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its shutters weren’t sagging, and it had a front porch instead of just three steps to a stoop, but otherwise they didn’t seem much different.
    Maybe that was why he’d always been so intrigued by the house near the stream, he thought. It looked like a smaller, worn-out version of his own home.
    The last light of evening faded away, and as darkness gathered around him, Seth hurried back across the street.
    That night, just before he went to bed, Seth slid the memory card from the camera into his computer and opened the file containing the pictures he’d taken that afternoon. A moment later the monitor was filled with the image of the house at Black Creek Crossing, with the reflection of the setting sun caught in the second story window.
    Except that in the picture, it didn’t look like the setting sun at all.
    Nor did it look like a flame was coming from the window.
    Instead, it looked exactly as if the entire house were on fire, its upper floor engulfed in flames.

Chapter 6
    YRA SULLIVAN ROSE STIFFLY TO HER FEET. HER rosary beads still twined through the fingers of her left hand, she silently repeated the last of the prayers one more time as she moved from the pew out into the aisle and toward the main door. She was halfway up the aisle when she abruptly changed her mind, and crossed over to the left side of the church and the statue of St. Joseph. Lighting a candle, she dropped once more to her knees, and though the rosary beads were still in her hands, it wasn’t the rosary prayers that tumbled softly from her barely moving lips.
    “Please,” she pleaded. “Make it work. Make this be the right one.”
    Getting to her feet once more, she hurried on out the main door of the church. Father Raphaello had told her she could cut through the chancery behind the altar and use the back door to make it easier to cut through the hedge to her house, but she never had. Taking the shortcut from the rectory was one thing. Taking it from the church was quite another.
    She thought that would be disrespectful, and she was certain that if she showed any form of disrespect at all, none of the saints would ever answer her prayers.
    This morning, though, it seemed that things were going to be different. Marty hadn’t awakened by the time she got home, and when he finally came downstairs half an hour later, the smell of bacon and fresh coffee filled the kitchen, and she put his oatmeal in front of him even before he asked for it.
    Nor did he seem to be quite as hung over as he should have been, given his condition when he came home the night before. In fact, he’d come home drunk every night since he’d been fired, and then gotten up each morning with bloodshot eyes, foul breath, and an even fouler temper. She’d been praying about it all week, though, and this morning the Holy Mother finally seemed to be answering her prayers.
Now, if St. Joseph would only come through, too—
    She cut the thought short, reminding herself that all she could do was open her heart to the saints, and then leave it to the Holy Spirit to know what was best for her. “Prayers are never unanswered,” Father Raphaello had told her. “It’s just that sometimes the answer is no.” Myra had listened carefully as he explained that it was a sin of pride to think that either God or the Holy Mother, or even the saints, were bound to give her something merely because she had asked for it. “Virtue takes many forms,” he said, “and often the gift of grace is given to those whose burdens seem otherwise too heavy to bear.” The priest had been talking about Marty then, and how God would grant her the grace to please the man she’d married, no matter how hard it might sometimes get. But she was pretty sure Father Raphaello would give her the same advice about the house too. Whatever happened with the house they were going to see today, she would understand that it was God’s will.
    Still, when Angel came in for breakfast and Marty didn’t start in with