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So?”
    “So I don’t wanna drag you into somethin’
that’s gonna fuck you up, man.” He forced out another exasperated
breath and turned away, once again avoiding eye contact with me.
The windows of the van had fogged from our breath as we talked, and
the winter landscape was all but completely obscured from view.
Chilled silence filled the van for a long moment before Ben finally
spoke in a near whisper. “I did that once already.”
    “Dammit, Ben!” I snapped. “I’m telling
you this for the last time. You didn’t drag me into anything.
I volunteered to help you with
that case. Any “demons” that I’m dealing with because of it are my
own and, very simply, are not your
fault !”
    I felt like grabbing my friend and
shaking him as hard as I could. I didn’t know if I would ever be
able to convince him that he wasn’t to blame for everything that
had occurred during that investigation—my brush with death, my
nightmares, and even Felicity’s miscarriage. Each of those things
had come about directly because of my involvement in the search for
a sadistic serial murderer. Ben’s loyalty as a friend caused him to
cling to that blame like a security blanket, as if by taking
responsibility he could protect me from an evil that he himself did
not understand. In his mind,
he thought all of this was because he’d asked me to decipher a
symbol left behind at a crime scene. In my mind, I knew it was because my destiny was to square off with that unseen
evil and face it down.
    I let out my own piqued sigh between pursed
lips and sent the mild anger with my friend to spin away down an
imaginary drain. I knew he meant well and that this was all a part
of what made Detective Benjamin Storm, “Ben Storm the devoted
friend.”
    I unlatched my door and shouldered it open.
“Let’s go have a look. If I can help, you know I want to.”
    “Ya’know... I really hated to ask you to do
this, Rowan.” Ben turned back to face me, his eyes betraying the
pain he still refused to let go. The temperature inside the van had
quickly dropped, and his words came in a cloud of steamy
breath.
    “I know you did, Chief,” I answered. “But get
over it. You can’t protect the entire world.”
    “Maybe not. But I can sure as hell protect my
corner of it.”
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    “W e haven’t cleaned her up
yet,” the emotionless voice of the medical examiner told me
officially. “We just finished the external examination early this
morning. Detective Storm asked us not to proceed with the rest of
the postmortem until you had a look.”
    The climate controlled gelidity of the
autopsy suite, though still a fair amount warmer than the current
outdoor temperature, injected itself uninvited into my joints,
quickly hardening them to ice. Insinuating itself like a prickly
arthritis, it froze me in place next to the stainless steel table
bearing the young woman’s partially shrouded corpse. The only sound
to reach my ears was the dull thudding of my own heart. I had been
in this very room before with none but the living, but even then
the restless souls of the departed had called out to me.
     
    Clawed at me…
    Pleaded with me…
    Spoken to me as their conduit to this
physical plane…
     
    They had sought me out as the one who
understood their continued existence and as the one who could
pierce that unyielding veil between life and death.
    And, they had spoken to me then just as they
were speaking to me now.
    This unearthly connection to the other side
was my own personal bane as a Witch. Something I had never wanted
but could never deny.
    My eyes were beginning to burn, and I
suddenly realized that I was staring. A fixed, unfocused gaze upon
her uncovered face and torso. A face that had once belonged to a
vivacious and beautiful young woman. I blinked and removed my
glasses before rubbing my eyes and taking a moment to will away the
voices of the dead. All of them but one, I hoped.
    In life, I am sure that Brianna