"Bullshit!" Harrison said, trying to shove himself forward, but Hudson placed a staying hand on the crook of his elbow. "I'm not leaving Laura to-"

"Let it go," Hudson said.

"The hell with that."

"We'll be right here," Hudson called after Catherine. His lips were a thin blade. "If there's trouble, we'll warn you."

"What the hell is this?" Harrison demanded of Hudson.

"Let's just see if they can help my daughter," he said. "I don't have any problem waiting at the gate in case that sick bastard should show up."

Catherine gave a curt nod to Hudson and seemed suddenly ten years older than her years. Becca, holding Rachel close, walked briskly up the path, and Laura wondered how desperate she was to bring her child here, knowing that Justice was nearby. Waiting. Lurking. Breathing death for every one of them.

Sliding her key into the hidden pocket in her skirts, Catherine shepherded them along the path, keeping one eye on the gate, as if she expected to see Satan and his legions marching up the drive.

Once inside the house, introductions were made quickly. Becca met her sisters as if for the first time. She explained that the man who was with her was, indeed, her husband, Hudson Walker. The women who greeted her offered up their names: Isadora, Cassandra, Ravinia, Ophelia, and Lillibeth, all blond or ash brown, all blue-eyed, all curious. There were still others, too, and some like Laura and Becca, who hadn't spent all their lives here; some dead, some missing, but all ghosts who seemed to be a part of these old timbers.

This time Catherine didn't shoo the younger girls upstairs but led the visitors into the large gathering room off the front hall, opposite the dining room and dominated by a stone fireplace that rose two full stories to the gallery above. A fire was banked, the smell of smoldering ashes heavy in the air. The furniture was old, a hodgepodge of pieces gathered over the last hundred years. Everything from Victorian settees to sleek midcentury sofas.

Catherine closed the heavy drapes and waved them into the ancient chairs and sofas that were spread around the room. She turned on a few lamps, old Tiffany style, which gave off muted, colored light, then stood near the grate. Lillibeth hung near the doorway, and Ophelia, whom Laura hadn't seen the last time she was here, took a seat on the hearth. Her eyes were round with fear, and she rubbed her arms constantly, as if chilled from the inside out.

Catherine's gaze fell upon the girl in Becca's arms. Rachel's hair was darker than her mother's, but her eyes were a deep green, her skin white as porcelain. Her expression softened. "You're concerned because Rachel is fussy and feverish," she guessed, "though there is no medical explanation for her condition."

Becca nodded, surprised and encouraged. "Everything was fine for the first fifteen months of her life and then . . . then things changed. Now she can't sleep at night. I find her staring off into space during the day. She . . . is warm to the touch. . . ." Gently she brushed a strand of Rachel's hair off her chubby cheek.

"But you suspect that she might be like you. Or one of your sisters," Catherine whispered, and Becca, tears forming in her eyes, nodded again.

"Yes."

"Would that be so bad?"

"I just want my daughter to be safe and happy," Becca said. "It would be difficult if she were different. I'm not sure Hudson would understand, but more than that, I just want to know, I mean we both want to know, that she's all right."

"Of course she is," Catherine said, her voice strangely soft. "She has the gift, that's all." She smiled with a bit of melancholy. "She'll be fine."

"I need to know more," Becca urged as, cradling Rachel, she lowered herself onto a worn claw-footed settee that looked as if it was nearly a hundred years old. "You've tried so hard to keep the secrets here, but now . . . because of Rachel, I have to know everything."

"It's best that you don't."

"I have questions and she will, too."

Catherine sighed.

"I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid, he'll find her." Becca's voice broke and Laura felt a pang of guilt. "I need to know what happened to my mother. How did Mary die? And I don't even know my father's name." Becca glanced at the women who were her sisters, and all of them, including Laura, turned to Catherine, hoping for answers.

"Harrison . . . he's the man outside, read the history that apparently a man named Herman Smythe wrote," Laura said.

"So did I." Becca was nodding. "But there's so much that isn't in those pages."

Catherine restlessly walked to the windows, parted the draperies, and looked through the glass. "I've dreaded this day. I've only kept the secrets here at Siren Song to protect you, and I can't explain everything. There isn't enough time, and I don't even know all the truth. What I can tell you is that you all have the same mother. My sister, Mary. You know this. She . . . was . . . promiscuous." Her lips tightened. "And perhaps . . . not completely sane. I don't know who your fathers were. I'm sorry. Mary probably knew, but she didn't love men. She used them." Catherine gazed through the slit in the draperies, but, Laura guessed, she wasn't seeing the grounds outside or the wall surrounding the complex, but was staring at something in the middle distance, something only she could envision . . . images from a different past. "And not long after the youngest of you was born, she died. Mary was walking out on the bluff, which she'd done often. She took a misstep and fell onto a rocky ledge about twenty feet down. The fall shouldn't have killed her, but she struck her head on an exposed root or rock. By the time we realized she wasn't returning, that she was missing, it was late, and dark. We found her, but it was too late. She'd already passed."

There was silence for a moment while they absorbed this information. Then Becca said, "I couldn't find an obituary. Or a death certificate."

"Because there were none. We buried her in the family plot, here at Siren Song, with the previous generations."

Becca stated flatly, "I think that's illegal."

Catherine shrugged. She was rarely threatened by what was legal and what wasn't in the outside world. "You mustn't keep digging into the past, looking for answers, uprooting scandals." She looked at Becca. "There's no reason for it. No good will come of it."

Laura remembered Mary's grave. She'd seen it as a child, a moss-and lichen-covered, graying tombstone marking the final resting place of the woman who had borne her, a woman she barely remembered.

"I'd like to see the cemetery," Becca said, but Catherine closed the draperies tight and shook her head.

"Right now we have to concentrate on staying safe, making sure Justice is captured. I've known him since he was a boy and probably realize better than any of his doctors just how sick he is, how twisted." She worried the draperies' edge with her fingers. "Rebecca, you and your daughter can stay here. You, too, Lorelei. He'll suspect you're here, but this place is a fortress."

"Even the strongest fortress can be breached," Laura said. "And what do we do? Just wait? Hope the authorities catch him?"

"What else?" Catherine asked, her gaze finding Laura's.

Laura shivered inside, wondering if Catherine suspected that she not only had the ability to "hear" Justice's mental rantings, but that she could call to him as well, taunt him, flush him out. "I don't know."

"I can't just hide here," Becca argued.

"No one asked you to come, Becca. You insisted," Catherine reminded her.

"I had to come. Not just because of Rachel, but . . . Justice and all of this. I've been having visions again, and this time it's Lorelei he's after." Becca regarded Laura a bit guiltily. "And then I knew he'd attacked you and . . . I should have come earlier." She held her daughter closer. "I was just so frightened for Rachel."

"I'll be all right," Laura said. She was already feeling pent-up, as if they were all huddled in a storm cellar, waiting for a devastating twister to threaten them all. She knew she couldn't just sit here and wait.

Should she tell Catherine that she could talk to Justice? That it was possible to goad him into some kind of trap? Catherine and her sisters might believe her, whereas the sheriff's department wouldn't.

She walked to the settee where Becca was seated and placed a hand on Rachel's forehead, which was a little warm, perhaps, but smooth as silk. "I'm a nurse," she said. "If there's anything I can do . . ."

Becca smiled. "Just tell me she's going to be all right."

"Of course she is," Laura said, though they both knew, as long as Justice Turnbull was alive, it was a lie.

CHAPTER 36.

So close.

I came so close.

I can still feel the knife in my hand as I chased her through the night. My hand throbs from where she stabbed me; the cuts upon my skin are shallow and stinging from breaking the window of her door.

How had I let her escape when I was so close . . . ?

It was because of the man she was with, not her husband, but the reporter! I'd sensed him through her mind, the one she thinks of as "the truth seeker." It was easy enough to identify him and find out where he works, where he lives . . . all compliments of the library computers.

At first I thought I'd been recognized, but my disguise and the librarian's obvious myopia allowed me free access.

But my failure to kill Lorelei and her growing bastard is an onus, one I must throw off.

Her smell is overpowering. A stench that burns through my nostrils and burrows deep in my soul. There are more of them now . . . The one who got away . . . Becca . . . is back, her child in tow. I feel her and know she is afraid.

Good. This is good. They, too, must be destroyed. . . .

It took hour upon hour to make my way back to the bait shop and the rat's den where I reside, but I'm here. I'm back. And there is a vehicle I can "borrow," one never used and parked near the boat landing, owned by that blind old fool Carter. . . . It's parked far from the security lights. . . . I only have to wait until darkness falls. . . .

A headache pounds behind my eyes and my stomach rumbles, reminding me it's been hours since I've eaten. The money I found in both Cosmo's wallet and the van driver's jacket is nearly gone. . . . I will need more.

My mind wanders back to that reporter. He wants to fornicate with Lorelei. My fists clench. Fornicate with the witch whose seed is already growing inside her!

I need to kill her . . . kill them all. . . .

My thoughts are scattered . . . falling away, and I have to work to snatch them back, pull them together. I breathe deeply, but here, locked in my soiled room over the bait shop, I feel confined and weak. . . . I find the hilt of the butcher knife, her knife, and run my fingers along its smooth shaft.

Now, in my mind's eye, I can see them, Satan's whores, gathered together, plotting, scheming, thinking they can outwit me. . . .

Their images run together.

Ashen hair . . .

Steely blue eyes . . .

Sharp little chins . . .

Rosebud lips that curl back to reveal tiny, needlelike fangs . . . cat's teeth . . .

As ever, they hurl their childish taunts and razor-sharp insults at me: "Bastard!" one says with a high-pitched giggle.

"Idiot!" another cackles, delight sparking in her blue, blue eyes. She feels naughty and oh, so smug.

"Cretin!" another rejoins to twitter at how clever she is.

"Changeling!" they cry in unison, as a chorus that resounds in my head, echoing with their wicked laughter. "Changeling! Changeling! Changeling!" Their malicious glee sends them into uproarious gales of hurtful laughter, and I run, faster and faster, away from them, along the ridge over the sea, to the cabins . . . and the lighthouse beyond. . . .

The call of a seagull brings me back to this, my wreck of a room reeking of fish and diesel. My hands are knotted in the grimy folds of the stolen coat on which I am lying. I stare out the cobwebbed window high overhead and see a seagull whirling in the cerulean sky.

It's time to end this.

Forever.

"Ssssissttters," I hiss, but the effort is weak and my own words ricochet back to me, bouncing through my brain. Lorelei has put up a wall against me, just as Catherine has secured the walls around Siren Song. . . .

But I will get through. I have a plan. . . .

I need to go to the sea.

To feel the caress of the salt air and hear the roar of waves thundering against the shore in my heart.

I will be restored.

I will be strong.

And I will kill.

I feel a thrill at this, a sizzle of anticipation, and I run my finger along the knife's long blade. A line of scarlet blooms along my fingertip, which I examine carefully, then suck the wound, tasting the salt of my own blood.

Yes, yes. It's time. . . .

Laura and Becca walked along an overgrown path where sunlight, piercing the lacy branches overhead, dappled the ground. Beneath their feet curls of mist rose from the damp forest floor and through the trees; glinting along the horizon was the steely Pacific Ocean. Becca carried Rachel, and the little girl eyed her surroundings suspiciously, though she didn't say a word.

In the past few hours, Laura had become reacquainted with most of her sisters again and gotten to know Becca, whose name had only been whispered while she was growing up. More than that, she'd been able to hold Rachel, even scaring up a smile on the little girl's face. To think that Justice would want to harm any of them, especially this innocent child, was incomprehensible.

Before she and Becca had started their walk through the grounds of Siren Song, she'd left her cell phone number with Catherine, in case they needed to get in touch. Just to ensure her aunt didn't misplace the number, she'd given it to Isadora as well.

Catherine hadn't written it down.

Isadora had.

"Here it is," Laura finally said when she spied the short fence that surrounded the small private cemetery on the eastern side of the lodge. As Catherine had told them, their earliest relatives rested here, those who died before the turn of the last century. The graveyard was all but forgotten by everyone except those who lived at Siren Song. Hidden deep in the old growth, high on a ledge, with a rickety fence covered with berry vines and offering little barrier, the cemetery boasted only a smattering of tombstones, marble monoliths or slabs that had grown gray and had disintegrated over time, the names and dates blurred with dirt. There were small, plain crosses and more elaborate stones decorated with angels or rings or flowers, even the Bible.

"I'm just amazed I'm finally inside," Becca said, picking her way through a winding blackberry vine that nearly covered the gate. "The sound of the ocean is closer here."

"Just your imagination."

"Peony Jane," she said aloud, reading the small headstone. "Darling daughter, birth March seventeenth, eighteen seventy-three, died October thirty-first, eighteen seventy-five." She held tight to her own little girl and said, "A child. How awful."

"The worst." Laura wended through the markers, some decorated with crosses or angels or an open Bible, and the smaller headstones, indicating the plots of children who had passed in an earlier century.

"Here it is," she said as she reached the moss-covered plot where Mary was buried. The headstone, that of an angel looking down, wings folded, was chipped and blackened; part of one wing, cracked. The inscription was simple: MARY RUTLEDGE BEEMAN, LOVING MOTHER, then the dates of her birth and death.

"I hardly remember her," Laura admitted. "I was about ten but the memories I have are blurry and I'm not sure if they're real or dreams or even something someone told me about that I turned into memory."

"I never knew her," Becca said softly.

Of course she hadn't. Becca had been adopted as a baby and had grown up in a "normal" family and attended St. Elizabeth's Catholic School in Portland. She'd been unaware of Siren Song, of the old lodge of a house, of the surrounding walls, of this very cemetery until just recently.

"Why are there no public records of her birth and death?" Becca asked.

"Because everything here is a secret."