On Harrow Hill

As Morgan was considering this, his phone rang. He peered down at the screen. “It’s Gareth Montell, the department’s forensic attorney. He’s meeting with Hilda Russell to go through her brother’s estate documents. I should talk to him.”

“Fine. I want to get back to Aspern and see what he has to say, then talk to Cursen. Can I take these copies of the texts?”

Morgan nodded and took the call from Montell.

Gurney headed next door to the village hall. As he was climbing the porch steps, he encountered Aspern on his way out.

A flash of irritation on the man’s face was replaced by a cool smile.

“Something else, Detective?”

“A question. We’ve managed to retrieve some of Billy Tate’s text messages. This one was sent to your cell number.” He handed the copy to Aspern. “Do you have any recollection of receiving it?”

Aspern studied it, his nose wrinkling as if the message had an unpleasant odor.

“I remember seeing this,” he said after a long moment, handing it back to Gurney. “But I had no idea it came from Tate. I assumed it was sent to me by mistake.”

“Did you call the source number to ask about it?”

“Are you joking? I wouldn’t waste my time on anything like that.”

Aspern made a show of glancing at his Rolex. “I hope that’s helpful.” He flashed an empty smile and hurried past Gurney down the porch steps. He got in the passenger seat of a waiting Mercedes, which immediately pulled away.

Selena Cursen’s house was located in the opposite direction from Waterview Drive, well outside the village of Larchfield—in the center of what Gurney had been told was a state-designated wilderness area where human habitation was restricted to the few widely scattered homes there at the time of the designation.

Wilderness was a good word for it, Gurney agreed as the gravel road took him through a pine forest thick enough to block out all but a few glimpses of the sky. As his GPS led him ever deeper into this dark place, he found himself with an uncomfortable sense of isolation.

He wondered how much of his uneasiness was coming from the echoes in his mind of witchcraft and Satanism and the message written in blood on the walls of the two female victims.

His GPS directed him from the gravel road onto a rougher dirt road, which terminated after another mile at a tall black-iron fence—with an opening too narrow for a car to pass through.

Each upright bar of the fence was topped with a black spearpoint shaped like an ace of spades. Beyond the opening, a stone footpath passed through an expanse of untended grass to a gray three-story Gothic Victorian.

Gurney switched off his engine and watched a flock of crows rising from the grass and settling in the tops of the pines. He took out his copy of Tate’s text to Cursen and read it one more time, searching for inspiration on the best way to approach her.

As he was pondering this, he sensed some motion in front of him. A pale woman in a silky black robe appeared in the fence opening. She had straight black hair, violet eyes, black lipstick, and three silver studs in her lower lip. A polished black cameo of the horned god of witchcraft hung from a silver chain around her neck. Her fingernails were glossy black. Her feet were bare and as pale as her face. The fabric of her robe lay against the contours of her body in a way that suggested it might be all she was wearing.

Gurney restarted his car and backed slowly away from the fence to create more space between them before getting out.

She was watching him, lips slightly parted, with a look that suggested secret knowledge, a sexual fantasy, or a fried brain.

“Hello, Lena,” he said gently, using the name Tate had used in his text.

There was a hint of movement in her eyes, but she said nothing.

“I saw Billy come back to life.”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, its pinkness a surprise in the midst of all the black and white and silver. He thought she was about to speak, but she didn’t.

“I saw Billy get out of his coffin. I saw him pick up a handful of knives and walk out into the night. He was definitely alive.”

Her unblinking eyes widened. “Billy’s a willow, and willows love water, and water is life, and life is love.”

“And love is all there is,” said Gurney, trying to match her tone.

“My Dark Angel rose from the dead,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“It must be hard for you,” he said, “not knowing where he is.”

“He’s my Dark Angel who rose from the dead,” she repeated with sudden insistence, tears welling in her eyes.

The tears, more than anything else, told him what he wanted to know. After a long silence, he got his copy of Tate’s text from the front seat of his car, tore off a blank part of the paper, wrote his name and cell number on it, and held it out to her. “If you want to talk to someone about Billy, you can call me.”

At first, she didn’t take it.

Then she did.

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