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“As if you don’t already know.”
“What are you?” I questioned.
Her hands squeezed into fists at her sides, and a quiet chant—familiar, though I didn’t know why—fell from her lips. The dancing shadows surrounded me once more. I was wrong to think it was a dark night. They were darkness. The female silhouettes swallowed all the starlight.
The shadows drew closer and reached for me with taloned hands. One of them grazed my neck, and coldness like I’d never felt seeped into my skin. I waved my gun at the damned thing, and something giggled in my ear.
“I am your atonement,” the girl said. I could barely see her past the shadows that closed in on me.
“For what?” I yelled, “I don’t even know you!”
The shadows stuttered, but only for a moment, before they continued their slow descent upon me. More and more of them reached for me. My teeth chattered. I released the safety on my pistol.
“Lying won’t save you, hunter,” the girl growled. “Nothing will now.”
Her words shook, but I didn’t know if it was from apprehension or pure menace.
“Please,” I begged. “Just don’t kill me here.”
She laughed humorlessly.
“You want to choose where you get to die?” she asked. “They didn’t get to pick where you killed them.”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” I said.
“Then why is my mother’s blood on your coat?”
My mind went to last night’s fuzzy memories, and the blood that was stuck to my neck. I tried to check my coat for stains, but the shadows crept closer. If darkness could be hungry, her dark minions were. They leached the warmth from my body and the breath from my lungs.
“I-I don’t know,” I stammered, “but I didn’t do it.”
“Walker?” a small, all-too-familiar voice called. “What’s going on?”
My heart lurched.
Cadence.
Chapter Four
Freya
Nothing made sense.
Josephine had found his blood-stained coat. When she looked for my mother last night, she realized that Mom died on the hunter’s property and had a hunch that the Reid family was responsible. They hadn’t been active hunters in decades, but it was too convenient for a witch to die on their land. Everyone knew Clyde Reid spent most of his days in the bottle, and the daughter was too young to be guilty.
That left Walker.
But how can a witch hunter be so defenseless?
“Walker?” a small, feminine voice called. “What’s going on?”
A young girl—Cadence—stood on the porch of the house at the end of the driveway. Her brown hair was in a clump on top of her head and her pink pajamas were wrinkled. She must’ve come as soon as she heard the commotion.
The hunter’s face crumpled.
Just don’t kill me here.
“Go back inside, Cady,” Walker ordered gruffly. “Everything’s fine.”
