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toward the spirit.
    “I shouldn’t be able to see you,” she said, low and fierce.
    “You see me because you have to. Because you’re here, and you’re the only one who
can
see. It’s bigger than you and your memories, what’s happened here. However it started, it’s so much bigger now. Bigger than your pain and your shame and your guilt. You have to help me. You have to help us.”
    “I don’t—”
    “You have to stop him before he goes on killing.”
    “YOU’RE SURE?” MAGGIE Garrett asked calmly.
    “Oh, yeah.” Jessie struggled to keep her own voice steady. “A young woman, dressed for winter in clothes about a decade out-of-date, sad face, almost transparent, creepy stuff to say. Definitely a spirit. And I wasn’t looking for one. At all.” Jessie had walked backto Rayburn House and managed to make it up to her room without encountering anyone who wanted to talk to her. Which was a good thing, since she felt jumpy as hell and doubted she was hiding it.
    She had always envied Emma her outward serenity.
    “Do you believe this spirit is connected to why you went home? Why you needed to?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t see how, but since I don’t really remember what happened except in flashes that make no sense to me, I can’t be sure of anything. All I can tell you is that she asked me to stop a killer, and I gather whoever she was referring to has killed more than once.” She kept her voice low, more out of habit than because she had any expectation of being overheard.
    “But there’s no evidence of a serial killer operating in Baron Hollow?”
    “I got on my laptop as soon as I returned here, and checked the Haven and SCU databases; there’s nothing about an active serial in this area, not even the suspicion of one. I also went online and checked the local newspaper archives, but they’re still working on getting most of the back issues digitized; for that older stuff, I’ll have to physically go to the library. Online, I could only go back a year or so.”
    “And?”
    “People go missing around here all the time. I mean in the mountains all along the Blue Ridge, not specifically Baron Hollow. With all the tourists, the hikers…Jeez, I’m betting some of them never show up in any record because they hike in and out, just passing through on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. Oftenwithout family, or with family six states away who have no idea where they’ve been for years. Unless something happens to cause a disturbance, none of the locals would even notice; new faces just passing through is the rule around here, not the exception.”
    “A perfect hunting ground,” Maggie said.
    “The thought had occurred. I haven’t narrowed down the area, but a quick check showed me there are more than eighty people currently listed as officially missing in North Carolina, and those are just the ones on the record; God knows how many have really disappeared without a trace. Men, women, and children. But the only thing I found local was a bit on a girl who went missing last summer. Big news, major search and rescue that went on for days. And then her boyfriend, who had reported her missing, seems to have rather sullenly admitted she probably hiked out of the mountains and hitched a ride back home after they’d fought. The chief of police followed up, and turns out that’s what happened. Case closed.”
    “So, no killer.”
    “Well, none that I’ve been able to find any evidence of. But we both know spirits don’t show up just to yank somebody’s chain. Pardon the pun.”
    “Mmm. You’re on vacation, Jessie. Hunting a killer wasn’t part of the plan.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    After a moment, Maggie said, “I’ll do some checking on this end and get back to you if I find anything. In the meantime, why don’t you spend some family time, like you planned.”
    “Unless and until another spirit shows up?”
    “The only investigating you should be doing is trying to figure