Ghostly Justice (Seven Deadly Sins, #2.5)(24)

Cold. Stars through leafy trees. Not a park, but a private backyard. Lights on one side, far away; a house closer. Candles. She was elevated, she didn’t feel anything. A pinch. She slept. She was dying.

The house itself. She was in the house for hours of preparation. She wasn’t scared. She was lethargic. A scented bath. Candles. Oils. Chanting. Someone lathered her with lotion. Lavender and something she couldn’t identify. Big house.

She’d been drugged, or under a spell. The coroner hadn’t found known drugs, but he wouldn’t have been looking for most of the herbs used in black magic rituals. The oils or lotion could have been made with any number of herbs that would relax her to the point of near unconsciousness. The bath, the candles, everything together was part of the purification ritual.

He was so pretty.

Rafe pulled his hand from the body, the connection lost. He’d seen Rex Van Allen, from Defiance, picking up Amy after school. He’d called her over and asked for directions, then said:

“There is a blood moon tonight.”

Then she’d gotten into the car and kissed him. Driven her to a house on Alonzo Drive. He’d seen the road sign with her eyes.

She had never met him before. He’d been a complete stranger.

Amy saw the truth as Rafe saw it.

It wasn’t my fault.

“No, Amy, you were murdered. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” She’d been hypnotized at the camp—all the dark energy Moira had sensed. Her vision at the willow tree.

Amy’s ghost shimmered in front of him, expanding in a bright light. Peace filled her face, the guilt that she’d been responsible in some way for her death disappeared, and her spirit was free to leave. For a moment Rafe wanted to touch her body and feel the same peace. To receive the knowledge and truth that Amy had at that moment.

But that knowledge would condemn him. He’d get but a taste of the truth, then it would be ripped away. Some rules could be bent, and some rules could be broken.

This rule was rigid.

Thank you, Raphael Cooper.

Then her mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear anything.

“What?”

She was worried. She was trying to warn him about something, but all he heard was one word.

Judas.

“What just happened?” Fern asked.

“She’s gone.”

“Just like that?” Fern seemed disappointed.

“It was beautiful.”

Fern hadn’t seen what he had, and Rafe should have felt lucky that he’d witnessed Amy’s ghost leaving the astral plane in a state of peace.

She knew his full name. She had been trying to warn him about something, but what? Tessa Standler? Rex? What was happening to Tori Schaeffer?

Or was it about him?

Fern zipped up the body bag. “We should go.”

He followed her out of the crypt, concerned that something was very wrong with him. He’d had this fear ever since he woke up from his coma nearly two months ago and walked when he shouldn’t have been able to walk. The fear only increased when he knew things he’d never remembered learning, like knowing what Tessa was planning with the Baphomet ritual.

Was he the Judas? Was he going to betray the people he was supposed to love and protect?

Grant was on his cell phone in the small office used by the intake clerk. He hung up a moment after Fern and Rafe walked in. “Good news, bad news. Good news first—we have an ID on the woman from Defiance off her fingerprints. Smart move of your girlfriend giving me her cameo last night. It kept a clean print. Gwen Simmons, wanted for the murder of her boyfriend. And the bad news? She’s supposed to be dead. Eighteen months ago, her car went off a cliff in Oregon and her body was never recovered. She left a suicide note confessing to killing her boyfriend, and her blood was found on the steering wheel.”

Fern gave a low whistle. “She faked her own death?”

“One year before Amy Carney died,” Grant said. “Did you learn anything?”

“She was killed in the backyard of a large house in the hills. I would know it if I saw it—it’s on Alonzo Avenue. Do you know where that is?”

“That’s in Encino,” Grant said, pulling out his cell phone to map it. “Damn, it’s near where her body was found.”

Rafe suspected Gwen Simmons had made a deal with the demon Baphomet. Her death was faked on the Equinox, and one year later Amy Carney died, her blood taken. Moira would know more about how the deal would have worked.

“Where’s Moira?”

“She went outside, said something about a blood moon.” Grant shook his head. “The moon isn’t even out yet, I don’t know—”

Rafe ran outside and searched everywhere. Moira had disappeared.





Chapter Ten




Moira’s head ached, not from the mind control but from being hit over the head when she emerged from the morgue.

You were such an idiot!

She had a call, but it was a wrong number. Then she had an urgent need to go outside and look at the blood moon. So urgent that she believed, for a moment, that if she saw the moon, all her questions would be answered.

But even as she stepped out, she knew something was wrong. She was on alert, waiting for something, and she turned just as Rex from Defiance stepped away from the building and hit her with a gun. He had a friend, the bouncer from the night before, who handcuffed her and they lifted her up and carried her to a waiting car. Her scream was cut short by a hard slap across her face, then she was in the back seat of a car and it started moving before Rex even closed the door.