Page 61 of In Her Path

Jenna turned back to the cellar, suddenly aware that Piper hadn’t followed her up. She descended the steps again, finding her sister standing quietly beside the lantern, her expression serene.

“You okay?” Jenna asked, moving to her side.

“They’re gone now,” Piper said. “The voices. Bruce and the others. They’re quiet.”

Around them, the cellar had transformed into a hive of activity—Highway Patrol officers tending to Claire, others securing the scene, Spelling directing the extraction of evidence. Meredith sat motionless on the dirt floor, an officer beside her, her face empty of everything but exhaustion.

“I heard what you said to her,” Jenna told Piper quietly. “About Bruce. About the willow tree. How did you know?”

Piper’s smile was gentle. “He told me,” she said simply. “Just like he told me where to find Claire.” She reached for Jenna’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Sometimes the dead need to tell us something right away. I guess when it’s really urgent, they can reach out to me—just like they do to you in dreams.”

Jenna looked at her sister—at the calm certainty in her eyes, at the way she stood amid the chaos without being part of it. After twenty years of searching, of hoping against hope, she had found not just Piper but new connections yet to be explored, gifts that ran in their blood. She knew they were going to need every talent they could muster to combat the darkness they kept encountering.

“Come on,” she said, putting an arm around Piper’s shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”

They climbed the steps together, emerging into the clear October morning. The trees around the clearing had begun to turn, gold and crimson among the green. In the distance, the hills rolled toward the horizon, unchanged by the human drama playing out below.

It was over. Claire was safe. Meredith was in custody. The case was closed. Justice had been served.

But what would be coming next? Jenna wondered how she would ever have time to build a life of her own. Was peace even possible under this darkness in Genesius County?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jenna hovered at the edge of consciousness; aware she was dreaming. The familiar sensation came first—the strange clarity, the weightlessness, the subtle shift in perception that told she was lucid.

The voice she heard was warm, female, “I’ve come with good news, Sheriff Graves.”

Then the figure appeared. An elderly woman with white hair, her face lined with age but her eyes bright with an intelligence that transcended years. She wore a simple dress of indeterminate age and style.

Jenna recognized her immediately.

“Esther Doyle,” she said. Frank’s grandmother. A woman who had been dead for decades. A woman who had appeared to her in other dreams.

Esther gestured, and the space around them changed. Now they stood in a field Jenna recognized—the high meadow on Miller’s Ridge, where the land dropped away toward Trentville below. The view stretched for miles, forests and farms spread out like a child’s map.

“I’ve watched this town, this county, my whole life and long after,” Esther said. “Seen the darkness that rises and falls here. It had slept for years, then it awoke hungry.” Esther’s voice softened. “But what I came to tell you is this: That darkness is beginning to lift. Now. Today. Because of you and the people standing with you.” She reached out, her hand not quite touching Jenna’s arm. “You and your sister, Deputy Hawkins, Frank—all of you, acting out of kindness and sympathy and love—you’ve broken its hold.”

The field around them began to brighten, sunlight breaking through clouds that had been solid gray moments before.

“That doesn’t mean nothing bad will ever happen here again,” Esther continued. “This is still the world, after all, with all its grief and pain. But the particular darkness I knew—the ancient, hungry thing that lived in the soil and stones of this place—it’s going away.” She smiled, a flash of warmth that seemed to brighten the dream around them. “Now there will be more light.”

The scene around them was growing brighter, the grass a vibrant green, the sky a perfect blue.

The old woman looked sharply at Jenna. “But you’re still afraid. You mustn’t be. You mustn’t let fear block the light.”

“Fear of what?”

No answer came.

Then Jenna’s eyes snapped open. Her bedroom lay in the gray half-light of early dawn. She pushed herself up on one elbow and reached for her phone on the nightstand.

5:17. October 17th. The day after they’d found Claire in Harlan Soll’s storm cellar. The day after Meredith had confessed.

Jenna sat up. The dream had felt so real—Esther’s voice, the meadow, the light—that for a moment she couldn’t be sure she was actually awake. But the familiar weight of her quilt, the distant sound of a car passing on the street below—all of it grounded her in reality.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, preparing herself for a new day. She and Jake had agreed to stop by Trentville Memorial this morning to check on Claire. The Mayor had been admitted for dehydration, shock, and the rope burn on her neck.

*