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understood the gift they had been given—a roadmap of all the serial killer’s murders; years of research that Buzz had locked away without showing anyone. If he had, the police might have been able to find Lord Halloween earlier.
    At the time, she was still reeling from all that she knew. It had only been the previous evening that Quinn had defeated the Headless Horseman at Phillips Farm. In that moment, everything had changed. Quinn had become the Horseman. But she… she wasn’t sure what she had become.
    Madame Zora, the local fortune-teller, had said Kate was a psychic—a claim she had rejected. But when Quinn became the Horseman, Kate could see into Lord Halloween’s mind. He wasn’t a threat—not anymore—because the abilities Quinn and Kate had tapped into were far more powerful than any mortal man’s. She could see where his hideout was, what his plans were, why he was killing people—everything.
    It had been useful information, data she used in tandem with Buzz’s notes to write the best stories of their careers. But it had also been profoundly disturbing. Seeing Lord Halloween’s thoughts… she felt like it had left a stain in her own mind. Like she had taken some part of him, no matter how small, and let it in permanently.
    She had watched Quinn sleep. They were intimately connected now—two bodies with one mind and one soul—but she knew he hadn’t sensed the taint. Some things were apparently still hers alone. It was in that moment that she conceived the idea.
    Her anger at the police was still acute. They had failed Leesburg and Loudoun County. It was Kate and Quinn who put a stop to Lord Halloween—and what price would they pay for it? As Quinn had warned time and again, the abilities they now possessed didn’t feel like something good.
    So she decided to send them a message. Just as Lord Halloween had done to Tim Anderson, she wrote the police a letter. Something that let them know who and what had stopped the murderer. She wanted them to understand that something else was now stalking Loudoun County. If the police couldn’t protect people, then the Prince of Sanheim would.
    When she wrote the first draft, though, it was confused, disjointed—not at all like something Kate would write. She tore up the first two versions. Finally, she had an inspiration. Instead of trying to use her own words, she would use Lord Halloween’s.
    “Some of what we tell you will be lies,” she wrote, repeating the first line of Lord Halloween’s letter to Anderson.
    As soon as she wrote it, it felt right. This was how to get their attention. The rest had poured out of her. She had taken credit for killing Lord Halloween and issued a warning to the police: “The monsters are out in force.”
    The ending was so natural she never stopped to consider it. She had repeated Lord Halloween’s initial missive word for word, but then added a twist: “We are night. We are October. We are flesh torn and rent. We are the rider that was promised long ago, the harbinger of fall. We are death, riding on a black horse. You can call us the Prince of Sanheim.”
    She had known Quinn would think it was a bad idea. Some part of her also understood that the letter would only antagonize the police and, worse, tip them off to their existence. But she had sent it off anyway, without his knowledge. She wanted the police to know they were out there. Instead of a serial killer, there was now a demon on the loose—and the police were to blame. Their failure had made the Prince of Sanheim necessary.
    It wasn’t until much later that she wondered if the letter was a sign of something darker. What if she had borrowed Lord Halloween’s words because she really had been corrupted by looking into his mind? In those moments before he died, Kate had seen everything about the man. Did some part of Lord Halloween live on in her? Was that why she sent the letter?
    Since that day, she had pushed the letter out of her mind. She didn’t want