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She glanced at the clock on her dash. Six a.m.

She’d be in Portland by eight.

Dawn was still a long way off, but Catherine was seated at the table in the kitchen, staring out the back windows that looked upon the garden—more bare ground than plants this month—and, beyond it, the graveyard. She hadn’t found the leather box with Mary’s journal, and the only thing a trip to her sister’s bedroom had accomplished was to leave Catherine in a state of melancholia that threatened to zap her of all her energy.

She was sitting in the dark. She didn’t need a light, as she kept her gaze trained out the window and watched as the blackness seemed to be slowly lifting, the depth of hue leaching to gray as morning arrived. Seagulls were cawing loudly, and she envisioned a wildly flapping flock fluttering above the sand and slapping lightly through the receding waves, searching for a meal.

She used to love the beach. As young girls, she and Mary would race across the flattened sand and into water cold enough to numb your feet in minutes. At that time there was no worrying about “gifts,” even though there were signs of what was to come, because, although their special prowesses came into bloom when they were passing through puberty, there were tendrils that took root even early on: Catherine’s faint moments of precognition, when she would see something she didn’t understand, like sudden pouring rain behind her eyelids, which would disappear instantly when she lifted them and stared into a cloudless sky; or Mary’s laser vision as she watched boys flying kites and using skimboards.

But she and Mary had ignored the signs. Hadn’t really understood what they were. Until that time Catherine had watched two lovers kissing, the man’s hand slowly sliding down his partner’s back and over the rounded curve of her bottom, and Mary had said in a knowing tone, “I’m going to take him from her.”

Catherine hadn’t known what to make of that. Mary was eight years old. But sure enough, she stood there in the sand and stared and stared and stared, and the man stopped touching his friend, as if he’d been burned, and he looked around, searching for something, his gaze dropping briefly on Mary but then moving on when he saw she was just a little girl.

Well. That had been just the start. Catherine had seen things that both awed and horrified her in the years since. And when she thought back to her own ill-fated affair, the way Mary had handled it, the memory left a burning cinder inside her chest that even now flamed hot with i

njustice. If she . . .

Movement outside the window.

Catherine froze, stayed perfectly still, her eyes straining. Someone was creeping along, trying to duck beneath the windows, heading toward the back door. Her pulse jumped, but she waited until she was certain they were past the point of seeing her, then silently got to her feet. She grabbed a small cast-iron pan that always sat on the back burner—a weapon wielded more than once before—and moved to the nearest light switch and waited. If they came in through the storeroom and alcove . . .

She heard them moving cautiously, carefully, and her heart rate increased. Had someone gotten over the fence? She knew there were places where the foliage grew close to it, and with the right amount of brush and rocks and boards, it would be possible to climb over the fence. Hadn’t Ravinia done just that the night Justice tried to scale the fence? And many times since, she was sure, though the girl wouldn’t admit to it.

A woman’s form suddenly filled the room.

Catherine switched on the light.

“Ravinia,” she said into the sudden glare as Ravinia took a large step backward, her breath sweeping in on a gasp.

“What are you doing here?” Ravinia demanded.

“Thinking,” Catherine answered shortly. “Something you spend too little time doing.”

Underneath Ravinia’s cloak Catherine saw the legs of a pair of dark brown pants. At the lodge she wore dresses, but on her evening forays it was the pants that Ophelia had made for her at Ravinia’s behest.

“I’m over eighteen,” Ravinia answered hotly. “I can leave anytime I want.”

“It hasn’t been that long since you fought with Justice.” Ravinia had been trying to escape at the time, but she’d been wounded by Justice’s knife, and it had cooled her ardor for a time.

Automatically Ravinia reached up and touched the shoulder where the knife had penetrated. The blade had hit her collarbone, which saved her from a deeper cut. “Justice is dead.”

“If you want to go, I won’t stop you,” Catherine said.

Ravinia narrowed her eyes on her aunt. “But you’ll try.”

“What I don’t want is to have you climbing the fence and coming and going as you please. If you want out, go. But don’t come back.”

Her eyes flickered. “Is this some kind of trick?”

“No, Ravinia,” Catherine said tiredly. “I don’t know where you’ve been all night, and I don’t have the energy to care. I’m going to make the lodge more secure. I guess I should thank you for showing me there are still ways to get in and out. I’ll find them and secure them, and then if you ever want to contact us, you can come to the front gate.”

Ravinia’s face was flushed. “Next time I leave, it’s forever!”

“Then we understand each other.”

Catherine climbed to her feet and forcibly collected herself, feeling both despair and relief over this final decision. She headed upstairs again, aware Ravinia was staring after her, as if she’d lost her mind, and glanced down the length of the gallery to the steps that led to Mary’s room. A faint slip of light showed. Catherine frowned. Daylight was creeping in, but this was lamplight, and the only way there could be lamplight was if the door to Mary’s bedroom had been left open.

She walked to the stairs and looked upward, seeing more light. Carefully, she climbed the steps, and when she crested the last one, she gazed down at the locked door. Only it wasn’t locked. It was ajar.

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