The Hexed. Heather Graham

and compassionate. So you went in search of her. And when you came back with that officer, I figured out what had happened.” She shrugged. “And you did turn on the television and your computer.”

      She might have died at a hundred and one, but Aunt Mina had known her electronics.

      Devin’s knees felt wobbly. She wasn’t sure she could make tea without breaking something. She swept past the great-aunt she couldn’t touch and made her way to the parlor, sinking down on the sofa.

      She was imagining things.

      No, Aunt Mina had followed her.

      Poe squawked. He flew over and tried to light on Mina’s shoulder, then ended up fluttering to the ground in confusion.

      “Poe, my poor Poe,” Aunt Mina said.

      “I’ll get him,” Devin muttered. She rose and scooped up the bird, who flapped agitatedly for a second and then settled into her hold.

      The damned bird was seeing the same apparition!

      “I can’t stay long, my dear. I haven’t mastered the skill yet, though I’m getting better and stronger every day. I practiced speaking when you were out, but...I had to pray that you would hear me when I finally showed myself. Not that I doubted you for a minute. Not really. After all, last night you heard the dead. And once you hear them...well, dear, I’m afraid you can’t just turn them off.”

      Devin stood stroking the bird and staring at her aunt. Suddenly tears welled in her eyes.

      “I loved you so much,” she said. “Still love you, of course.”

      “Love lasts forever,” Aunt Mina told her. “And I love you, too. So very much. Since I never had children of my own, you are, in spirit, my child. Not to take anything away from your lovely mother, you’re just my child in a different way. And your books! They’re getting better and better. I’m so proud of you. What are you working on now?”

      Devin told her, and Aunt Mina clapped her astral hands. Then she looked down and sighed. “The house is locked up tight?”

      “It is.”

      “Good. Oh dear, I’m fading already. Well, at least now you know I’m here.”

      “Auntie Mina...?”

      Too late. Aunt Mina was gone. And, Devin realized, darkness was falling quickly and she was still standing by the love seat, stroking the raven.

      * * *

      The night shift was on; the evidence room was quiet.

      An Officer Buckley was manning the desk while Rocky sat at another desk in the back, studying the three medallions.

      It had taken some doing to find the first. While Jack had been looking into the old case, he hadn’t gone so far as to request the medallion, which had been misfiled and hard to locate. After half an hour of studying the three pentagrams on their silver chains, Rocky shook his head.

      Having them right there in front of him didn’t tell him anything that the photographs hadn’t. None of them carried an artist’s mark, which was what he’d been hoping to find.

      Had they been designed by the same person or not?

      He couldn’t tell. But he did know that he was going to have to get to know Gayle Alden and find out if she really was Sheena Marston, not to mention whether she’d created these pentagrams as well as Devin’s.

      At nine o’clock he locked up the medallions in their boxes and got ready to head back to his hotel.

      Since he knew he would be plagued all night if he didn’t, he called Devin Lyle.

      “I’m just checking on you,” he admitted immediately. “I hope you don’t mind.”

      “Not a bit, thank you. And I’m fine,” she told him.

      He hesitated. He should just hang up. He’d checked; she was fine. But he took a chance.

      “I’d like to get to know your friends at the shop better,” he said.

      “Oh?”

      “I need to learn more.”

      “About pentagrams?”

      “Yes, and Wiccan traditions and—”

      “Wiccans didn’t do this!” she snapped.

      “And Christians aren’t bad people, either—until they take religion and turn it into the excuse for an inquisition,” he told her. “I’m sorry—I’m not trying to fight. And I’ll defend this nation’s Wiccans just as I would her Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. It’s possible that someone is trying to make these deaths appear to be part of a Wiccan ritual of some kind. The more I understand today’s Wiccans in this city, the better I can figure out what’s happening.”

      She was silent for a moment and then told him, “We’re going to a movie tomorrow night. You can pick me up around six-thirty.”

      He was stunned. And appreciative.

      “Thank you,” he managed.

      “I’d ditch the suit, though,” she muttered.

      And she hung up.

      Rocky headed back to the hotel. Luckily, the bar there served food until eleven. He ate and went up to bed.

      That night when he slept, it was Melissa Wilson who entered his dreams.

      He was standing by her graveside in Peabody when she came up behind him, setting a hand on his shoulder.

      “You couldn’t hear me,” she told him. “I kept crying out for you, but you didn’t hear me.”

      “I did hear you,” he told her. “I just didn’t understand.”

      “You have to listen,” she told him.

      “I’m listening. Who did this?”

      “He comes in the dark, he comes from behind,” she said.

      He turned to her.

      But she was gone.

      He awoke sweating. He found a bottle of water and drained it, and looked at the clock. It was only four in the morning. He lay back and prayed for dreamless sleep.