CHAPTER SIX

I left my penlight on as I led us out of the dark maze. It opened into a room that was supposed to have a moving floor. Except the floor, obviously, wasn’t moving. Nor was it staying still. With the motor off, the boards slid as soon as I put my foot down.

We crossed slowly and exited into the inevitable mirror maze. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of my adoptive dad. I turned fast and saw myself, at eight, when I’d been here with him, both of us making faces in the mirror. Part of me wanted to look away—even two years after his death, it still hurt too much. Yet a part of me wanted to keep looking, to get my fill of that memory. Then it faded, and I saw only myself, as I was now.

As I turned, I heard a familiar laugh, and there I was again, giggling and goofing around with my father, except this time my father was Todd Larsen. I was a toddler, and he was swinging me around, and even if I couldn’t hear what I was saying, I knew exactly what it was—faster, Daddy, faster! And he obliged, as my adoptive dad would later.

Two men who’d been so important in my life. Two fathers I’d loved with all my heart. Two very different men, and yet in some ways the memories felt the same, and that was confusing and unsettling. It also felt unfair to both, but what else did I wish for? That one of those relationships had been strained, like with my adoptive mother? Hellishly complicated, like with my birth mother? Or just plain hellish, like Gabriel’s with Seanna?

Gabriel caught up, and I saw us both reflected in the mirror. Only it was us at our first meeting, when he’d cornered me in the shortcut behind my Cainsville apartment. In the reflection, I saw my wary expression and his cool one, those ice-blue eyes hidden behind his shades, his shadow stretching out to me, making him seem even larger. He’d had a proposition. My mother had written a memoir, and while she couldn’t profit from it, he reasoned I should. I’d shot him down. Then, a few days later, I hired him as an expert on my parents’ case, not to help me prove they were innocent but to convince myself they weren’t.

As I turned from the mirror, I saw another image of myself, this time at a fundraising party with James. The fundraising party—a completely forgettable event that was now emblazoned on my memory. We were in the back hall, whispering after we’d escaped for sex. He told me he was considering running for senator—following in his father’s footsteps—and all I could think was “I can’t do it.” I could not be that wife. I was not that person.

Then the call came from my mother, saying she urgently needed me home. I’d spent the car ride trying to figure out how to tell James I might want to go back for my doctorate, definitely wanted to start a career. I’d arrived home to get the news that I’d been adopted, and my world shattered.

Maybe someone else would see that image and say, “You silly fool—you should have been happy with what you had, not whining that you wanted more.” But I didn’t.

I’m sorry, James. I loved you. I really did. But that wasn’t the life for me. I just wish…

Two tears fell before I wiped them away, and I glanced at Gabriel, but he was looking in a mirror. I wanted to ask what he saw, but before I could, I caught another image: me on the back of Ricky’s bike, roaring through the hills of the Cabot Trail.

I was holding Ricky tight and grinning and thinking how happy I was, how incredibly happy I was. I had a shitty apartment, a demanding boss, a new job that scared the crap out of me, an adoptive mother who’d abandoned me for Europe and a biological one who was definitely a killer. But my father wasn’t a killer. I loved that terrifying new job. I loved Cainsville. And I’d been in love with this amazing guy. What more could I want?

What more indeed.

Was I still that girl with my fathers, hungry for excitement, the next big thrill? Was I still the young woman with James, dreaming of a more fulfilling life? Was I really a silly fool, never satisfied with what I had, always aiming for the next rung up the ladder?

I loved Ricky. Still did. Always would. Yet as with James, there would always be that sense that we didn’t quite fit, that something was missing, that I could be happier…

I looked over at Gabriel. He stood in front of a mirror, staring at his reflection. I reached for his hand. Then I remembered what happened in the dark maze and stopped myself.

He glanced over, his gaze meeting mine. He hesitated. Then he took my hand, squeezing it, and when he did, I saw what he did: endless iterations of Gwynn. I recognized one—the boy, hunting in the forest, following Arawn’s representative, Carl. Carl taunted him, and Peter lifted his rifle. As I glanced away quickly, I saw another scene, another Matilda, this one in a Victorian gown, screaming at a Gwynn, who stood stunned and pale, holding a bloodied sabre over the body of a man I knew must be Arawn. The woman dropped beside Arawn’s corpse, sobbing as if her heart would break, while Gwynn stood, dazed, as if he couldn’t understand how he’d gotten there. And in a blink, I was that Matilda, feeling her grief and her rage and her confusion, and it hurt so much, and I wrenched my gaze away, squeezing Gabriel’s hand.

“That’s enough,” I said. “Let’s move—”

“No,” he said. “This is important.”

He released my hand enough that I could let go. His way of saying that I didn’t need to watch. But he did. He struggled so much with being Gwynn, in a way I did not struggle with being Matilda nor Ricky with Arawn.

Gwynn is the man who betrayed his friend and mistrusted his lover and brought about her terrible death. I understood why Gabriel wanted nothing to do with that part of himself, but now he watched. Forcing himself to take it in. To understand.

When I met Gabriel and Ricky, I admired the way they were both so comfortable in their own skin. They knew what they were, and they accepted that. They knew what they wanted, and they strove toward that. I hungered for such a life. Now I was finally edging toward it.

I was Eden Larsen and Olivia Taylor-Jones and Matilda and just plain Liv.

Yet, at the same time, Gabriel and Ricky had discovered there was more to them. After a lifetime of knowing who they were, that foundation tilted, throwing them off balance. Ricky plowed forward, determined to find that reconciliation of self. Now Gabriel stood here, trying to do the same.

I looked into another mirror and saw yet another tragedy, another death, this time of a young woman, lying dead on a floor, a young man kneeling beside her, another grabbing him and hauling him to his feet and hitting him. He hit him again and again, while the first young man made no move to defend himself, just stared at the dead girl on the ground.

Show him something better, damn it. I know there’s something better.

I squeezed Gabriel’s hand and pictured Gwynn—the real Gwynn—in those early days. I found him, at about twelve, laughing as Matilda mimicked someone, Arawn joining in the impersonation and grinning at Gwynn, just as happy as Matilda to hear Gwynn’s rare bout of laughter.

That was what it had been like, for so many years—three friends, delighting in each other’s company. The kind of children who make a blood bond that they will never be separated, who imagine themselves growing old together, still laughing and talking and happy, endlessly happy.

An image glimmered in another mirror, and I looked with reluctance. It was another iteration of Gwynn and Arawn, as young men at the turn of the century, walking down a street, clearly drunk. I could tell in an instant who was who, Arawn singing some dirty ditty at the top of his lungs and trying to get Gwynn to join in, Gwynn laughing and shaking his head and stumbling. Another picture flickered, a girl and a boy in pioneer clothes, running hand in hand through the woods, exploring. The girl stopped to cough, and fear flashed across the boy’s face. I knew she would not live long, but for now, she was happy—Matilda was with her Gwynn and she was happy.

More memories flashed, more Gwynns and Matildas and Arawns, and maybe there was tragedy in their futures, but at that point, they were happy.

Finally, Gabriel said, “That’s enough.”

“Better?” I said.

“Yes.”

“They aren’t us,” I said. “Their mistakes won’t be ours. We see those mistakes. None of them had that advantage.”

I pointed to the original three, Arawn and Matilda now finished their performance, the trio stretched out on the grass, watching clouds pass, completely at peace.

“That’s us,” I said. “You feel it, don’t you? We’re the closest to them. And that is us. Now. It will stay us.”

“Yes,” he said, and for once there was conviction there. Conviction and determination.

We exited into another room. I kept my light on, and we’d gone only a few steps when I caught voices. I could tell Gabriel didn’t hear them, and I said, “Finally.” A few months ago the prospect of a vision would have sent me running the other way. Now, I just wanted to get the damn thing over with.

The next room was a kaleidoscope of color and visual distortion. A group of people stood in the middle, their voices as distorted as the room. Five figures dressed in robes, hoods pulled up. My first thought was Cŵn Annwn? but the cloaks were wrong, and two figures seemed female.

My next thought was that I’d walked into a scene from a movie. A D-grade horror flick filmed at an abandoned amusement park, where the wide-eyed young blonde stumbles onto a satanic ritual in progress…and becomes the star, taking the role of virginal sacrifice. Yeah, serious miscasting. The only part of the description I fit was “blonde,” and my hair was really more of an ash shade.

Yet this particular ritual had already found its sacrifice. A young man lay in the center of the circle. Long dead, the gash across his throat bloodless. A cowled figure crouched unmoving beside him, knife in hand, and I would have thought I was seeing a still image except that I could hear someone talking, the voice too distorted to make out words.

Another figure shifted, as if growing impatient. The one with the knife turned the corpse onto his stomach. Then he positioned the knife over the dead man’s shoulder blade, and very carefully, as if paring an apple, he removed a swath of skin.

My gut seized as I imagined a different man under that blade, his face so familiar I could feel the contours of it under my fingertips. I pictured his body, lying on his back, dead eyes staring at the ceiling, Gabriel crouched beside him, me asking him to turn the corpse over. He did, and there, on the shoulder, had been that same missing strip of skin, the one I’d seen in crime-scene photographs from my parents’ murders, replicated on the shoulder of a man I’d loved.

“James,” I whispered as I backed away.

I hit something solid and jumped to see Gabriel behind me, his face drawn in concern. “You’re seeing James?”

“No, just…” I looked back at the scene. “It’s some kind of ritual. There’s a corpse. Someone cut the skin from the shoulder. Like…”

“The Tysons did.”

I nodded. My parents were convicted of murdering four couples. The last two victims we’d proven to be copycat killings. The first two victims—Amanda Mays and Ken Perkins—had actually been murdered by couple number two, Marty and Lisa Tyson. The Tysons had established the ritual, which a host of professionals had tried to identify, but it seemed to be ritualistic gobbledygook.

“Do you want to stop watching?” Gabriel asked.

Yes. But I couldn’t, no more than he could stop watching in the hall of mirrors. I had to know what I’d been brought to see.

“I’m fine. It’s just…” I shivered and rubbed my arms.

Gabriel put one arm around my waist and pulled me back against him, letting me rest there, exactly as he had at James’s funeral.

“Is the body Mays? Perkins?” he murmured, bending to my ear.

I shook my head. “It’s a young man I don’t recognize. Someone’s talking, but I can’t make out the words. I can’t even tell gender. He or she is instructing the person doing the cutting.”

“Instructing him in a ritual.”

“Right. Which means…” I squeezed Gabriel’s hand before tugging it from my waist. “I need a better look.”

I approached the figure kneeling beside the corpse and bent to see the face under the cowl.

“Marty Tyson,” I said.

Gabriel grunted, as if he’d already presumed this.

I looked up at another face. “Lisa’s standing right here. Along with three others.”

I rose and followed the voice giving instructions, but under its cowl I saw only a black pit. When I tried to move the hood, my fingers passed through it.

I walked up to the next figure and had to stoop to peer under the hood—she was about six inches shorter than me.

“Stacey Pasolini.”

Gabriel’s brows lifted. I sidestepped to the last figure, a man only a little taller than me.

“Eddie Hilton,” I said. Then I rhymed off their vital stats—approximate height and weight, hair color, eye color—and Gabriel nodded and said, “Yes, that’s correct.” I knew it was. I’d stared at enough photos to recognize my mother’s third and fourth victims.

We already knew Pasolini and Hilton were killers. That’s why the Cŵn Annwn made the deal with my mother—in exchange for them curing my spina bifida she would exact justice on four murderers whose crimes fell outside their purview. As for what exactly Pasolini and Hilton had done, Ioan didn’t know the details and didn’t care. Their prey was guilty, and theirs is absolute justice—no extenuating circumstances considered.

We’d investigated Pasolini and Hilton ourselves, but it seemed impossible to find a victim when you only knew the killers.

I moved back to the figure who was instructing Marty Tyson. “Let’s get a look at you.”

I shone my penlight under the cowl, but it was like shining it into a black hole, the light disappearing as soon as it left the source.

“Damn it,” I said. “I can’t see a face at all.”

“But you see a figure, correct?”

“Right. Okay. Height is…” The figure wobbled, and I cursed under my breath. “Taller than me, shorter than you. An average man or very tall woman. Weight…” Again the figure shimmered, and I had to rely on my initial impression. “Slender. That’s all I can say. Thin to average. As for build, the cloak hides it, but—”

The figures evaporated.