I throw the medicine ball down, hard, squatting quickly to pick it up and do it all over again. Twenty pounds above my head and down again, again, and again, until I’ve done fifty ball slams, fifty squats.

As I move to the next exercise on the list for today’s CrossFit workout, I find myself praising the gods of exercise for creating this amazing, butt-kicking workout phenomenon. These workouts have been my savior since Damon walked out, pushing my body to the limit, helping me restore muscle and build strength, and wearing down the anxiety and worry that has plagued me since all of this supernatural business began.

CrossFit is all about personal bests. There are goals to hit, sure, but individual performance is all about setting and beating personal goals. Today I might do fifty ball slams, but tomorrow I might do sixty. This works for me. I’ve never been much of a team player.

As I work through a series that includes sprints, burpees, and mountain climbers, I find myself thinking about my next stop for the day. I’ll need to head into the office to check in with Rick. With Damon gone, I have thrown myself whole-heartedly into work. I work and I work out. That is the extent of my activities lately, and it suits me just fine.

I miss Damon, desperately, but I have also missed my work. I have missed being a true and trusted forensic investigator. Now I have nothing to do but focus on this work, as dark and frustrating as it can be sometimes.

The media has dubbed the case the “Centerfold Murders,” a gangly, gumshoe reporter named Wes stringing together the similarities between the cases recently and asking the police to explain why they are not investigating things as a serial murder situation.

Because I am the only one who has expressed concern that these murders are too similar to be unconnected, Rick has put me back in charge of the investigation team, a decision that came with much grumbling. Many of my colleagues have not-so-subtly intimated that they believe I am having a breakdown of some sort. They believe I was involved in the death of a suspect in a past case – which I was – but they have no idea that he tried to rape me, that it was Vincent who tore him to pieces and made sure no trace of him would ever be found. All they know is that there is a cloud of guilt around me, and that I have not been acting myself for the past year.

Rick questioned me numerous times about it and even limited my work scope because of that situation as well as my own health and behavior issues. I wish I could tell him everything I have been through, but I know it would only make me seem crazier.

I stop to take a water break, impressed as I watch a petite woman who has to be in her mid-fifties climb the rope, slide down, and then do a clean-and-jerk with at least a hundred pounds of weight. I give her a thumbs-up as she heads off to the showers, hoping against hope that I will be just as fit when I am her age.

Checking the time, I realize I should head to the showers as well.

Seeing the scars left behind by my encounter with a possessed Damon always makes me a little bit sick to my stomach. I have been through a lot this past year, physically and emotionally, and while I am generally able to stand back up and move on, this last round of violence has put me in a strange place.

I love Damon. I want him back, and I know that he was doing his best to strive toward a “normal” life for the two of us, a life that might, in his mind, have meant having children.

The look on his face when he realized I might not be able to have children was unbearable. I saw the moment he decided that he could not bear to see those scars, that he could not stand to be with me knowing it was his hand that made those marks, that took that possibility away.

It did not matter that I was okay with it, that I forgave him, and that I had never really wanted children anyway.

Now, the scars serve as a reminder that things would never have been normal between us, no matter how hard we tried. And a small part of me thinks maybe he was right to go.

I clean up and pull on my usual black pants and sweater combo, pull my hair back in a short ponytail, and make a run to the car, hoping the LA traffic gods are on my side this morning.

On my way to work, I get a call from Rick.

“Amy,” he says by way of greeting, “I need you here soon. That dumb kid from the paper is beating down my door, asking for an update on the Centerfold cases.”

“I’m on my way,” I say. “I was going to stop and get you a latte but I guess I will have to forego it.”

“Well,” he says, “I could use a shot of caffeine. I was here very early this morning.”

“I imagine you were,” I say. “Since it is only seven-thirty now. We might have to get you a cot in the lab.”

“This kid is relentless,” he says. “And who reads the paper anymore, anyway?”

“It’s all digital now,” I answer. “And we should give him some credit for not being a nitwit. He figured out the similarities before most of our investigative team.”

“I do not like press in my business, Amy,” Rick says. “Get down here and get him out of my hallways.”

“Coffee or no coffee?” I ask.

He growls in response. “Coffee, please. See you soon.”

We hang up and I stop for the coffees, also picking one up for young Wes, who is indeed lurking in the hallways as I walk down toward my office.

“Morning, Wes,” I say cheerily as I approach, pulling his coffee from the tray. “I brought you a Highlander Grogg with extra cream, just how you like it.”

He takes the coffee and grins, one of his front teeth just slightly out of place. His hair is a little too shaggy to be professional, and his brown jacket looks borrowed from his father’s closet. He’s barely an adult, probably only recently out of college, if I had to guess.

“You are the sweetest, Amy,” he says. “Why are you so much nicer than the other people down here?”

“Is that an official question?” I ask. “Will I get a feature story? Nicest forensics investigator in Los Angeles?”

He chuckles. “Maybe you will, but only after you tell me what’s tying these murders together.”

“I have already told you, Wes, we do not have definitive answers on that yet, nor can we say with one-hundred-percent certainty that the murders truly are connected. At this point, all evidence points to a very strange coincidence.”

He scoffs, making a doubtful face, but does not reply. I wave at him and head down to Rick’s office, shutting the door behind me, offering him his latte. He takes a sip and sits back, eyes closed.

“I needed that bit of caffeinated heaven,” he says.

“I know the feeling,” I say, holding up my own large, black coffee in solidarity. “I got rid of him. He is also easily manipulated by coffee. Perhaps you two are related.”

“He’s a little rat,” Rick says. “I need him out of my hair.”

“I think you’re thinking of bats,” I say. “Rats don’t get in your hair.”

“Very funny,” he says. “Tell me you’ve got something for me? Five women dead, all with similar stab wounds to the abdomen, all employees of the same club. I know you saw it first, but until we have a suspect in custody, a motive, a way to explain how witnesses have seen the acquaintances of these women in the act of killing them…I just don’t know. I have seen a lot in my career, but I am utterly befuddled by this one.”

I think the number six to myself. There were six victims, but one of them lived and sits across from him, not wanting to draw even more attention to herself.

As always, I find myself debating whether or not to tell my mentor, colleague, and friend the truth. That I know the cause of these deaths, that the killer is not fully human at all. That there is a supernatural explanation for what is happening.

Of course, he would have me locked up in an instant if I did. Rick is not the kind of man who would blindly take my word that the supernatural exists. No, he would have me back on leave in a heartbeat, or worse.

“I am getting close,” I say. “But you may not like the answers once they emerge.”

He crinkles his nose at me. “I can hardly believe that closing this case would make me anything other than thrilled, but okay.”

“I’m recording that for posterity,” I say, heading to my computer. “Now, I am having no luck figuring out who owns the Centerfold Club. Every lead is a dead end and the corporate ownership just leads to more layers of LLC’s and holding groups. It is almost like the owner simply doesn’t want to be found. Don’t you think that’s weird, since it’s just a little strip club?”

“It’s weird, for sure,” Rick says. “Keep digging. You’ll find it eventually.”

He wanders off toward one of the labs as I sit down and start piecing through layers and layers of company information. I follow one company, Star Unlimited to a woman named Rheena Star. It turns out that she is deceased, and the company was split between five sons. I spend a couple of hours tracking down the sons, who all check out and seem to have no connections to the Centerfold Club.

Back to the drawing board.

As I sit at my desk, four ghosts stare at me, their mouths moving but no sound coming out. I have become used to their presence. I know I owe them justice, that I could just as easily be one of them, if not for Faye, Alexis, and Vincent.

My hand rests on my abdomen as I look at the ghosts of four women, all bleeding from their stomachs. Their lives were taken in order to advance the cause of someone who wishes to purify the earth, to wipe out creatures like werewolves and vampires, all by creating a pure and powerful breed of witch.

Damon would probably say that it was a good thing, to see the end of vampires and werewolves, but I am not so sure. I have found that creatures can be both good and bad. Either way, genocide is not something I would ever support.

I keep searching, finding names within the company searches and systematically researching them. Nothing seems out of place, nothing leads me to the “a-ha” moment I need.

Frustrated by mid-afternoon, I decide I need some air and head out to visit my friends at Faye’s shop.