary and unlocked the drawer and pulled out a small phone that was ringing off the hook.

“Hello?” she answered in a carefully controlled voice.

Greg Dawson pulled up to Juno’s house later that night. “Thanks,” Juno said, getting out of the car before falling flat on her face.

Greg got out of the car and ran around to the other side to help her up. “Do you want me to walk you to the door?”

“No, thanks,” Juno said, steadying herself. “I would take you up on that offer but on the off chance that my dad is still awake and on the other side of the front door with a shotgun in his hands, I politely decline for your safety.”

Greg smiled as he let go of her but stood by her tentatively. “Enjoy this while you can,” he said. “You only got one summer left to do it before we have to grow up.”

Juno laughed and gave him a drunk hug. “I know. Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem. I’ll just wait in my car until I see you go inside.”

“Thanks.” She waved goodbye to him as he got in his car and she walked to her front door. She found her keys and let herself into the house, and then turned to wave goodbye to Greg before he drove off.

As she shut the door, she turned around and felt her leg bump into something.

“What the hell?” she muttered, looking down to see what it was. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noticed about half dozen suitcases packed by the door.

She frowned and pulled out her phone to see that her phone was loaded with missed calls and voicemails from both of her parents, the last one being two hours earlier.

“Mom? Dad?” she called out. Hearing no answer, she took a deep breath and put her phone back in her pocket.

She walked to the kitchen and set her purse down on the counter before going to the fridge to look for something to eat. When she opened the fridge, she was surprised to see that the light wasn’t on. Frowning, she stuck her hand inside and found that the inside wasn’t nearly as cold as it should’ve been. Groaning, she shut the fridge and stepped over to the light switch and flicked it to turn on the lights, but those weren’t working either. Now she knew something was wrong with their fuse box and she was going to have head upstairs for the dreaded task of waking up her dad.

“Hey Dad, this is your drunk underage daughter coming to wake you up at two o’clock in the morning because the lights aren’t working,” she said to herself sarcastically as she walked out of the kitchen and headed to the stairs. “Yep, I’m just so responsible like that.”

She reached the top of the stairs and froze suddenly. She thought she’d seen a shadow moving near her bedroom for a split second. Then she shook her head, mentally kicking herself. There was nobody there. She was just drunk and seeing things. She rubbed her eyes and headed to her parents’ room and opened the door.

In the moonlight, her parents bed was a mess and her gaze slowly lowered to the floor and screamed at the sight in front of her.

Neil and Wendy Jensen were lying dead on the floor in pools of their own blood.

With tears streaming down her face, she moved towards her mother’s body and tentatively touched her head. Her face was bruised from a powerful beating that someone had given her, and there was blood gushing from the gash in her neck where someone had slit her throat. She was almost unrecognizable to Juno.

“Mom?” she whispered, stunned.

She heard a gurgling sound and jerked her head up to see her dad twitching.

“Daddy!” she cried, rushing over to him.

Her father’s eyes widened as she came to his side. His throat wasn’t slit like her mother’s, but his shirt was soaked in blood, and there was a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth.

“Daddy you’re going to be okay,” Juno sobbed. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to get help.”

Neil shook his head slowly. “Run,” he said weakly. “Run!”

“I’m going to get help and then I’ll be right back Daddy.”

She kissed his forehead before standing up and turned and ran out of the room only for a figure to jump out of a hallway closet and grabbed her.

Juno struggled in the powerful grip of the person and threw herself into the room, where her attacker lost their grip on her as they both tumbled to the ground and Juno cried out as she felt herself fall into her parents’ blood and looked into the eyes of her dead mother for a second before she jumped up and ran out of the room.

She made it to the stairs and had her foot on the top step when she felt a hand grab her hair and yank her backwards where she was thrown into the bathroom and she saw stars as her head slammed into the tiled floor and looked up to see the face of a jackal towering over her.

Juno jerked awake, breathing hard. She had heard screaming, someone screaming loud and they sounded terrified. The screams had shaken her up so bad that her heart was pounding, and she felt a chill go running through her body.

She looked around. She was in a hospital room.

She heard a shuffling of movement and turned her head to see a figure slumped over in the chair next to her bed. The face was covered by blonde hair, but Juno felt a sense of relief at the sight of her mother.

Juno didn’t inherit her mother’s blonde hair. Her hair was just naturally jet black, and her skin was an olive tone, something she couldn’t really grasp with having two blonde haired, blue eyed and pale skinned parents.

“Mom?” she said quietly.

Her mother didn’t stir.

Frowning, she cleared her throat and tried to lift her arm to throw the blanket off but felt a sharp burst of pain shoot through her body and gasped, wincing as her arm fell back on the bed. Now she felt the soreness, the weakness, the helplessness. She felt like she had been hit by a Mack truck.

She looked up as her mother sat up, and as the hair fell away from her face, Juno felt her mouth drop open.

The relief she had felt a moment earlier instantly disappeared as she stared at Zoey McKellen, the wife of her mother’s younger brother Nathan.

Nathan was eight years older than Zoey and wore the pants in their marriage. Zoey was eight years younger than Nathan and had married him eight years earlier, when she was twenty-six and had just graduated from grad school as a psychologist. Her young, vibrant nature and appearance appealed to the students she counseled at the high school she used to work at and when Juno was younger, when her mother and Nathan had been closer, Juno and Zoey had formed a special bond.

But about five years previously, her mother and her uncle had had some falling out, and Wendy abruptly cut all ties with Nathan, refusing to reveal what led to the estrangement. Juno was upset at losing someone she considered a close confidant, but her mother stubbornly held onto her resolve to keep Nathan out of their lives, eventually leading her to distance herself from the McKellen family, until they all became ghosts to Juno.

For Zoey to be sitting there in Juno’s hospital room, next to her bed – a spot that would’ve been reserved for her mother – meant that Nathan was around. And if Nathan was nearby and her parents were nowhere to be found, she had an awful feeling that something bad had happened.

“Juno!” Zoey breathed sitting up quickly. She rubbed the back of her neck as she leaned towards Juno. “How are you feeling?”

“Zoey, what happened?” Juno asked desperately. “Why am I here? And what the hell are you doing here? Where’s Mom and Dad?”

Zoey’s eyes widened slightly, and Juno saw her them watering up which had the domino effect of making her own eyes water.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Zoey asked with a tremor in her voice.

“Not until you tell me where mom and dad are!” Juno snapped.

Zoey sighed, wiping the tears streaming down her face with the sleeve of her sweater. “Honey, what’s the last thing you remember?” she repeated gently, her voice breaking on the last few words.

“I am not answering your questions until you answer mine. Where’s mom and dad?”

“They . . .” Zoey’s voice trailed off.

“Where are they?” Juno shouted.

“Something happened at the house last night. Do you remember what that was?”

Juno frowned as she struggled to remember. “I remember I came home late. I went to a party with my friends. I came home, and the electricity wasn’t working . . .” She froze.

“You don’t have to tell me anymore,” Zoey said quietly.

“What happened?” Juno asked in a low voice as a feeling of dread swept over her.

“The police are saying they think it was a home invasion,” Zoey said slowly.

“But Mom and Dad are okay, right?” Juno’s voice was shaky.

Zoey looked down at the ground silently.

Juno, growing frustrated, punched the bed, wincing as she felt the sharp pain again.

Zoey lifted her head and gave her niece a pained apologetic look and shook her head. “You were the only one who survived. Your parents are gone.”

Juno felt her heart stop.

Zoey put a hand on her arm, but she didn’t notice, nor did she hear what Zoey was saying as she struggled to process the bomb that Zoey had just dropped on her.

Images began flooding her mind. Their bodies on their bedroom floor, falling between them in a pool of their blood.

Their blood.

She looked down at her hands and saw them covered in blood.

Even her own blood curdling screams couldn’t break through the fog in her mind.

A week later, the gray clouds, and the icy rain matched the somber mood of Wendy and Neil’s family and friends, as they gathered for their joint funeral.

The police still had no leads on her parents’ murderers. Juno still had no clue why they had packed the suitcases that she’d found standing by the front door. The police combed through phone records, emails, mail, everything they could get their hands on to find out why Wendy and Neil were suddenly in such a hurry to leave town. They’d told no one of their travel plans, or that they were planning on leaving town at all.

Juno had told the police about the secret phone that had been kept locked in a secretary in the hallway off the kitchen, the one her parents thought she didn’t know about. She’d discovered it years ago, picking the lock on it one night when her parents were asleep. They’d told her that under no circumstances was she to ever go into that secretary, which piqued her curiosity as to what they could possibly be hiding in it. After getting into it, she was disappointed to discover that it was just a phone, a phone that was password protected and after a trying to crack the code a few times, she gave up and quickly lost interest. In hindsight, she wished she had asked more questions since the phone was discovered missing when the police searched the secretary.

Juno stood silently as the priest said his final prayers. Zoey and her uncle Nathan stood on either side of her. Nathan had been stiff as a board, holding an umbrella, while Zoey kept a hand on Juno’s shoulder as she cried softly and shook uncontrollably. Juno was also holding an umbrella over her and Zoey’s heads, knowing that Zoey wouldn’t be able to hold it steady for long enough. The priest is speaking in a loud, somber voice that was like a knife slicing into Juno’s head and she just wanted to scream at him to shut up. She hated him. She hated his bald head, his boney hands, his hollow face, his ugly black robe with the white collar around the neck that signified his status as a person of God. He was just delivering the usual spiel about how much less pain her parents were in and how they were in a happy, safe place. This was just business to him, nothing more. He’d been doing this forever and she sensed that he had stopped actually caring about his job a long time ago. His long speech was just all about her parents, the people who died, but nothing about the people they left behind. The people who were in more pain than the priest could ever imagine.

She looked up at her uncle. Her face was blank, expressionless as he stood at a respectable height of five foot eight with broad shoulders, a soft, flat stomach. His brown hair was greased and pulled back, his funeral suit perfectly ironed with not a single thread of fabric out of place. She wondered how he could not be so disheveled, so unaffected by this. His sister had just died. Had he been this cold, hard metal exterior at her Uncle Jack’s funeral, or at his own parents’? Her grandparents had died before she was born, and her mother used to talk about them often. Juno liked hearing the stories. They’d inspired memories and feelings of love and joyful things and she wondered if Nathan had learned to guard his feelings after a few too many funerals.

His stature was the opposite of his wife, who stood on Juno’s other side. Her straight blonde hair fell loosely over her black cashmere coat and Juno could feel her skinny five-foot two frame shaking with her soft cries.

Nathan looked down at her and Juno immediately shifted her gaze to the other people at the service. Numerous cousins, aunts and uncles, her grandparents from her father’s side, family friends, and other people she didn’t know. They weren’t looking at her, but were either focused on the boring, annoying priest or the two coffins sitting before them.

Now she looked at the coffins and sucked in her breath. She had looked at the coffins before, but she was still shocked whenever she looked at them, realizing all over again that her parents’ bodies were in them.

Juno listened as the priest finished his sermon and then watched as the coffins were lowered into the ground, Nathan gave Juno an umbrella before he, Zoey, and everyone else left to give her one last moment alone with her parents to give them a private goodbye.

Juno walked to the little area between the grave sites and knelt on the ground. Her legs immediately got wet, and soaked, but she didn’t notice it. She did double takes between the coffins and set her umbrella down in front of her, letting the rain hit her hard as she looked up to the sky.

“I love you,” she said softly to the sky. “And I will never stop missing you.” A single tear streamed down her face and she took the umbrella and stood up. She looked at both coffins one last time before turning and walking back to her aunt and uncle, who were standing by their car, protected from the rain by their own umbrella.

There were a few stragglers around, and outside of the main gate was a throng of reporters being held back by private security that her uncle had hired for the occasion.

“I want to walk back to the hotel,” Juno said. “It’s not that far from here.”

“No,” Zoey said immediately. “It’s much too cold out here; you’ll get a cold, or worse: pneumonia. And you’re already soaking wet. And the reporters are out there and will be on you the second you step out there. Come on, honey, just drive out with us.”

“I want some time to myself,” Juno said. “It’s not even that much of a walk, Zoey. And I know about the back entrance.” She neglected to mention that she knew of it because she and her friends used to sneak into this cemetery for little séances after drinking and smoking pot. “Please?”

Zoey opened her mouth, but Nathan cut her off.

“Zoey, let the girl walk back on her own,” he said in a tired voice. “We’ve been hovering over her twenty-four seven since we got here. Let her have some space.”

“But-”

“No buts,” Nathan said firmly. His eyes softened as he looked at Juno. “Just please be there within an hour. Can you do that for me, kiddo?”

Juno nodded. “Thanks. And I’ll be fine,” she added to Zoey.

Zoey nodded and pulled away from Nathan to give Juno a quick hug before Juno said goodbye and walked off.

She didn’t walk directly back to the hotel. Instead, she took little detours to the places that she and her parents used to frequent. Her mother’s favorite little cafe on the corner; her dad’s favorite sports store. The big, red Victorian style house that her mother had been eyeing for years; her dad’s favorite bar where he went most Friday nights. The toy store that her mother had taken her to every Easter until Juno felt she was too old to get anything from there.

And then the park. The park that her mother would take her to every Sunday morning when she was younger. By now, the rain had stopped, but there were still no kids there now because of the chilly temperature. Juno strode over to her favorite part: the swings.

She turned one of the swings over to get some of the water off, and then sat down on it, not caring that her butt was suddenly cold and wet. No one would be able to tell anyway; she was wearing all black.

As she rested her head against the handles of the swing, she noticed an older man in a black jacket with a small umbrella sitting in a bench near the fence that was at the edge of the park. He was just sitting there, staring in her general direction, and to make things even weirder, he was wearing sunglasses on a dark, rainy day. An as an elderly man, wouldn’t his already probable poor vision be even more obstructed by those dark sunglasses? Weird.

But as the wind blew into her, she turned her gaze away from the old man and looked up to the sky as she lifted her legs, rose high, and then pulled back to go back down. Raise, up, back, down. Juno smiled, her suspicions of the old man beginning to fade away as she became lost in memories from long ago. Her mother always used to those words when she was pushing Juno. Her mother’s cheerful laughing entered her head as she spoke and waited for Juno to come rushing back to her and pushed her back up.

Raise, up, back, down.

Juno smiled a little as she could almost feel her mother’s hands pressing against her back, pushing Juno up high.

She was so lost in her mother’s voice that she never noticed the maroon car sitting across the street. It had pulled up as she got on the swing, but no one ever stepped out of it.

Raise, up, back, down.

Nathan and Zoey entered the hotel suite they were staying in and Nathan shut the door as two bodyguards stood outside in the hallway.

Zoey sat down on the sofa in the sitting area and began pulling her shoes off while Nathan made a beeline for the bar and poured himself two fingers of scotch.

“You’re breaking your five o’clock rule,” Zoey said quietly as she stared at him.

“I didn’t realize there was an etiquette book on burying your sister after she was murdered,” Nathan said sourly before he down the scotch. He took a deep breath and immediately poured another glass.

“Well I don’t think it’s proper etiquette to let a young girl wander off on her own after she just buried her parents!” Zoey snapped, standing up. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Damnit, I was thinking that girl needed some time to get a grip on what’s happening!” Nathan shouted, slamming the glass down on the bar before he whirled around and glared at his wife.

“Her parents were just murdered a week ago, Nathan,” Zoey said in a carefully controlled voice. “Your sister was just murdered a week ago,” she added in a softer voice. She took a deep breath. “No one expects you to have a grip on that right now, especially not on the day when you just buried her.”

“I know that, but everyone expects me to keep it together right now. Juno needs me to keep it together right now.”

“You’ve barely spoken to her in the past week.”

“Because I don’t know what to say to her!” Nathan shouted with his voice breaking on the last few words. He suddenly felt deflated as his eyes began to sting from the water welling up inside them. “My parents are dead. They died years ago when I was already a grown adult, but they were old, and I knew they were going to go soon. They died naturally. Peacefully. I had time to prepare myself. Wendy and Neil were young. They were murdered. And Juno is so much younger than I was, not nearly as prepared, and I can’t find a way to council her through this. I don’t even know how I’m going to get through this. Juno is only seventeen and she’s had her whole life ripped away from her. Hell, I don’t even know her. We haven’t seen her in years.”

Zoey was silent for a moment. “You should tell her what you’re telling me. That you don’t have all the answers and that you’re struggling to find your way through this just like her. Don’t pretend that your struggle is the same as hers, but just let her know that you’ll be there for her.”

“If she’s anything like me, that wouldn’t make a damn difference,” Nathan replied.

Juno was sleeping in her room at the hotel when she suddenly heard loud voices coming from outside her door. Annoyed, she buried her head under her pillow to stifle the voices, but it didn’t do much good; they seemed to only get louder. Zoey and Nathan were in the middle of one of their stupid arguments about what to do about her. The least they could do was keep their voices down while she was trying to sleep.

Cursing under her breath, she got out of bed and tiptoed to the door, pressing her ear against it and then she realized that her uncle was in the middle of an argument. An argument with another man. Juno was more curious than ever now. Who would her uncle be entertaining this late at night on the same day of his sister’s funeral? What could be so important?

And why, when they were obviously whispering, could she hear them so clearly as if she was standing between them? The light in the hallway was on, but there were no shadows in the bottom of the doorway.

“… she is dangerous, McKellen,” an unfamiliar man’s voice snapped. “You know she is.”

There was a sinister undertone in the man’s voice that gave Juno a chill. A chill that felt strangely familiar for some reason.

“Shut up!” she heard Nathan hiss. “She is a scared teenage girl who was brutally attacked and watched her parents die horrible, inexplicable deaths. Of course she’s not the same girl she was. And she may never be. But that does not mean that there is something wrong or deadly about her. I don’t even know where you’re getting this stuff from.”

Juno took a step back from the door as she felt a powerful gaze on her, as if someone was staring intently through the door at her and could sense her eavesdropping.

“I’ve watched her since I got here. I know there is something not right about your niece. And you would be wise to do something about it before it’s too late. What if something happens to that pretty little wife of yours because of that girl? What will it take for you to open your eyes to what she is?”

Juno sucked in a breath. Someone had been watching her? Who the hell was this man and why was he spying on her?

“You have my card and you know where to reach me.”

Juno heard someone ripping something.

“She is a teenage girl who has been through a very horrific, traumatic experience,” Nathan snapped. “My sister didn’t entertain you with this bullshit and neither will I. Now get out and don’t bother me again with your crazy conspiracy theories old man.”

“How will you fare if Clara Vitale comes back to reclaim what’s rightfully hers now that your sister and her husband are dead?”

“You seem to have some difficulty hearing what I’m saying. Try pulling your head out of your ass for once and shake your piss out of your ears so that you can hear me clearly: get out!”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Senator McKellen,” the man said grimly.

Suddenly, Juno could feel something, as if a pair of eyes were burning through the door, looking straight at her and she took a step back immediately, suddenly afraid. She heard footsteps walking away from her door and then heard a door open and close. And then the footsteps headed back toward her room and she quickly ran to her bed and jumped under the covers in time to hear her door creak open. She felt her uncle’s eyes on her, and then with a sigh, he said, “God, Juno, I hope he’s wrong about you,” in a soft, sorrowful voice before he shut her door and walked away.

What is bothering you, Nathan? Who was that man and why has he been watching me? Why does he think I’m a danger to you?

And who the hell is Clara Vitale? What is she coming back to reclaim?

A few days later, Juno walked through her house one last time, savoring the memories before she left with her aunt and uncle. They were biding their time outside loading stuff into the U-Haul that one of her uncle’s employees would follow them back in, using it as an excuse to give Juno some alone time to say goodbye to the only home she had ever known.

Her parents had thought of everything in regard to their deaths. They had the funeral arrangements already laid out; only a call to the funeral home and the cemetery that they had chosen to be buried at. They had even chosen what they wanted on their grave markers. It was almost like they were expecting to die so young and unexpectedly, but Juno tried to shrug it off as her parents just wanting to be prepared for anything.

But when the hell were they prepared to send her away with Nathan? Of all the four siblings that her mother had, Nathan was the only one with whom she was estranged, though Juno could never understand why. There was her aunt Gretchen, who actually lived in Milwaukee, or her aunt Martha who lived in Bayfield, or her uncle Roderick, who lived in Madison. Or any of her mother’s cousins, or her father’s relatives. Why Nathan though, a man with whom her mother been estranged years and lived the farthest away from their home?

With a lump in her throat, she started up the stairs and went to her parents’ room. The room was bare, for it had been one of the first one cleared out. The beige carpet was scrubbed clean, and she could still smell the carpet cleaner they’d used to get rid of the bloodstains.

Her parents’ bodies had been found in here, near the entrance to the walk-in closet. Juno walked over there now and turned on the closet light. It no longer smelled like death in here, but the area would always be invisibly scarred by the events of that night. Just because it didn’t smell didn’t mean that it didn’t feel like death. The condemned house should be burned in her opinion, but who was going to listen to her? Everyone thought that she was mentally unstable, and she sometimes wondered if they were right.

But why was her gut instinct telling her that she was right and that there was something wrong with the way things were going?

She glanced in the mirror and gasped when she saw a figure in the reflection standing in the doorway, wearing a Jackal mask and turned to the door where Nathan was standing, watching her. She looked back at the mirror and saw Nathan standing in the doorway, wearing no mask.

“Maybe you should take a picture,” she quipped as she stared defiantly at him in the mirror. “Take a picture of me standing in the room where my mother’s body was found and then put it on the desk in your office and look at it there, so you don’t have to waste another minute at that door spying on me.”

“You shouldn’t be in this house,” he said, ignoring her attitude and biting words. “I don’t know why you wanted to come here.”

Juno stared at him in disgust. “This was my home. I was raised here. Maybe I wanted a chance to say goodbye to it. Is that okay with you?”

Nathan sighed. “Well, time is up. Your aunt is tired, and we have a long drive ahead of us.” He nodded for her to follow him and Juno took one last, long look around the room before she slowly walked past him into the hallway without another word.

Juno walked outside and slammed the front door shut behind her and took a deep breath as she looked around the neighborhood. She felt a wistfulness as she knew she would never be back here again and slowly walked toward the Nathan’s car where Zoey was waiting inside. There was a car in front of her. But as she reached the car, she noticed another car, a maroon car with tinted windows parked at the corner of the next block. And she couldn’t help but feel like someone inside was staring at her. She stopped and turned to face the car, staring at it, daring the occupant to step out.

“Juno, what is it?” Zoey asked as she opened her door and got out. She turned her attention toward the maroon car. “Do you know who owns that car?”

“No,” Juno said, still staring. “But I’m about to find out.” She started to walk towards the car but was jerked back by a stiff hand on her arm.

“Get in the car,” Nathan said tightly, his eyes on the maroon car. His teeth were clenched and his grip on Juno’s arm tightened as he led her to their car and opened the backseat door for her. Zoey gave the car one last glance and then got back in the front seat.

Juno wrenched her arm out of his grasp with surprising strength before he could push her into the backseat and turned to the car just as it started and drove away in the opposite direction. She sighed in disappointment and looked back at her uncle, who hadn’t taken his glare off the spot where it was parked. “You know who that was, don’t you?” Juno said quietly to him.

Nathan turned his gaze back to her and tightly repeated, “Get in the car.”

Juno raised her eyebrows at him, but silently obeyed his order and got into the car.

Juno stared out the window, looking at the houses as they passed by in a blur. Zoey and Nathan were sitting in the front seat silently. She knew that they had nothing to say to her, nothing new at least. It was like they’d forgotten about the maroon car already.

In some ways, St. Paul was kind of like Milwaukee, but with a lot more trees. They were on a street called Summit now, supposedly the richest street in the state. She was slightly surprised; Nathan was a Minnesota Senator and she knew from her government class in junior year that government officials didn’t make as much money as people thought. But then she vaguely remembered that Zoey came from old money, so maybe they got the house through her.

She glanced at him in the driver’s seat, but he was staring straight ahead at the road. She turned back to the window and out of the corner of her eye, saw Zoey looking back at her for a moment, but pretended not to notice; if she turned to Zoey, Zoey would take that as an invitation to engage in conversation and Juno wasn’t in the mood for talking.

After about ten minutes, Nathan stopped and pulled into the driveway of a red, three story house surrounded by a brown wooden fence on both sides. The drive way went all the way around to the back of the house, where there was a large open yard that stood before a matching red three car garage.

There was a deck connected to the back of the house, with tables and chairs, and an electric grill and the deck spanned out across the whole back of the house.

Nathan moved the car from the pavement and parked behind the deck on the grass while the U-Haul pulled up and parked on the pavement. Juno got out of the car and grabbed the bags in the backseat.

“Home sweet home,” Zoey said, smiling at her.

Juno forced herself to smile back.

“We just got solar panels installed a couple months ago,” Zoey said, motioning to the roof. “They cover most of the roof on the house and the roof on the garage. We’ve saved so much money, and even made some since we hardly ever use any power,” she explained. “Your uncle is always out of town or at the office and I spend a lot of time out and about, but I’ll be spending more time at the house to help you get acquainted.”

Nathan went around to the trunk and opened it. He pulled out two suitcases and headed up the stairs, not saying a word to Juno as he passed her.

“Don’t worry about him,” Zoey said quietly. “He’s just tired from the long drive.” She looked at her husband disapprovingly.

Juno nodded and walked up to Nathan as he unlocked the back door and went inside. The back door led them into a large, vast kitchen. The counter tops were made of Tuscan Spice granite, the stove stainless steel and the side by side black refrigerator. There was one counter, the sink, another counter, and then the microwave on one wall; another counter, the stove, another counter, and the refrigerator were on the other.

In the middle, there was a huge counter top that was probably also used as a dining room table with the same granite top as the other counters.

On the other side of the door was the dining room area, with an oversized espresso colored table was sitting with two cream colored espresso wood chairs sitting on each side. Behind the table against the wall was an espresso china cabinet that displayed a large set of porcelain dinnerware with the same gold pattern on each piece.

“Follow me to your room,” Nathan said shortly after letting her look around.

Juno turned and followed him through a narrow, wooden hallway that led to the foyer. They came to the front door and Nathan stopped and motioned to the living room, which was on the right side. Someone had obviously put a lot of thought into it. In the middle of the wall was an electric fire place and on top of the mantle over the fire place was a mounted flat screen TV. There were two brown microfiber couches sitting across from each other and a love seat sitting in the middle facing the fire place and someone had set two cream colored throw pillows against each end of each couch. There was a cherry wood coffee table in the middle of the couches that just looked out of place, at least in Juno’s opinion.

Nathan nudged her, and she turned and started up the stairs that were on the left of the door. Under the stairs, she saw a closed, wooden door.

“Are you coming?” Nathan asked, halfway up the stairs.

She nodded and quickly went up the stairs as he resumed his walk. The second floor was a little less complicated then the first floor. It was mainly just a long hallway that stretched out on both sides of the stairway. There were doors directly across from each other, all of them closed.

Nathan turned to the right and Juno followed him. He stopped at the third door, which was at the end of the hallway, and opened the door. Juno walked in after him and looked around. There was a bare king size bed on the wall next to the door of the room from where they entered, and it faced another wall with a window looking out onto the street. At the far end of that wall on the right, there was a sliding glass door that led out to a balcony. In between the window and the balcony was an TV stand with a thirty-inch flat screen TV settled on it accompanied by a cable box and a DVD player.

“We thought you might like this room,” Nathan said quietly. He set the suitcases down next to her bed. “Your mother and father always talked about how much you loved your privacy.”

Juno nodded, still sizing the room up. There was a little nightstand next to the bed and there was a desk under the window, and on the wall between the bed and the window. The walls were a bare white with nothing on them. It was almost like she was standing on a blank page in the story of her life. A new chapter about to be written as she got settled into the room.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“The closet’s through here,” he said, pointing at the door on the other side of the bed. “It’s a walk in. There should be plenty of hangers in there for your clothes, but if you need more, feel free to ask. This was one our guestrooms and your aunt was in the middle of washing the bedding when we got the call . . .” His voice trailed off and he uncomfortably cleared his throat. “They’ll be up here by tonight before you go to bed.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you need any help unpacking?”

She shook her head. “No, I can do it myself.”

He nodded. “Okay. Well, you’ve got some more stuff in the car that I have to go get.”

“Let me help you,” she said as she set the bags she was carrying on the bed.

“No, Juno, why don’t you just start unpacking,” he said quickly. “I’ll get the rest of your stuff and it’ll get done a little faster that way.” She nodded obligingly and didn’t say anything else as he walked out of the room. His foot bumped into the door a little and it swung a little, revealing a lock.

She sat down on the bed and looked around again. “Home sweet home,” she said quietly.

Dinner was awkward that night. Nathan had ordered Chinese, which Juno hated, but ate anyway. She tried using the chop sticks, but eventually gave up and switched to a fork instead. She looked between Nathan and Zoey, noting how they would seem like a happy, upper class couple had it not been the disheartened looks on their faces. Their expressions made Juno want to be invisible and she looked down at her food.

Halfway through the nightmare, Nathan cleared his throat and turned to her. “I’m going back to Milwaukee tomorrow to settle the last affairs and to get your car. You’ll need to take a driver’s test to get your license in Minnesota, I think. I’ll have to check.”

She nodded, pushing what was left of her food around her plate. “Okay.”

“You’ll stay here with your aunt and finish getting your room ready. And then Zoey can take you around the city, show you the sites, and work on getting you registered for school and everything. You’ll be going to Central High School. After I bring your car back, I have to leave town immediately to go back to work.”

She nodded again. “Is that a private school?”

Nathan started to shake his head before he realized Juno wasn’t going to look up at him. “No, it’s a public school, but a very good one and it also happens to be close by.”

“I’m sure that you’ll like it here after you get used to it,” Zoey said eagerly, fiddling with her chopsticks.

Juno nodded again, not saying anything.

Zoey accidentally pricked her finger on one of the chopsticks and blood started pooling out.

“Damnit,” she said, sucking on it.

Without even thinking, Juno sniffed toward Zoey, wondering what smelled so good.

“Juno?” Nathan was looking at her oddly. “What are you doing?”

She shrugged. “Something smells really good.”

“You look finished,” he said abruptly.

She nodded and picked up her plate and brought it to the sink. Then she nodded to her aunt and uncle as she left the room. She had passed the living room and noticed that the TV was on. She went in, picked up the remote and was about to turn it off when she saw the news program.

“The young woman’s body was reportedly mutilated, and half eaten, according to officials who found bite marks all over the body.”

Juno’s eyes widened.

“Authorities think the animal may be some kind of dog, but they are not reporting which dog they think it is. But this is the seventh death in two weeks so until the animal is confirmed to be caught or killed, I would stay inside after dark and make sure your doors and windows are extra secure. I’m Jordana Collins with JCKQ News.”

Juno turned off the TV.

Henri Deveraux walked into Osmund Gilmore’s home office without invitation and shut the door behind him quietly.

Osmund Buchanan was sitting behind his massive Victorian style harvest cherry wood desk. Even though he was seated and had the weathered face and piercing brown eyes of a man who had been seen hard times throughout his life, it only added to the air of authority that he carried with him, especially whenever he was donning one of his Armani suits. He was in appearance a man of his early sixties, with graying hair that he stopped dying brown years ago. When he was standing, he had a tall, lean figure and in combat, many of his opponents were surprised by his agility and speed. Osmund simply chalked his victories up to the experience of hard earned lessons of being a vampire since the seventeenth century.

Henri, who had had been turned into a vampire not long after Osmund and been at his side for over three centuries, was not intimidated by Osmund and felt comfortable walking in and interrupting Osmund about issues that he deemed were a higher priority than what Osmund might be working on. Having been turned into a vampire when he was in his late thirties, to outsiders, Henri was a seasoned doctor and the ‘Dr. McDreamy’ of United Hospital with his icy blue eyes and smooth, shoulder length blonde hair that he usually kept tamed and slicked back. When he spoke, most women couldn’t help but be mesmerized by his mixed British-American accent, and when he spoke in his native French tongue, women swooned over him. It also helped that practicing medicine for over a hundred and fifty years made his career a second nature to him and helped rise through the ranks at every medical institution he ever worked at.

Now, when he walked into Osmund’s office, he was not surprised to see there was no open space on the desk at all. To Osmund’s right, his desktop Dell computer was on and to his left, his Dell laptop was also on, and in the middle was a pile of paperwork with gruesome photographs of a rotting, half eaten corpses poking out underneath autopsy reports and numerous police reports from Hungarian intelligence, which Osmund had been looking over intently until he raised his gaze when Henri entered and Osmund watched him with a blank expression on his face as Henri took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk with a file in his hand.

“What can I do for you?” Osmund asked nonchalantly, though inside he was brimming with anxiousness. He’d known this conversation was coming.

“I received the report on Melissa Sherburne’s autopsy,” Henri replied, setting the file in front of him. “And on Donald Jarvis.”

Osmund nodded, hiding his surprise. “I didn’t realize we were looking into that.”

“We weren’t until Delissio asked us to,” Henri replied. “They can’t figure out what killed them and the other victims and he’s getting anxious because the department doesn’t want any open cases of this magnitude for the President’s visit.”

“We don’t investigate animal attacks,” Osmund replied. “Tell him we can’t help him.”

“We investigate weredogs,” Henri replied. “I believe from looking at the photos that they were killed by weredogs.”

“They’re highly aggressive but if we had weredogs running loose in the city, we’d know it. They’d be out every night wiping out whole neighborhoods.”

“Not if they’re being trained to hunt and kill specific targets. You remember that incident up on the Iron Range.” Henri gave him a pointed look. “They didn’t believe that weredogs could be controlled, trained to do someone’s bidding, but those dogs were. And they suspected that there were other conspirators because the number of weredogs they tracked and killed did not equal the amount of supplies and equipment they found at the breeding site.”

“We don’t know the amount of supplies it takes to manage a weredog,” Osmund replied.

“Damnit, Osmund, we have a problem here,” Henri snapped. “We need to look into this.”

Osmund sighed. “I’ll have Alex, Marie and Trevor look into it. They’ve wanted a little more work, so they can take it. You can oversee them but give them some space. They’re about go off on their own next year and won’t always have us watching their backs; they need to learn how to work their own cases.”

“And what will you and Jethro be doing?”

“Jethro has to take a trip to Pakistan to clear up that gargoyle mess, I will be looking into the Milwaukee case,” Osmund said simply.

Henri cocked an eyebrow. “Even if that fell under our line of work, it’s out of our jurisdiction.”

“It enters our jurisdiction when the only survivor is settling here.” Osmund opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a file. “Background on the case should something happen here. Skim it over quickly and then give that back to me. The vampires that killed those folks are some nasty bastards. It’s a wonder that girl survived them.”

“It sounds like it was a random attack.” Henri said, picking up the file and giving it look. “She’ll be going to the same school as the kids,” he said after a moment. “I assume that is no accident?”

Osmund said nothing.

“What do you know that you’re not telling me?” Henri asked.

“The case strikes me as more than a random attack,” Osmund said quietly. “Per reports from a source involved in the case,” he added.

Henri nodded. “If you say so.” He shrugged. “But I think this will be closed fairly soon.”

Osmund nodded and turned to his computer, then looked back at Henri when he didn’t move. “Is there something else?” he asked.

“Have you noticed anything strange about your daughter?” Henri asked. “She’s pale, her loss of appetite, taking more and more naps?”

Osmund shrugged. This was the conversation he’d been bracing himself for. “She might just be feeling a little under the weather.”

“So, you are admitting that something is different?”

Osmund nodded. “Yes, but she has not mentioned anything to me and I’m sure she would if there was something seriously wrong. It happens, Henri. Being a little sleepier is no reason to get your panties in a twist.”

Henri frowned and pushed some of his white hair out of his face. “I’m a doctor. I can see the tale tell signs of early symptoms.”

Osmund feigned ignorance. “Symptoms of what?” he asked casually.

“I don’t know,” Henri replied. “But vampires don’t get sick. It’s kind of weird considering that we’re bloody dead and all.”

“You know how Evelyn is,” Osmund replied. “Just wait for her to come to you, or she’ll just bite your head off.”

“I don’t know how long I can wait before my head gets bitten off,” Henri replied. He stood up and set the file on the desk in front of Osmund. “Osmund, you better get her to come clean soon. I’m not going to sit on my ass when I know there’s something wrong with your daughter and I don’t know why you are.” Without waiting for a reply, he let himself out of Osmund’s office while Osmund remained in his seat staring at the seat that Henri just vacated.

Chapter One

Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Present

Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was sitting on her couch alone while a thunderstorm was raging outside.

Most people would not be watching a bloody, gory horror show on the TV alone on a stormy night, but Sarah wasn't most people and she'd seen enough blood and gore to last a lifetime.

As she watched Michael Myers hunting for his niece in the fourth Halloween film, she felt her throat tighten and her heart quicken. She'd watched hundreds of movies, many of them horror, but she never felt more connected to any of the characters in those films except young Jamie Lloyd, a young girl hunted by a killer who just won't seem to go away.

Watching Jamie Lloyd fell down a flight of stairs with her murderous uncle bearing down on her, Sarah felt the girl's mounting panic. Just as Myers was about to make his move, a loud shrill rang through the air at the same time a particularly loud roar of thunder sounded outside.

Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin and screamed loudly, just as Jamie's step-sister Rachel swooped in to save Jamie. She took a deep breath and reached for the source of the ringing, her cell phone on the end table next to the couch. Looking at the caller ID, she saw that it was her father, making his one hundredth call of the day, it felt like.

“Hello?” she answered tiredly. She grabbed the remote and turned the volume on her TV.

“Hey honey,” Adam Royston replied. “Just calling to see how you're doing.”

“I told you two hours ago that I was doing fine, Dad,” Sarah said, her voice softening a bit as she set the remote down.

“I know, but I also know that this is a distressing day for all of us, but most of all you. I worry about you being home alone tonight. There's a nasty storm going on right now and your neighborhood-”

“Is a neighborhood with lots of people nearby if I need something, Dad,” Sarah interrupted. “It was my choice to stay home tonight, just like it's my choice to move out in two weeks. Is the place in New York set up yet?”

“Yes, it'll be ready for you.” There was a short pause. “Honey, I feel like there's something you're not telling me. Why the sudden urge to move back to New York? It's not like I'm not happy you're moving back, because I tried to get you to go to college out here, but the way you sounded on the phone . . . Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, Dad, I'm not,” Sarah lied, glancing nervously around the room. “I'm just ready to come back. I have my credits worked out and everything; they'll transfer to the college I'll be enrolling in for fall semester.”

“Well, I wish you'd thought twice about staying home tonight and not going out with your friends,” Adam said reprovingly.

“Dad, it's eight o'clock at night, thirteen years later, and I'm still here.” Sarah rolled her eyes as she stood up. “I think if I was going to be kidnapped and tortured or killed, the Grim Reaper would've come for me by now.” She entered her kitchen and went to the fridge and pulled out her half gallon of rice milk.

“Honey, please don't be flippant about this,” Adam said in a firm voice.

Sarah sighed. “I'm sorry, Dad. But there is nothing for you to worry about.”

“This is the first year that you're alone . . . Of course I'm going to worry,” Adam said quickly. “I don't think I'll be able to sleep until tomorrow morning when the sun comes up and I hear your voice.”

“Then I will call you first thing in the morning when the sun comes up,” Sarah promised. “But I'm going to get ready for bed. I'll keep my phone by me, okay? If you can't sleep, try to get some work done.” She took a deep breath as she looked out the window above the sink at the downpour outside.

“I know I can be overbearing and nagging, but just know that I love you, Sarah.”

Sarah smiled into the phone, turning away from the window. “I love you too, Dad. Good night.” She hung up the phone and set it on the counter before moving over to the cupboard where the cups were stored and poured herself a glass of almond milk. Downing the milk in one gulp, she put the cup in the sink and let the water run to rinse it out as she went to the downstairs bathroom and turned on the shower.

As she was leaving the bathroom, she froze for a moment, listening. She thought she heard a sound, like footsteps. Feeling a chill run through her body, she went back to the kitchen to get her cell phone but found that it was missing from the spot where she had set it on the counter and the faucet in the sink was turned off.

Heart beating fast, she whirled around toward the back hallway where she had just come from and screamed at the site of an intruder standing at the kitchen threshold in a long black coat with a grey skull mask with red roses around the cut out of the eyes and painted red tears going down the cheeks.

Sarah turned and ran to the front door. She cursed as she grabbed the door handle and tried to yank the door open, but it wouldn't budge and she suddenly remembered that it was locked and she unlocked it in a frenzy and felt an enormous sense of relief as she threw the door open and stepped outside towards freedom, only to feel a hand grab a tight grip on her hair and yank her back inside before the door was slammed shut.

Three hours later, Detective Marshall Mears pulled up to the curb a few houses down from Sarah's house and got out of the car. It was still pouring out, but unfortunately, he wasn't able to park any closer with all the cruisers and crime scene unit vehicles that had gotten there before him so he kept his head down as he trudged up the sidewalk to Sarah's front porch, which was outside of the house, but was sheltered with a roof. He saw two young women in their early twenties standing off to the far side of the porch, hugging themselves as they wore police windbreakers over their shoulders to get warm.

His partner, Detective Oliver Grant, was standing outside the front door, speaking to a crime scene tech. Once he saw Mears approaching, he said something to the tech and then stepped away as the tech went into the house.

“Catch me up,” Mears said as he came to stand next to Oliver, peering inside the house.

Standing side by side, the two detectives could not have looked more different. Mears was big fitness guru, looking like a cross between a footballer and a model at six foot one, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle with his shoulder length blonde hair pulled back into a little ponytail, to highlight his brown eyes and chiselled, hard bone features, giving him an untraditionally handsome face.

One the other end of the spectrum, Grant was a shorter five foot seven, with a little pudge in the middle due to his affinity for comfort food, and with his black hair in a razor cut, with a thin face that was more plain than handsome. He most likely would've packed on more weight, but he had twin toddler boys, and two young daughters that he chased after at home, in addition to his wife's recent pledge to raise their children in a healthier lifestyle.

“Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was last seen four hours ago by her roommates before they left to go out with some friends. According to them, Sarah decided to stay in because she had to work tomorrow morning and she wasn't really a clubber anyway. They came home a little bit ago, found the front door wide open, the house a mess, and no sign of Sarah.”

“Ladies, this is my partner, Detective Mears,” Grant said, motioning for the girls to walk to them. “This is June Dallas and Alice Windsor,” he added. “The victim's roommates. They come home and found the place like this,” he said, motioning to the inside of the house.

Mears nodded a greeting to them as they approached, noting that they were pretty girls. Both had the windbreakers hanging over their shoulders so he was able to get a look at what they were both wearing. June's voluptuous hourglass figure was squeezed into a red mini dress and her black hair rolled up in a tight little bun on the top of her head and sporting simple black heels and clutching a little black purse. Alice's curly blonde hair was kept parted to the side with a gold hair clip and was wearing short little tank top that showed off her nicely toned stomach and matching mini skirt and was holding gold clutch.

“You ladies have a good night?” he asked. “You’re home pretty early. It’s not even midnight yet.

“It was pretty dead tonight,” June said in a shaky voice. “No one wanted to come out in the rain.”

“What was the occasion?”

“It was my cousin’s birthday.”

“Sarah and your cousin not friends or something?” Mears asked skeptically. “Was she not invited?”

“Sarah doesn’t like clubs,” June replied quickly, looking defensive. “She never explained why; it’s just not her thing. She gets along great with my cousin though, and she was invited.”

“If you’re looking for a suspect, I’ve got a name for you,” Alice jumped in. “Warren Pelt.”

“Who is Warren Pelt?” Mears asked.

“Sarah’s ex-boyfriend that she dumped about a month ago,” June explained. “He’s the only one I can think of with any reason to hurt her.”

“Do you guys have any contact information for this Warren Pelt?” Grant asked. “Even better; do you know where we can find him?”

“We don’t have his number . . .” Alice replied slowly, shaking her head.

“He’s still living on campus at the U because he’s taking summer classes,” June said quickly. “We hung out with him handful of times, but only because he was dating our roommate. We’re not friends with him or anything.”

“And did this Warren Pelt get your stamp of approval to date Sarah?”

The girls glanced at each other and shrugged.

“He wasn’t anything special in my opinion,” June said.

“And Sarah obviously didn’t think so either because she dumped him after she cheated on him with another guy,” Alice chimed in.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, go back a step there,” Mears said. “Did he know that Sarah was cheating on him?”

They nodded in unison.

“Sarah told us she was upfront with him about it because she felt really bad and owed it to him to tell him the truth,” June said. “She wanted to ‘do the right thing’ I guess,” she added, making the quote sign with her fingers.

“I told her she was dumb for that,” Alice said. “All she had to do was tell him she didn’t like him anymore. I heard he was really pissed off about it.”

“Well you’d be pissed off too if you found out your girlfriend cheated on you and then just left you high and dry,” June said with a defensive tone.

“Ladies, ladies, ladies,” Grant said quickly. “Your place is a crime scene right now and you can’t sleep here tonight.”

“We don’t want to sleep here anyway,” Alice said with a shrug.

“Can I call my cousin to come pick us up?” June asked.

“Yeah, just do it over there,” Mears said, waving them away dismissively toward the side of the porch where they were standing before he’d arrived. “Actually, just tell her we’ll drop you off,” he called after them.

“So we need to send a unit over to the campus and track down this Warren Pelt guy,” Grant muttered. “I’ve also got someone working on getting contact information for the family to notify them.”

“Actually, I have the family's contact information and I’ve already notified her father.”

Mears and Grant turned to see a woman in her mid-thirties walk up the porch steps. She was wearing a brown rain jacket with hood, and a black laptop bag draped across her front.

She came to stand in front of them and pulled her hood back, revealing her shocking red hair.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Mears asked suspiciously.

The woman reached into one of the pockets of her jacket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it to reveal an FBI badge. “Special Agent Jenna Larsen,” she said, putting the wallet back in her pocket.

“We didn't call the FBI in on this,” Grant said, confused. “The first responders just got to this crime scene less than an hour ago.”

“I know,” Jenna said, nodding. “But I happen to be familiar with Sarah Royston.”

“Is she involved in any active cases with the FBI?” Mears asked, wondering if that was the motive for Sarah's abduction.

“It's more than that; Sarah has a very dark past that appears to have caught up with her.”

Westminster, Minnesota

Thirteen Years Earlier

“Mommy! I can't find my Sleeping Beauty dress!” eight-year-old Sarah yelled as she pulled out the bottom drawer of her big dresser.

Camille Royston’s size six, short stature figure appeared in Sarah's doorway with a smile on her face. Camille wasn’t generally considered ‘beautiful’ with her long black hair wrapped up in a tight bun behind her hair, and her brown eyes, and round cheeks, but she was considered pleasant and pretty, which accompanied her kind and charitable personality.

Now, she stood in front of her daughter, holding up the missing dress with one hand.

The dress had a comfortable knit top, black velvet bodice, and mauve china silk skirt with whimsical detailing, and in the other hand, she held the black satin bow to complete her daughter’s outfit. She had bought the dress as a gift for Sarah to wear on Halloween when she was six and Sarah had been obsessed with it ever since.

“Oh I wonder where it could be,” Camille said in a sing song voice.

Sarah’s head jerked up and she pushed her wavy, shoulder length blonde hair behind her ears and smiled widely as her hazel eyes lit up and she raced to her mother.

“I was keeping it safe for you,” Camille said, smiling as she handed her daughter the bow.

“Thank you, Mommy!” Sarah cried happily, plopping the bow promptly on her head.

“I’ll go start the popcorn while you put this on,” Camille said. She walked around Sarah and laid the dress gingerly on Sarah’s full-size bed, which was covered with a large, pink blanket with the first three Disney princesses, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. At the head of the bed laid three pink pillows with the images of the different animal characters from each of the movies the princesses were first featured in.

“Don’t start the movie until I get into the living room!” Sarah ordered sternly as she followed her mother.

“A Disney Princess marathon wouldn’t be complete without my Sleeping Beauty,” Camille gushed as she leaned own and kissed Sarah’s forehead. She ran her hand through Sarah’s forehead and gave a little tug on the bow of her black hair band before she pulled her hand away and straightened up. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, and I promise I won’t start the movie without you.” She turned and walked out of the room while Sarah turned back to the dress and snatched it up, hugging it tightly.

Camille gingerly pulled the cardboard cover off the Jiffy Pop pan and checked to make sure the foil wasn’t penetrated or dented. After the pan passed her inspection, she set it on top of the electric stove top, which she had preheat a few moments before.

She turned away from the stove and moved over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine she had bought at the Westminster Spirits store earlier that day and set it on the counter. Her husband Adam had taken their two sons, six-year-old Joshua and five-year-old Kevin, out for a boys night of camping at the local campgrounds while Sarah had used the opportunity to demand a Disney Princess marathon, something she rarely got to do with having two younger brothers who weren’t interested in anything ‘princess’ whatsoever, so Camille had made sure to pack Sarah’s favorites: Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and even though Esmeralda wasn’t considered a Disney Princess, Sarah had demanded The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well.

As she pulled open one of the kitchen drawers to retrieve the corkscrew, she froze and looked up at the backdoor. She thought she’d heard a noise on the back porch.

Taking a deep breath, she reached over to the knife block and pulled out the biggest knife and slowly tip toed to the door. She placed a sweaty hand on the door handle and closed her eyes for a few seconds, counting to three in her head before she opened them and threw the door open. She stepped out onto the porch with the knife in her hand raised and ready to strike, her heart beating faster and faster as every second passed.

She looked around the porch into the yard beyond it but saw nothing besides trees. No movement, no strange sounds, just crickets chirping in the darkness.

As she sighed in relief, she let her hands hang down at her side, with the knife suddenly feeling heavy. She turned around and walked back into the house and shut the door, then locking all three locks before she turned to the counter and set the knife down.

“Jesus, Camille,” she muttered to herself as she leaned against the counter. “She’s gone. The Blood Rose Slayer is dead and she’s not coming back.”

Sarah raced into the living room just as Camille was setting a large bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.

“Popcorn!” Sarah said gleefully as she grabbed a handful and began stuff her mouth, with crumbs falling on the floor.

“Sarah!” Camille said reproachfully. “You’re getting popcorn everywhere! A princess doesn’t eat like a caveman.” She gave her a daughter a stern look before she picked up the DVD remote from the table and pressed the play button.

“I’m sorry Mommy,” Sarah said regretfully. She looked around the floor and began picking up the crumpled popcorn pieces.

Camille smiled as she bent down and gently pulled her daughter up by the arm. “Don’t worry sweetie, I’ll vacuum it up in the morning. Let’s watch the movie.”

Sarah was watching Princess Aurora dancing with Prince Philip in the forest, singing her favorite song, Once Upon A Dream.

“Mommy?” Sarah said, her eyes fixed on the screen as the song ended.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think I’ll ever find a prince?” she asked.

Camille smiled. “Of course! You’re a princess, remember? That’s what your name means. Princess.”

“And his name will be Philip? And he’ll speak like the people from England?”

Camille laughed. “I don’t know if his name will be Philip, or if he’ll speak like an Englishmen, but I’ll make sure he walks and talks like a prince, and treats you like a princess. How does that sound?”

Sarah contemplated it for a moment as she watched Aurora and Prince Philip part ways. “That’s fine. But I want him to look like Prince Philip.” She pointed to the screen. “And he has to know how to ride horses so we can ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.”

Camille nodded approvingly. “You know that Princess Aurora and Prince Philip don’t ride out into the sunset though, right? The movie ends with them dancing the fancy dance in the fancy ballroom on their wedding night.”

“With their mommys and daddys watching from their thrones.” Sarah shrugged. “Both endings are happy endings. You and Daddy are going to be watching me dance the fancy dance. What’s it called again?”

“The waltz,” Camille said quietly. “It’s called the waltz.”

“I want to go to England and do the waltz with Prince Philip,” Sarah announced. She looked up at her mother and was surprised to see a startled expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, mommy?”

Camille cleared her throat with a little shake of her head. “Honey, why are you so interested in England now?”

“Because they have princesses and princes there,” Sarah said. “And I’ve been there.”

Camille frowned. “What did you say?”

Sarah shifted so that she could face her mother now. “When I was a baby, you took me there.”

Camille shook her head, numbed by a sense of dread. “Honey, I never took you to England. Where did you get that idea?”

“The man at the library.”

Camille looked perplexed. “The man at the library?”

“I met him today. When you were in the bathroom, a man was walking by my table and saw the book you were reading about Princess Diana and Buckingham Palace. He said he thinks you should have some pictures of me at Buckingham Palace from when I was a baby.”

“That I have pictures of you at Buckingham Palace?”

Sarah nodded. “He said, “I remember seeing pictures of you and your mommy at Buckingham Palace when you were just a baby.”

Camille opened her mouth but before she could speak, there was a loud knock on the front door.

Chapter One

Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Present

Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was sitting on her couch alone while a thunderstorm was raging outside.

Most people would not be watching a bloody, gory horror show on the TV alone on a stormy night, but Sarah wasn’t most people and she’d seen enough blood and gore to last a lifetime.

As she watched Michael Myers hunting for his niece in the fourth Halloween film, she felt her throat tighten and her heart quicken. She’d watched hundreds of movies, many of them horror, but she never felt more connected to any of the characters in those films except young Jamie Lloyd, a young girl hunted by a killer who just won’t seem to go away.

Watching Jamie Lloyd fell down a flight of stairs with her murderous uncle bearing down on her, Sarah felt the girl’s mounting panic. Just as Myers was about to make his move, a loud shrill rang through the air at the same time a particularly loud roar of thunder sounded outside.

Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin and screamed loudly, just as Jamie’s step-sister Rachel swooped in to save Jamie. She took a deep breath and reached for the source of the ringing, her cell phone on the end table next to the couch. Looking at the caller ID, she saw that it was her father, making his one hundredth call of the day, it felt like.

“Hello?” she answered tiredly. She grabbed the remote and turned the volume on her TV.

“Hey honey,” Adam Royston replied. “Just calling to see how you’re doing.”

“I told you two hours ago that I was doing fine, Dad,” Sarah said, her voice softening a bit as she set the remote down.

“I know, but I also know that this is a distressing day for all of us, but most of all you. I worry about you being home alone tonight. There’s a nasty storm going on right now and your neighborhood-”

“Is a neighborhood with lots of people nearby if I need something, Dad,” Sarah interrupted. “It was my choice to stay home tonight, just like it’s my choice to move out in two weeks. Is the place in New York set up yet?”

“Yes, it’ll be ready for you.” There was a short pause. “Honey, I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Why the sudden urge to move back to New York? It’s not like I’m not happy you’re moving back, because I tried to get you to go to college out here, but the way you sounded on the phone . . . Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, Dad, I’m not,” Sarah lied, glancing nervously around the room. “I’m just ready to come back. I have my credits worked out and everything; they’ll transfer to the college I’ll be enrolling in for fall semester.”

“Well, I wish you’d thought twice about staying home tonight and not going out with your friends,” Adam said reprovingly.

“Dad, it’s eight o’clock at night, thirteen years later, and I’m still here.” Sarah rolled her eyes as she stood up. “I think if I was going to be kidnapped and tortured or killed, the Grim Reaper would’ve come for me by now.” She entered her kitchen and went to the fridge and pulled out her half gallon of rice milk.

“Honey, please don’t be flippant about this,” Adam said in a firm voice.

Sarah sighed. “I’m sorry, Dad. But there is nothing for you to worry about.”

“This is the first year that you’re alone . . . Of course I’m going to worry,” Adam said quickly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until tomorrow morning when the sun comes up and I hear your voice.”

“Then I will call you first thing in the morning when the sun comes up,” Sarah promised.

“But I’m going to get ready for bed. I’ll keep my phone by me, okay? If you can’t sleep, try to get some work done.” She took a deep breath as she looked out the window above the sink at the downpour outside.

“I know I can be overbearing and nagging, but just know that I love you, Sarah.”

Sarah smiled into the phone, turning away from the window. “I love you too, Dad. Good night.” She hung up the phone and set it on the counter before moving over to the cupboard where the cups were stored and poured herself a glass of almond milk. Downing the milk in one gulp, she put the cup in the sink and let the water run to rinse it out as she went to the downstairs bathroom and turned on the shower.

As she was leaving the bathroom, she froze for a moment, listening. She thought she heard a sound, like footsteps. Feeling a chill run through her body, she went back to the kitchen to get her cell phone but found that it was missing from the spot where she had set it on the counter and the faucet in the sink was turned off.

Heart beating fast, she whirled around toward the back hallway where she had just come from and screamed at the site of an intruder standing at the kitchen threshold in a long black coat with a grey skull mask with red roses around the cut out of the eyes and painted red tears going down the cheeks.

Sarah turned and ran to the front door. She cursed as she grabbed the door handle and tried to yank the door open, but it wouldn’t budge and she suddenly remembered that it was locked and she unlocked it in a frenzy and felt an enormous sense of relief as she threw the door open and stepped outside towards freedom, only to feel a hand grab a tight grip on her hair and yank her back inside before the door was slammed shut.

Three hours later, Detective Marshall Mears pulled up to the curb a few houses down from Sarah’s house and got out of the car. It was still pouring out, but unfortunately, he wasn’t able to park any closer with all the cruisers and crime scene unit vehicles that had gotten there before him so he kept his head down as he trudged up the sidewalk to Sarah’s front porch, which was outside of the house, but was sheltered with a roof. He saw two young women in their early twenties standing off to the far side of the porch, hugging themselves as they wore police windbreakers over their shoulders to get warm. His partner, Detective Oliver Grant, was standing outside the front door, speaking to a crime scene tech. Once he saw Mears approaching, he said something to the tech and then stepped away as the tech went into the house.

“Catch me up,” Mears said as he came to stand next to Oliver, peering inside the house.

Standing side by side, the two detectives could not have looked more different. Mears was big fitness guru, looking like a cross between a footballer and a model at six foot one, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle with his shoulder length blonde hair pulled back into a little ponytail, to highlight his brown eyes and chiselled, hard bone features, giving him an untraditionally handsome face.

One the other end of the spectrum, Grant was a shorter five foot seven, with a little pudge in the middle due to his affinity for comfort food, and with his black hair in a razor cut, with a thin face that was more plain than handsome. He most likely would’ve packed on more weight, but he had twin toddler boys, and two young daughters that he chased after at home, in addition to his wife’s recent pledge to raise their children in a healthier lifestyle.

“Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was last seen four hours ago by her roommates before they left to go out with some friends. According to them, Sarah decided to stay in because she had to work tomorrow morning and she wasn’t really a clubber anyway. They came home a little bit ago, found the front door wide open, the house a mess, and no sign of Sarah. I’ve got someone working on getting contact information for the family to notify them.”

“Actually, I have the family’s contact information and I’ve already notified her father.”

Mears and Grant turned to see a woman in her mid-thirties walk up the porch steps. She was wearing a brown rain jacket with hood, and a black laptop bag draped across her front.

She came to stand in front of them and pulled her hood back, revealing her shocking red hair and piercing greeny eyes.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Mears asked suspiciously.

The woman reached into one of the pockets of her jacket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it to reveal an FBI badge. “Special Agent Jenna Larsen,” she said, putting the wallet back in her pocket.

“We didn’t call the FBI in on this,” Grant said, confused. “The first responders just got to this crime scene less than an hour ago.”

“I know,” Jenna said, nodding. “But I happen to be familiar with Sarah Royston.”

“Is she involved in any active cases with the FBI?” Mears asked, wondering if that was the motive for Sarah’s abduction.

“It’s more than that; Sarah has a very dark past that appears to have caught up with her.”

Westminster, Minnesota

Thirteen Years Earlier

“Mommy! I can’t find my Sleeping Beauty dress!” eight-year-old Sarah yelled as she pulled out the bottom drawer of her big dresser.

Camille Royston’s size six, short stature figure appeared in Sarah’s doorway with a smile on her face. Camille wasn’t generally considered ‘beautiful’ with her long black hair wrapped up in a tight bun behind her hair, and her brown eyes, and round cheeks, but she was considered pleasant and pretty, which accompanied her kind and charitable personality.

Now, she stood in front of her daughter, holding up the missing dress with one hand. The dress had a comfortable knit top, black velvet bodice, and mauve china silk skirt with whimsical detailing, and in the other hand, she held the black satin bow to complete her daughter’s outfit. She had bought the dress as a gift for Sarah to wear on Halloween when she was six and Sarah had been obsessed with it ever since.

“Oh I wonder where it could be,” Camille said in a sing song voice.

Sarah’s head jerked up and she pushed her wavy, shoulder length blonde hair behind her ears and smiled widely as her hazel eyes lit up and she raced to her mother.

“I was keeping it safe for you,” Camille said, smiling as she handed her daughter the bow.

“Thank you, Mommy!” Sarah cried happily, plopping the bow promptly on her head.

“I’ll go start the popcorn while you put this on,” Camille said. She walked around Sarah and laid the dress gingerly on Sarah’s full-size bed, which was covered with a large, pink blanket with the first three Disney princesses, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. At the head of the bed laid three pink pillows with the images of the different animal characters from each of the movies the princesses were first featured in.

“Don’t start the movie until I get into the living room!” Sarah ordered sternly as she followed her mother.

“A Disney Princess marathon wouldn’t be complete without my Sleeping Beauty,” Camille gushed as she leaned own and kissed Sarah’s forehead. She ran her hand through Sarah’s forehead and gave a little tug on the bow of her black hair band before she pulled her hand away and straightened up. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, and I promise I won’t start the movie without you.” She turned and walked out of the room while Sarah turned back to the dress and snatched it up, hugging it tightly.

Camille gingerly pulled the cardboard cover off the Jiffy Pop pan and checked to make sure the foil wasn’t penetrated or dented. After the pan passed her inspection, she set it on top of the electric stove top, which she had preheat a few moments before.

She turned away from the stove and moved over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine she had bought at the Westminster Spirits store earlier that day and set it on the counter. Her husband Adam had taken their two sons, six-year-old Joshua and five-year-old Kevin, out for a boys night of camping at the local campgrounds while Sarah had used the opportunity to demand a Disney Princess marathon, something she rarely got to do with having two younger brothers who weren’t interested in anything ‘princess’ whatsoever, so Camille had made sure to pack Sarah’s favorites: Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and even though Esmeralda wasn’t considered a Disney Princess, Sarah had demanded The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well.

As she pulled open one of the kitchen drawers to retrieve the corkscrew, she froze and looked up at the backdoor. She thought she’d heard a noise on the back porch.

Taking a deep breath, she reached over to the knife block and pulled out the biggest knife and slowly tip toed to the door. She placed a sweaty hand on the door handle and closed her eyes for a few seconds, counting to three in her head before she opened them and threw the door open. She stepped out onto the porch with the knife in her hand raised and ready to strike, her heart beating faster and faster as every second passed.

She looked around the porch into the yard beyond it but saw nothing besides trees. No movement, no strange sounds, just crickets chirping in the darkness.

As she sighed in relief, she let her hands hang down at her side, with the knife suddenly feeling heavy. She turned around and walked back into the house and shut the door, then locking all three locks before she turned to the counter and set the knife down.

“Jesus, Camille,” she muttered to herself as she leaned against the counter. “She’s gone. The Blood Rose Slayer is dead and she’s not coming back.”

Sarah raced into the living room just as Camille was setting a large bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.

“Popcorn!” Sarah said gleefully as she grabbed a handful and began to stuff her mouth with crumbs falling on the ground.

“Sarah!” Camille said reproachfully. “You’re getting popcorn everywhere! A princess doesn’t eat like a caveman.” She gave her a daughter a stern look before she picked up the DVD remote from the table and pressed the play button.

“I’m sorry Mommy,” Sarah said regretfully. She looked around the floor and began picking up the crumpled popcorn pieces.

Camille smiled as she bent down and gently pulled her daughter up by the arm. “Don’t worry sweetie, I’ll vacuum it up in the morning. Let’s watch the movie.”

Sarah was watching Princess Aurora dancing with Prince Philip in the forest, singing her favorite song, Once Upon A Dream.

“Mommy?” Sarah said, her eyes fixed on the screen as the song ended.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think I’ll ever find a prince?” she asked.

Camille smiled. “Of course! You’re a princess, remember? That’s what your name means. Princess.”

“And his name will be Philip? And he’ll speak like the people from England?”

Camille laughed. “I don’t know if his name will be Philip, or if he’ll speak like an Englishmen, but I’ll make sure he walks and talks like a prince, and treats you like a princess. How does that sound?”

Sarah contemplated it for a moment as she watched Aurora and Prince Philip part ways. “That’s fine. But I want him to look like Prince Philip.” She pointed to the screen. “And he has to know how to ride horses so we can ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.”

Camille nodded approvingly. “You know that Princess Aurora and Prince Philip don’t ride out into the sunset though, right? The movie ends with them dancing the fancy dance in the fancy ballroom on their wedding night.”

“With their mommys and daddys watching from their thrones.” Sarah shrugged. “Both endings are happy endings. You and Daddy are going to be watching me dance the fancy dance. What’s it called again?”

“The waltz,” Camille said quietly. “It’s called the waltz.”

“I want to go to England and do the waltz with Prince Philip,” Sarah announced. She looked up at her mother and was surprised to see a startled expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, mommy?”

Camille cleared her throat with a little shake of her head. “Honey, why are you so interested in England now?”

“Because they have princesses and princes there,” Sarah said. “And I’ve been there.”

Camille frowned. “What did you say?”

Sarah shifted so that she could face her mother now. “When I was a baby, you took me there.”

Camille shook her head, numbed by a sense of dread. “Honey, I never took you to England. Where did you get that idea?”

“The man at the library.”

Camille looked perplexed. “The man at the library?”

“I met him today. When you were in the bathroom, a man was walking by my table and saw the book you were reading about Princess Diana and Buckingham Palace. He said he thinks you should have some pictures of me at Buckingham Palace from when I was a baby.”

“That I have pictures of you at Buckingham Palace?”

Sarah nodded. “He said, “I remember seeing pictures of you and your mommy at Buckingham Palace when you were just a baby.”

Camille opened her mouth but before she could speak, there was a loud knock on the front door.

Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Present

Grant set two evidence bags on Mears’ desk in their squad room. One bag held a photo of Sarah in bed with another man, while the other had held the same photo, only with a red ‘X’ drawn over the man’s face.

“Forensics had found it after searching Sarah’s room,” he told Mears. “According to Stevens, Agent Larsen caught a glimpse of those photos and ran out of there like a bat out of hell. But whatever. This is our priority. Finding out who this guy is and who took these photos.”

“A jilted lover?” Mears said quietly, pulling the clean photo towards himself.

“Maybe his girlfriend or wife or something caught him cheating with Sarah, or Sarah had a secret admirer. Whatever this is, someone clearly did not want them together.”

“And looking for him is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Grant said with a dejected look as he sat on the edge of the desk.

“His name is William Usher,” Jenna said.

Grant and Mears looked up at her in surprise.

“He’s a member of Scotland Yard,” Jenna explained. “He and Sarah met during a case that I was working on six months ago. The murder of an FBI recruit and her parents in Richmond, Virginia. I called my superiors on my way here. Will Usher is a British citizen, and even more importantly, a British cop. You’re treading into FBI territory now, and you’ll need FBI resources to track him down.”

Richmond, Virginia

Six Months Earlier

William ‘Will’ Usher stepped out of the FBI vehicle in a fog as he stared at the house on Dewitt Drive.

Two hours ago, he’d been pulled into the office of Special Agent Lucas Kirkman, who had informed him that one of the FBI recruits in the program Will was participating in was brutally murdered along with her parents.

Layla Webster had been a fresh faced twenty-six-year-old recruit. She wasn’t considered a conventional beauty, but her looks made her intelligently beautiful. She had a thin face, high cheek bones and big, brown eyes. She had a slender, petite body, and she preferred to dress in more conservative style. She spoke in an eloquent fashion, with a soothing voice and an articulate vocabulary. But what he loved most about her was the energy she put into everything she was doing while they went through the course together.

And now, they were at a crime scene together. The scene of her murder.

He saw two agents coming out of the three story Victorian style house wish ashen faces. He took a deep breath and marched up to the house, but two uniforms stopped him at the front steps, demanding to know who he was.

Special Agent Jenna Larsen, was standing on the front steps, saw him and moved forward.

“He’s with me!” she called to the uniforms. “You can let him through.”

The two uniforms exchanged a look and stepped aside to let him pass and he quickly hurried up the steps and stood in front of Jenna.

“She’s still in there,” Jenna said quietly. “The parents too.”

“I want to see her,” Will said.

Jenna sighed. “If you go in there, you won’t remember her the way you knew her before…” She paused and moistened her lips. “The only thing you’ll see when you think of her the way that sick fuck left her.”

“I see dead bodies all the time in London.”

“London hasn’t seen anything like what’s in that house since Jack the Ripper,” she said, laughing dryly. “But if you think you’re up for it, go ahead. Tell the guys in there I said you were cleared. I need to go get some statements from the neighbors, see if they saw or heard anything.” She patted his shoulder and walked down the steps without another word.

Will looked after her for a moment, and then turned and entered the house.

There was a staircase about six feet in front of the door, going up to the second floor and he saw the second floor landing on the left side. The wall along the staircase was brown and covered with family portraits of Layla and her family throughout the years. She had two brothers and two sisters, who thankfully were not at the house and were spared from the same fate as their sister and parents. Will remembered Layla saying she and her siblings were as thick as thieves growing up, and despite the fact that they were all spread out around the country, that bond never weakened.

There was a landing on the stairs which showed the beginning of a hallway on the second level, but he couldn’t really pay attention to that because of the way Layla Webster’s naked body was strung up on the landing.

His mouth dropped open at the sight and he thought his stomach contents might come spilling out.

Her arms were spread out, and tied to at the wrists with rope, and her head was tied around the neck to hold it upright so that her entire face was shown without obstructing the view. Her shoulder length hair was hanging loosely and her eyes had been cut out with a white rose covered in what he suspected was her own blood. Will’s gaze moved down and it only got worse. Her heart had also been cut out, and her left breast was cut out. The lover half of her body was covered in blood, as if it had been smeared on like paint.

Will blinked and walked out of the house and leaned against the railing on the front porch, trying not to throw up.

He took deep breaths as he remembered meeting Layla for the first time on his first night at Quantico. He was in the library late at night, looking up some cases that would be covered during the three-week course and he was so immersed in his research that he almost jumped out of his skin when he felt that light tap on his shoulder and looked to see her staring down at him with an apologetic smile on her face. She had found a book that she wanted, but it was on the top shelf and she couldn’t reach it. So, like a proper English gentleman, he graciously came to her aid.

He had every intention of returning to his books, but when he saw the book that Layla had asked him to grab for her, it piqued his interest. It was a book on the Blood Rose Slayer murders in Minnesota, which occurred twenty years earlier.

He started inquiring about her interest in the case, and they ended up sitting down right at that spot, spending three hours going through the book, sharing their thoughts and opinions as they flipped through it and even spent a good chunk of that time sitting in silence as they read passages and chapters from it together.

And that’s when he put it together. The Blood Rose Slayer.

Layla’s body had been posed like one of the victims in the Blood Rose Slayer book, the book that had brought them together.

Was it a coincidence?

He scanned the front yard noticed Jenna questioning a young woman in front of the house next door on the right. The girl had her back turned toward him and was hugging herself as the wind blew her long blonde hair around lightly.

He watched Jenna put a hand on the girl’s arm and give her a reassuring look and then pulled her hand away and reach into her wallet and pull out a card, which she then handed to the girl, who accepted it. Then Jenna nodded and walked away from the girl back towards the Webster house.

He straightened up and hurried down the stairs to meet her halfway. “Who was that?” he asked.

“There’s a group of college kids renting the house next door,” Jenna explained. “I was just asking her if she saw anything. She wasn’t much help, but I gave her my card in case she remembers anything.”

“What’s her name?” Will asked, staring at the girl.

“Sarah Royston,” Jenna said absently as her phone started ringing.

Will’s eyes widened as the girl turned around to face him and his mouth dropped.

Sarah turned and saw Agent Larsen approach a tall man who looked about ten years older than her and had a brief exchange with him before she put her phone to her ear and turned away from him. She watched his eyes widen and his mouth drop open as their eyes connected.

She took a deep breath and quickly turned away from him, unnerved by the obvious recognition. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised; she’d seen the same brief flash of recognition in Agent Larsen’s eyes when she’d introduced herself.

The Blood Rose Slayer case was one of the most famous murder cases in the upper Midwest and the fact that the only known survivor, her mother, was murdered in a similar matter less than ten years later had brought it all back to the front page of newspapers across the country, along with the fact that her mother’s murder was never solved.

And she knew it would happen again once the press got wind that Sarah Royston was staying next door to the house where the family of an FBI agent was brutally murdered.

Taking a deep breath, she walked back the house. Agent Larsen appeared to be done with her and if she wanted to ask her more questions, she could come inside. But Sarah wanted to prolong the press’ intrusion for as long as possible and avoid getting her picture in the papers.

Feeling on edge, she made her way to the back of the house and went to the kitchen, heading straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of pomegranate vodka. After preparing a medium sized glass of vodka on the rocks, she walked to the dining room table and set her glass down and pulled a bottle of Oxycodone out of her purse.

She sighed and popped the lid open and dumped two pills into her palm before replacing the lid and putting the bottle back in her purse.

She took a deep breath as she stared at the two tiny pills in her hands, and the sound of her mother’s voice echoed in her head.

Westminster, Minnesota

Twelve ½ Years Earlier

Camille’s head whipped around at the sound of the knocking.

“Who is that?” Sarah asked.

Camille turned to her daughter, struggling to hide the terror that was rising inside of her. She gently put two hands on her daughter’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “A stranger,” she whispered. “Honey, I need you to do me a very important favor.”

Sarah nodded silently, jumping as the knocking turned into pounding.

“I need you to go to your room and hide under your bed. You know how you hide under your bed by pulling out the square when you’re playing with your brothers, and you put the square back after you get under the bed so they can’t see you? I need you to do that for me right now. Go under your bed and put the square back in it’s place, and be very, very quiet.”

“Mommy?” Sarah’s eyes started glistening with tears.

“Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Camille promised. “Do not come out unless I say so. Promise?”

Sarah nodded her head jerkily.

“Okay.” Camille pulled Sarah into her arms and hugged her tight. “I love you. Now go!”

Sarah nodded and kissed her mother on the cheek before she got off the couch and ran to her room.

Richmond, Virginia

Six Months Earlier

There was a loud smack and she jumped and looked up to see the screen door smacking as it was being thrown around by a gust of wind behind the main back door. She tossed the pills in her mouth and followed it with the vodka, emptying the glass before she set it down and walked to the back door and threw it open.

She grabbed the handle of the screen door and held it firmly against the wind and halfway turned around to close it when something stopped her and she slowly turned to look out at the trees behind the house.

They reminded her of the trees behind the Westminster house. She used to imagine that the Westminster house was the house in Sleeping Beauty, and that her mother was the fairy Flora, raising her just like she raised Aurora. In the movie Maleficent, the story was slightly different, revealing that Maleficent used to watch Aurora from the woods around the house, having known where she was all along. Now, Sarah wondered if her mother’s killer had been watching them like Maleficent before she struck.

And if he was watching now.

She felt her breath catch as she figured it out what had stopped her from shutting the door; she’d had the feeling that she wasn’t alone. That someone was watching her from the trees.

She took a deep breath and shut the screen door, making sure it was locked before she shut the main door and locked that as well. She closed her eyes and turned, rested her head against the door, taking a deep breath.

“I’m sure the quiet in the back of the house must feel like a relief compared to the front.”

Sarah opened her eyes in alarm and was startled to see the agent she’d seen with Agent Larsen earlier standing in the threshold of the kitchen and the living room.

“Can I help you Mr...”

“Usher,” the man answered with an English accent. “Will Usher.”

“Like The Fall of the House of Usher,” Sarah said. She walked to the dining room table where her purse and her empty glass were sitting.

“House of Usher?” The man gave her a questioning look.

“It’s a story from Edgar Allan Poe,” Sarah replied. She leaned against the table, watching him closely.

“Ah. I’m not really informed in the area of American literature.”

“I see that.” Sarah cleared her throat.

“How old are you?” Will asked, folding his arms.

“Twenty,” Sarah said, looking him in the eye.

“Isn’t the legal drinking age in this country twenty-one?”

She nodded.

“You could be arrested for that then.” He motioned to her purse. “And what was in that bottle?”

“Like I said, it’s vodka,” Sarah said, pretending to misunderstand him. “I don’t know how you say it in British, but in American, that’s how we say it.”

“British isn’t a language, it’s a culture,” Will corrected irritably, recognizing her ruse for what it was. “But we both know I was referring to the party favors you pulled out of your bag. What’s in that bottle?”

“Medication,” Sarah said sourly, folding her arms now.

“Was it prescribed to you?” he asked.

“Not every medication needs to be prescribed to you in order for you to take it,” Sarah sniped, irritated at how this stranger was invading her privacy.

“What’s the name of the medication?” Will asked again. “I already know it’s illegal.”

“Oxycodone,” Sarah said promptly.

“And I bet you don’t have a prescription for that by a licensed doctor, do you? You know that is also illegal.”

Sarah gave him a defiant look and held her hand out with her wrists together. “You caught me. Guess it’s time for you to do your civic duty and arrest me.”

Will said nothing as he unfolded his arms and started walking toward her. He stopped in front of her and pushed her arms down and then gently turned her around and pulled her arms behind her back.

Sarah felt her face burning as she stared at the orange pill bottle sitting on top inside of her purse and frowned when a hand snaked around her and snatched the bottle up.

She turned around just as Will walked away from her and around the table to the sink, popping the top of the bottle off and dumping the contents into the sink. She stared in shock with her mouth dropped open and watched him turned the garbage disposal on, crushing the pills he had just dumped down there.

He let the disposal run for a brief moment and then shut it off and turned toward her, tossing the empty bottle lightly on the table.

“I’m not going to arrest you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m just a visiting officer from England here on an FBI training course. I don’t have the authority to arrest you even if I was inclined to. But if I catch you doing this again, I’ll pass this information on to the authorities who do have the power to make an arrest. You’re a young, beautiful woman and you’re above that nonsense.” He motioned to the pill bottle. “There are other ways to handle your internal struggles.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re a complete stranger to me,” Sarah said incredulously. “You just trespassed into the house I’m staying in and threatened to arrest me even though you don’t have the power to do that, and you’re standing here trying to tell me to find some way to deal my ‘internal struggles’ that you don’t know anything about. I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing each other again. Get out.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said softly.

“Then maybe you should’ve started with making your presence known instead of standing there spying on me,” she sniped. “You must’ve been there for a few minutes if you saw me take those pills out of my purse.”

“I did,” he replied with a frown. “I said your name but you clearly didn’t hear me. You were staring in your hand like you were in some sort of trance. Or like your mind went somewhere else.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “I was lost in a thought,” she admitted.

“And what about when you were at the door? You seemed unnerved by something.”

“A family was just murdered next door in the middle of the night while I slept soundly in my bed,” she said with a dry laugh. “Why would I have any reason to be nervous?”

“According to the statement you gave Special Agent Larsen, you didn’t have any information to help them find out who did it.”

“Because I don’t!” Sarah insisted.

“But something is clearly bothering you,” Will said slowly, looking at her thoughtfully.

Sarah glanced at the back door before she turned her gaze back to him. “I told Agent Larsen everything I know,” she said quietly. “If I remember anything, I’ll give her a call.” She pulled the card out of her pocket and held up for him to see. “Please leave, Will Usher.”

“Usher!”

Sarah and Will turned their heads and saw Agent Larsen standing there, staring at them disapprovingly.

“I already questioned Ms. Royston,” she informed Will sharply. “No one told you to come in here and question her again. I apologize on DI Usher’s behalf for this intrusion, Ms. Royston,” she said coolly, her eyes glued to Will. She cocked her head toward the front door and turned on her heel and walked away.

Will turned back to Sarah. “Sorry for the intrusion, Ms. Royston,” he said quietly before he turned and followed Agent Larsen.

Sarah stood rooted to the spot, even after she heard the front door close.

Will shut the door behind him and turned around and took a step back, startled to see Jenna standing there, glaring at him.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded.

“I thought I would try my hand at it,” Will replied quietly.

“You’re not an agent, DI Usher,” she snapped. “You had no authority to go in there and question her like one.”

“I let her know that I wasn’t–”

“And I’ll let you know that you just put this investigation in jeopardy! If this goes to trial and she decides to mention your little chat, it’s possible she could accuse the Bureau of prejudice and harassment. Stay away from her!”

She turned around on her heel, but he grabbed her and yanked her back before she could walk away and made her face him. “You think she did this,” he said, frowning.

Jenna ripped her arm out of his hands and stepped to him so that they were nose to nose. “You don’t know anything about this girl,” she hissed.

“I know that she’s certainly not a killer. And I’ll prove it.” He stepped around her and walked away, feeling the heat of her eyes as she glared at his back.

Battersea, London, England

The Present

The loud ring of a cell phone jerked Will out of his dream and back to reality as he opened his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

He felt movement beside him and turned his head to see a young woman pull the blanket back that was covering her head to reveal a face strikingly similar to Sarah’s.

“Would you mind shutting that off?” she asked groggily with her eyes half closed.

Her English accent jerked him out of his reverie and he turned his head as he reached for the phone on his nightstand and snatched it up. Checking the caller ID, he answered at once after seeing DCI Eireann ‘Ann’ Hines’ number on the screen.

“It’s the middle of the fucking night,” he snapped. “I’m not on duty.”

“It’s actually seven in the fucking morning,” she snapped back. Then she took a deep breath. “Will, my superiors just received a phone call from the top brass of the FBI in the States,” Ann said, her voice taking on a grim tone. “A Special Agent Jenna Larsen is requesting a statement from you regarding someone named Sarah uh . . . Shit I can’t remember.”

“Royston,” Will said, instantly alert as he sat up at the sound of Sarah’s name.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Ann said. “The girl has been kidnapped, Will.”

An hour later, Will was in Ann’s office at Scotland Yard, seated in front of her desk as she finished up a phone call with the FBI.

Born in an Irish village of Ashford about an hour south of Dublin, Ann had built up a career and resume on the Dublin police force before moving to London ten years previously and moving up the ranks. She was a headstrong woman who struggled between balancing her personal feelings with the challenging decisions she was constantly making as part of her job title. Will had joined the force around the same time as Ann, though he didn’t have her ambition to move up, and was instead comfortable with his rank of Detective Inspector while Ann revelled in her success as an Irish woman in a leadership position within Scotland Yard, one of the most formidable police forces in the world.

Ann was a beautiful woman with pale skin as white as snow and hair as black as ebony. She had a nice slim, but toned figure due to spending at least twenty hours in the gym every week, though this wasn’t so much out of concern for her looks, but to remain as healthy as possible, and she couldn’t imagine herself slowing down.

Due to her harsh personality, her physical features and the hard stare that almost never left her face, she was given the name ‘Snow White’ around the force, though she had laughed hysterically when Will informed her of this but pretended like she didn’t know about the nickname. She could’ve been dubbed something worse, and she happened to like the fairy tale.

“Yes, I’ll call you back when he gets in and set it up,” Ann said. “Good bye.” She hung up the phone and looked up at him and took a deep breath. “The director of the FBI wants a statement from you. He thinks you were in the States on assignment without the Americans’ knowledge, however I informed him that that is far from the case. But I want to hear from you before they do. How do you know this girl, Will?”

Will leaned forward. “I met her when I attended that training program at Quantico. You heard about the recruit that was murdered; Sarah was staying next door to victim.”

“Okay, but why did you go to Minnesota last month to see her? If it was something to do with the case, you should’ve gone to the FBI.”

“I-I . . .” Will closed his mouth, unable to give her an answer she would want to hear.

But his silence was all Ann needed to hear and she leaned forward in her seat, resting her elbows on the desk as she looked him dead in the eye. “There have been many women to grace your bed over the years that I’ve known you, including some on this force. You have plenty of warm, willing bodies here. And yet you travelled across an ocean to see this one?”

Will nodded. “There was something about her,” he said softly. “Something about being around her just felt right. It felt comfortable, it felt familiar.”

“How did it feel familiar? You just met this girl for the first time six months ago.”

“I can’t explain it. But I had to see her, so I took some time off and I went. It wasn’t about the case, or any case for that matter. It was a personal visit.”

“Will, you know how this looks!” she snapped, slapping the desk. “The FBI does not care about personal, and quite frankly, neither do I. You met this girl, whatever her name is–”

“Sarah,” Will interrupted. “Her name is Sarah. Sarah Marie Royston.”

“You met Sarah six months ago on a case involving a serial killer’s legacy that has haunted her for years. Megan Brooks was a resident of London studying in Minnesota. You, a Scotland Yard cop, meets Sarah six months ago on that case in Virginia, then you visit her again in Minnesota last month, and then last night, she is abducted. Are you really going to tell me that the sequence of events I just laid out for you is purely coincidental?”

“It is,” Will answered without hesitation.

Ann narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve been a cop for over fifteen years, I’m five years into my current role as DCI, and we’ve worked together for ten years now. You know I didn’t get this job by flashing a pretty smile and leaving my top three buttons undone, I got this position based on my skill and the merits of my work. Now I’m no whanker, and you’re no bloke, so why the bloody hell do you think it’s smart to insult my intelligence? Are you just being cheeky? Do you find this situation funny? Because I sure as hell–”

“Of course not!” Will shouted, jumping out of his chair. “A girl has been kidnapped for Christ’s sake!”

“Exactly!” Ann shouted back, standing up as well. “Damnit Will, a girl’s life is at stake! So, you either tell me what the hell is going on right now, or I’ll call my superiors and have them throw you to the FBI in handcuffs for obstructing their investigation!”

Will took a deep breath. “Fine. I do have something to tell you. But it doesn’t leave this room and it’s for your ears only.”

Ann held up a hand motioning for him to stop. “Did you have something to do with this kidnapping?”

“No.”

“Did you commit a crime that’s been connected to this kidnapping or the murder investigation in Virginia?”

“No,” Will said in exasperation.

“Then as far I’m concerned, it’s none of the bloody FBI’s business,” Ann said quietly. She sat down and motioned for him to do the same.

1. Getting those creative juices flowing

2. Cajun wings

3. Soy chai tea

4. Taking a trip to London

5. My next writing class

6. Black Cherry Gelato

7. Chateau Ste Michelle Harvest Select (Wine)

8. Haunted houses

9. Bar Bingo w/friends

10. Potato Skins

11. Scattegories

12. Psych (TV Series)

13. Getting my first book published

14. Moving to the Isle of Man

15. Wine & Cake Night with the gals