The Sinner Read online

  I searched the tenebrous recesses for Darius Goodwine. “Where are you?” I called softly.

  “Here,” he said from the shadows. “Can’t you see me?” His voice was low and resonant. Otherworldly.

  Wrapping my arms around my middle, I took another few steps inside. I spotted him then, or thought I did. Maybe my eyes were still dazzled from the sunlight, but like the man in the mask, his form seemed to waver in and out of reality. I had no doubt that he was there, though. In one form or another.

  A breeze rippled his loose clothing, and when he moved, a trail of blue sparks followed him. I could smell the ozone of his presence, could hear a faint tinkle from the metal charms he wore around his neck and wrist. I wondered how I could take in all these details if he only existed in my head.

  “Are you real?” I murmured.

  His white teeth flashed in the gloom. “I’m as real as you need or want me to be.”

  “I don’t need or want you at all,” I said. “You’re the one who keeps seeking me out.”

  “But there was a time when you came to me and now we have unfinished business. A score to settle, as it were.”

  I sighed. I had always known it would eventually come back to the debt that I owed him for bringing Devlin back from the other side. “What is it you want from me this time?”

  “Our bargain remains the same. Expose the killer and I’ll help you find your great-grandmother’s key.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Not easy, but necessary. I told you before, he’ll kill again if you don’t stop him.”

  “Atticus Pope, you mean.” The very mention of the witch doctor’s name seemed to have a chilling effect on both of us. My heart started to hammer in trepidation and I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder. No one was about. The cemetery remained sun-drenched and empty, yet I felt we were being watched.

  As for Darius, he’d moved back so deeply into the shadows that I thought for a moment he’d disappeared altogether. Even the scent of ozone had faded.

  I took a few more steps inside the ruins. I was well away from the arches now. Too far to make a dash back into the sunlight if I felt threatened. “If you know Atticus Pope is responsible for that woman’s death, then why not tell the police? You could do it anonymously if you don’t want to get involved.”

  “And tell them what? That a man who died twenty years ago now hides in the body of another? What do you think their response would be?”

  He was right, of course. Even if Kendrick remained open-minded, that would be a hard pill to swallow. “Do you know who Pope is now?”

  “Only you can unmask him.”

  “Then how can you be sure it’s him? How do you know he’s come back?”

  “The signs are all there,” Darius said. “You just have to know where to look.”

  He pointed to a place on the wall between two of the arches and I turned to follow his direction. The vines and foliage had been recently chopped away to reveal a large triskele that had been etched into the surface of the brick.

  I glanced at Darius. “I don’t understand. What does that prove?”

  “This was his place. He’s come back to claim it.”

  I scoured the ruins anxiously. “I never noticed before how unsettling it is to be inside here.”

  “You’re only now opening yourself up to the vibrations,” Darius said. “To the dark emotions that reside here. During all the months that you’ve worked near these ruins, the key you wear around your neck has protected you. It allowed you to deny your true nature by blocking their screams, but you can’t keep them silenced forever. Just like the ghosts of Kroll Cemetery, they demand to be heard.”

  “How do you know about the ghosts of Kroll Cemetery?” I asked with a frown.

  “I know everything about you. Your whole life is right there in your head, right there in your dreams. Buried deep, some of it, but not too difficult to find if one knows where to look.”

  The notion of him having access to my private dreams and buried memories terrified me, but I didn’t bother trying to shut him out because I was no match for his cunning. Not yet, anyway. “Is that why you brought me here? To show me that symbol?”

  He put a finger to his lips to silence me as he lifted his head, listening. I did the same, but I heard nothing beyond the sawing of the breeze through the trees.

  “What is it?” I asked, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I wished fervently to go back to the peace and quiet of early summer before I’d stumbled upon those mortsafes. I wanted to end my day with the lull of a sea breeze and the sway of the hammock and the satisfying exhaustion of hard work. I wanted to hide behind the protection of Rose’s key until everything went back to the way it had been before Darius Goodwine’s arrival, but I knew in my heart there was no turning back. I’d passed the point of no return the moment I followed him into the ruins. I had no choice but to do his bidding because he wouldn’t leave me alone now that my defenses had tumbled.

  “Listen,” he said. “Just listen to them.”

  I had the urge to press my hands to my ears and block out whatever had endured inside that abandoned place, but instead I forced my gaze to move slowly over the symbol. The linking spirals were oddly hypnotic. I felt myself weave as a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

  “Don’t fight it,” Darius said, his lyrical cadence deceptively mesmeric. “Let them in.”

  My hands clenched into fists at my sides as if I could somehow defy his witchery. But I felt an all too familiar tightness in my chest as my stomach began to churn. “I’m not well,” I said. “I need some air.”

  “Let them in.”

  My ears began to roar. The day was still and silent and yet suddenly I felt as if I’d been caught in a powerful vortex, one that might sweep me off my feet and carry me into the next world if I let it. I tried to move back toward the arches, but a terrible vertigo seized me. I fell to the floor on hands and knees as the world tilted and the arches, the cemetery and all the trees in the forest began to spin around me.

  Over the howl of that rushing wind, I heard their screams. I could even catch a glimpse of their wavering forms in a twilight corner of the ruins. Two young girls chained and terrified, their agonized wails echoing for eternity inside those fragmented walls.

  I dropped all the way to the floor, curling myself in a ball as I reached for Rose’s key, clutching it tightly until the dizziness began to pass. I heard Angus whimper as if from a great distance, but he didn’t come into the ruins and I didn’t call to him. I lay there until my world finally settled and then I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest as I sought Darius Goodwine in the half-light.

  “You heard them?” he asked.

  “Yes. Who were they?”

  His gaze seemed to burn into mine. “You’ve spoken with my grandmother. You already know the answer.”

  I gave a vague nod as I searched my memory for everything Essie had told me about the two missing girls. “She said they were taken in broad daylight from the railroad tracks on their way home from school. Weeks later, they were found in the swamp, their bodies so mutilated by alligators their own mothers couldn’t recognize them.”

  “Alligators did not desecrate them,” Darius said. “He did that to them.”

  “Pope?” I whispered his name fearfully now, afraid that I might somehow summon him.

  “Night after night, he brought them here in chains, forcing them to witness his depravity and the atrocities he committed for the sake of his magic. First he took their blood and then their hands, their eyes, their tongues. By the time he removed their hearts, they were beyond fear and suffering in the living world, but from the dead world, they still cry out for justice.”

  The picture he painted sickened and devastated me. My first instinct was to flee through the arches and get as
far away as I could from those ruins, from Darius Goodwine and his dangerous proposal. From Atticus Pope and his grisly alchemy. I did not. I remained frozen, not from fear of the truth or the aftermath of vertigo, but from a sudden and unholy thirst for vengeance.

  “There were others before them,” Darius said. “Runaways and the homeless that no one knew or cared about. But to attain the kind of power Pope sought through his spells, he needed the blood and innocence of the very young.”

  Darius came toward me then and I didn’t try to scramble away. I wasn’t afraid of him now. Our unified quest had dissolved some of his mystique, but I knew I would be a fool to trust him completely. He was who he was, after all. A scorpion with a treacherous nature.

  “Essie told me you were the one who brought in the Congé to stop him. That’s why you remain in the shadows, isn’t it? Why it’s better if no one knows that we’ve spoken. You’re afraid of him.” My voice held a note of wonder because there was a time when Darius Goodwine had seemed like the ultimate nemesis. But his crimes involving black magic and gray dust paled in comparison to what I’d learned about Atticus Pope.

  “I don’t fear for my own safety,” Darius said. “There are things more precious than one’s life.”

  I nodded in understanding. “You’re worried he’ll come for Rhapsody.”

  His eyes flashed fire, a manifestation of his strong emotions. “She’s little more than a child, headstrong and foolish and only now realizing the full potential of our bloodline. It will be a difficult task to save her from herself, let alone from Atticus Pope.”

  And from her father’s influences, I thought. “She said you’d come to her in a dream. You told her that she should trust me because I’m the only one who can protect her.”

  “And protect her you must. Not only for her sake and mine, but because there is more at stake than you realize.” I heard a strange element in his voice, one that I didn’t dare try to decipher. “If the blood and energy of the very young empower Pope’s spells, the heart of a Goodwine could make him invincible.”

  My fingers sought the key around my neck as I shivered. “Surely you’d be more equipped to deal with him than I am. You also have powers. I’ve witnessed your magic.”

  “But you’re the only one who can see inside his soul.”

  “Yet you seem to see so clearly into my thoughts and dreams.”

  “Not for much longer, I fear.”

  I closed my eyes, toying with the notion of trying to peer into Darius’s soul, but I didn’t want that connection. It wasn’t a good idea to be linked psychically or otherwise to a man such as he.

  “I think you give me too much credit,” I said. “If you can enter my head so easily, who’s to say Pope can’t do the same? What if he’s already been inside my thoughts and dreams? What if he already knows about me?”

  “If he had an inkling of your capabilities, he would have dealt with you long ago.”

  “Like he dealt with the woman in the caged grave?” I got slowly to my feet. “Essie said she was Congé, but how could she know that?”

  “They mark themselves with symbols and creeds, some more discreetly than others.”

  “Like the memento mori tattoo on the victim’s wrist?”

  “A fitting precept, wouldn’t you say? Remember to die.”

  I stared at him with open suspicion. “Did you bring her here?”

  He shook his head. “She was an initiate. Young, inexperienced and out to make a name for herself. She was undoubtedly lured here by Pope so that he could send a message to the others. And for his own perverted enjoyment. It was the Congé, you see, that buried his twelve disciples alive.”

  “They were buried alive? Why?”

  “To trap Pope’s soul. Make no mistake. The Congé were as cold-blooded and ruthless in their mission as Atticus Pope was in his.”

  Darius came all the way out of the shadows then so that I could see him more clearly. So that I could take in the menacing set of his mouth and jaw and the warning glint in his eyes. “You have a common enemy in Atticus Pope, but the Congé are not your friends. If they knew about you, about your abilities, they would hunt you down for no other reason than their abhorrence of those whom they perceive as unnatural.”

  I trembled at his warning, at that terrible gleam in his eyes. He towered over me, ethereal and omniscient, his clothes billowing in a nonexistent wind. I could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance as the scent of ozone deepened inside the ruins.

  “I can see that you’re afraid,” he said. “You should be. Someone close to you has been assimilated into the ranks of the Congé. Someone you think you know well. Someone you think you can trust. But don’t be fooled.” His voice faded as he moved back into the shadows. “If they learn of your gift, not even your great-grandmother’s key can protect you.”

  Nineteen

  “Who is it?” I asked on a breath. “Tell me!”

  But he’d already vanished in the same way that he had appeared, leaving nothing behind but a distant thunder and the lingering chill of his presence.

  I wasn’t alone, though. Someone was calling to me. Someone I thought I knew. Someone I thought I could trust.

  “Amelia? Can you hear me?”

  The familiar voice pulled me out of the spell Darius had cast over me. When the haze of his magic began to clear, I found myself kneeling beside a headstone, a brush in my hand and a water bucket beside me. Angus watched me from the shade. Neither of us had moved from our original positions and very little time had passed. But once again, I didn’t doubt the encounter with Darius had been real.

  “Amelia!”

  For a moment, I remained so lost in the swirling haze of his hypnosis that I wondered if the sight of Temple Lee walking toward me through the headstones was another of his illusions or tricks. Why else would she be here when Detective Kendrick had said she wouldn’t be free until the following week?

  Strange that she should show up at this very moment with Darius’s warning still echoing in my head.

  I had once wondered about Temple’s affiliation with the Order of the Coffin and the Claw. I’d even entertained the notion that she could have been one of the first women inducted into the secret society. She’d never sufficiently debunked my suspicion and, if she were a Claw, would it be that much of a leap to consider the Congé may also have recruited her?

  Stop it! I told myself firmly as I pressed fingertips to my temples. This is not your thought.

  Darius was still there in my head, toying with my emotions and twisting my perception even though I could no longer see him. With an effort, I shook off the remnants of his influence. Go away and take your games with you.

  He had insisted the Congé were not my friends, but neither was he. I’d known Temple for years. I wouldn’t let him tarnish our relationship by planting doubts and paranoia for no apparent reason other than to isolate me.

  “I was told I could find you here,” she called gaily. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out all summer!”

  I rose and peeled off my work gloves as I monitored her approach. Her attire was almost identical to mine—T-shirt, cargoes and work boots. But unlike me, she’d taken the time to apply lipstick and mascara and I could detect a hint of her perfume on the breeze.

  Tossing my gloves to the ground, I gave her a tentative smile. “What a surprise. I had no idea you were coming here so soon. I thought you were busy until next week.”

  “Oh, I am. We’ve been swamped for months. You know how it is.” She bent to give Angus a quick pet when he trotted over to investigate her arrival. “I had business in the area and thought I’d drive down for a quick visit. Actually, I wanted a look at those cages before anything happens to them.” She paused, giving me a worried scrutiny. “Are you okay? You look a little out of it.”

  “
I’m just tired. I’ve been working in the heat all day. But what did you mean, before anything happens to the cages?”

  “According to James Rushing, the plan is to try and excavate the graves through the gates rather than remove the mortsafes altogether. It seems they’re cemented in place and there’s a worry about how much damage will be done if they try to pry them loose. But I don’t have to tell you how tedious and time-consuming that will be. The police aren’t usually so patient. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Detective Kendrick decides to have them dismantled.”

  “Wait a minute.” I shook my head in confusion. “When did you talk to James Rushing?”

  “Just now.”

  “You’ve already been down to the circle? I didn’t see you drive up.”

  “I followed Detective Kendrick out here from town and apparently he took the long way around. He was adamant about not disturbing your work by coming through the cemetery.” Temple lifted a brow as she observed me curiously. “So adamant, in fact, I had to wonder if there was a reason why he wanted to avoid you.”

  “None that I can think of.”

  She shrugged. “In any case, if he decides to remove the cages, I won’t be able to stop him. The graves aren’t old enough to fall under my jurisdiction. But I still believe those mortsafes have historical value and I’d at least like the chance to study them before they’re destroyed.”

  “Yes, so would I. You know about the center grave?”

  She nodded. “And about the missing skull. You and I both know that skulls have a tendency to disarticulate and roll, but I gather they don’t think that’s the case here.”

  “There is evidence of a prior exhumation and reburial,” I said.

  “So I was told. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that, as well, but I don’t want to keep you from your work. I’m hoping I can persuade you to knock off early so that we can grab a drink and catch up before I head out.”