"That's baked, I think. Minimal fat content."

"Maybe." She smiled. "But I'll take a rain check on dinner, thanks." She'd spent way too many hours with him already, she determined, and yet she wanted to be with him longer, and though she could tell herself it was because she was nervous about Justice, that Harrison Frost made her more comfortable, less anxious, it was something more.

Something she couldn't even consider right now.

"You have to eat, don't you?" he pressed.

"I've got stuff in the fridge."

"How much stuff?"

"You wangling for an invitation?"

"Maybe. What have you got in the fridge?" When she didn't immediately respond, he added, "Salad?"

"And other things."

"Other healthy things."

"Don't you eat healthy things?"

He half smiled. "If you invite me to, I will."

He was blasting her with a kind of irrepressible charm that she sensed could be a real pain in the ass. "Okay," she said, relenting not only to him but to her own secret desires as well. "Take me home and I'll dig up something for us to eat. But you're not tucking me in."

He offered her a lazy, self-deprecating smile. "What if I just stay at your house, say, on the living room couch?"

"What if I say no?"

"Might not work," and he was serious again. She knew that their time ignoring the real threat that menaced her was over. The exhilaration of being instrumental in catching the Deadly Sinners was fading. She couldn't escape her own problems forever, though she'd done an admirable job of it today.

"The couch has saggy cushions."

"You're a nurse, right? Maybe you can fix me if I . . . need help."

"Maybe." She ignored the tiny voice inside her head that nagged at her. What do you think you're doing, Lorelei? This is crazy. Nuts! But it was a little thrilling to think of him spending the night.

He locked the front door, and they headed down the outside stairs to his car. The scent of the sea reached her nostrils, and the night was cold. Raw. Deep. As they climbed inside the Impala, Harrison said, "Hey, I heard you diagnose Noah with future mouth cancer. That one of your woo-woo predictions?"

"No." Laura almost laughed. "I was just trying to distract him. I could tell he'd been chewing. And it doesn't really work that way, anyway."

"Can you tell if there's something wrong with me?" He turned toward her, eyeing her with amusement, his hand on the keys in the ignition, the gloom outside the car thick.

"No."

"How does it work? Do you see my aura, or something?" God, his eyes were dark, sexy in the night.

"There you go, making fun of me again." She tried to be annoyed. She wanted to be annoyed. Instead, she was amused and managed to break his gaze. Instead, she stared out the front windshield, willing herself not to look at him, her fingers curling over the armrest.

"Well, how does it work?" he insisted.

"I don't really know."

"You must have some idea."

"Well," she said reluctantly. "It's better if I touch you. Maybe I could see something, then."

"Bullshit."

"Total truth." She turned back toward him, smiling.

"Okay." He left the keys dangling in the ignition and held out his hand, clasping her fingers. He gazed at her penetratingly, and she found herself mesmerized by the warmth of his skin.

After a moment she frowned and ripped her hand away.

"What?"

"I don't really want to say."

"Oh, come on!"

"All right." She shook her head. "You're on the way to serious digestive problems. The kind with . . . unpleasant surgeries."

"Is there a pleasant surgery?"

"But this problem is just a small possibility. Not a reality, yet. I think you might be able to avoid it, given some changes." She rubbed her hand where he'd touched her. He stared at her hard, and she could tell he was wondering if, just maybe, she was really, just possibly, for real. "I'm sorry to say, Mr. Frost, but you need to give up fried food."

"Oh, hell!" His fingers twisted the keys, and the Impala's engine roared to life. "Like I said. Bullshit."

"Total truth," she rejoined; then they both started laughing.

Forty minutes later they'd pulled into her driveway, their jovial mood disappearing with each mile that passed beneath the tires of Harrison's car. She thought of the maniac who was related to her and his thirst for blood. Her blood. Her sisters' blood. Her unborn child's blood.

Could she do it?

Call to the maniac?

Dance with the devil?

She stared out the window into the inky night, over the cliffs to where she knew the ocean rolled in restless waves. She closed her eyes and remembered him as a child. Small. Blond. Blue-eyed. And filled with hate. He was pale and lean, and the few times she'd seen him, there had been a weirdness evident. Even then his intense gaze curdled her blood, but now . . . with his vicious hissing voice, she couldn't imagine facing him.

But she would . . . if she had to.

She didn't even realize they'd reached her home until she heard the crunch of the Chevy's tires on gravel, saw the arc of its headlights wash up against the siding of her little house.

It was now or never.

Harrison, alone with his own thoughts, switched off the ignition and turned to her, ready to ask her what was next. Before he could open his mouth, she said, "Let's do it. I'm ready."

"Call Justice . . . in your way?" he asked, a bit surprised by her sudden capitulation after the seesawing indecision that had plagued her throughout the day.

She swallowed hard, then pushed open the passenger door and felt the cold, damp night press against her face. She slid out, slammed the door behind her, and said over her shoulder, "That's right, Frost. And you'd better damn well be ready to take this investigation to the next level, because I guarantee you, he's going to be pissed."

CHAPTER 19.

The sea calls to me.

The lighthouse is my sanctuary in God's mansion of many rooms.

I belong at the lighthouse, and my soul flies there even when I am not able. But now it is guarded closely by the robotic members of the sheriff's department. Guarded against me. Yet, it is my place to stand at the edge of the world. My place on the small island where the lighthouse stands, an island accessed only by boat or the arched pedestrian bridge available at low tide whose braces and beams have been worm-eaten and waterworn, condemning it for public use.

This has always worked in my favor, but even I cannot reach it now.

Until I find a way to shake loose those who would capture me. Evade them. Misdirect them. Send them away.

My mission cannot fail this time. I will get them all. All those blond, vile witches with their taunting, smirking lips and their condescending blue eyes. Fling their black souls into the dark pit where there is no escape. Leave them forever. I smile when I contemplate their misery.

"Well deserved," I whisper and realize I've been caught in my own fantasy. Driving by rote. With a start, I drive by the entrance to the lighthouse, a worn track that is weed-choked down the middle. I can see the dark hump of the patrol car. A man is smoking inside. He is bored. Waiting. Cursing this detail that has forced him to sit while others frantically seek me like dogs chasing their own tails. Another one sits beside him, hat down low over his eyes. Or is it a woman? I can't tell, but I mustn't slow down and stare.

If I must, I will kill the deputies inside the vehicle, but I will need to lure them away first.

First . . .

I glance at the dead woman beside me. She is a nuisance, but I need her vehicle.

I have people to meet.

Her head lolls forward, and I push her cheek to the passenger side window. She looks asleep.

Justice . . .

My name hurtles through the atmosphere.

What! I gasp. Justice. The sound rings in my ears, deafening, stunning.

She is calling me?

No . . . never! But there it is again. Jusssstice! shivers through the air, a hissing sibilant sound, as if she is mocking me.

"Bitch!" I yell, jerking on the wheel, my view out of the windshield lost as her face fills my mind. I nearly drive into the oncoming lane.

"Satan's whore!" I shout aloud, wrenching the wheel.

Come and get me, you bastard.

Abruptly I pull to the side of the road, wrenching the wheel, spraying gravel as the vehicle slides into the shoulder. A horn blasts behind me, and the driver of a pickup with monster wheels, the cab jacked to the sky, throws up a middle finger.

My companion keels forward and nearly slides to the floor, but I hold her in place with a hand that fills me with rage when I see it quiver.

With fear?

Never!

Just a seething, burning rage. Oh, this one who's called me is destined for the flames of hell!

Lorelei. Her face comes to me again as the car shudders to a stop and the mist rises in the surrounding forest. How she needs to be tortured. Burned.

But then they all must be destroyed, I think again. All of them, burned . . . burned.

"I will rip your black heart from your chest, bitch!" I say it aloud as I toss it into the airwaves, forcing it into her mind.

No sound. No ripple. No word.

She is afraid now. I feel myself smile in the gloom of the obscuring fog. She is pregnant, and the last one outside.

The easiest to smell.

The easiest to find.

The easiest to kill.

A new surge of adrenaline races through my bloodstream. Soon . . . I will find her soon. . . . New confidence fills my soul.

"Lorelei," I say again, sending the message through the dark corridor that reaches into her mind. "I am coming."

Laura's face was white as chalk as she sat at her kitchen table, across from Harrison, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance.

Jesus, what had he done to her? Suggesting she call a madman.

"Laura!" He reached across the tabletop for her hand.

Her fingers were cold as ice.

Hell!

"Laura!"

She didn't respond. She was there in the room, but her mind, maybe even her soul, was definitely somewhere else. He'd half laughed at her insistence that she and Justice could communicate, but now he had a glimmer of something he didn't understand, thought there was something to her claims.

This wasn't right.

"Lorelei," he said, squeezing lifeless fingers with his own. "Okay, you win. You're scaring me."