Bad Blood

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  The earliest complaints dated to the establishment of the Serenity Ranch commune on the outskirts of Gaither more than three decades earlier. According to the files Agent Sterling had acquired, Holland Darby was a collector of drifters and strays, but over the years, he’d wooed more than a few young, impressionable locals to his side, too. Never anyone under the age of eighteen. Never any males.

  That told me what I needed to know about Holland Darby. You dot your I’s and cross your T’s. If you harbored minors, you could run afoul of the law, and whatever you’re doing out at Serenity Ranch, the last thing you want is cops on your property. Your followers include both men and women, but when it comes to locals, you prefer females—the younger, the better, so long as they’re legal.

  “He brought Melody to town as a test.” Lia’s tone gave no clue to the fact that this was personal to her, that Holland Darby had raised memories she kept buried deep. “Darby wanted Shane to see his sister. He wanted Melody to make it clear that they are her family now.”

  The less contact Melody has with her family, the easier she is to manipulate, but the more times she looks them in the eyes and chooses you, the more certain she’ll be that they won’t forgive her. That they can’t forgive her, and that even if she wanted to leave Serenity Ranch, she could never go home.

  “Clearly,” Lia said, standing up, “the Gaither Hotel is only passingly familiar with proper air-conditioning.” She pulled her hair back and off her neck. “I’m going to change into something cooler.”

  Lia’s expression dared us to argue that her need for a wardrobe change had nothing to do with the temperature. Beside me, Michael watched her walk away. No matter how good she was at hiding her emotions, he was better at reading them. He knows what you’re feeling. You know that he knows.

  After another moment, Michael followed her into the bedroom. I could see exactly how this was going to play out—the push and pull between them, Michael trying to bring her emotions to the surface, Lia throwing the fiasco with Celine in his face.

  “I believe,” Sloane said, filling the silence, “that there is approximately an eighty-seven percent chance that Michael and Lia will end up making out or otherwise engaged in acts of physical—”

  “Let’s turn our attention back to the case,” Agent Sterling cut in. “Shall we?” She fell into lecture mode. “There were dozens of complaints filed about Serenity Ranch when Holland Darby first began buying up large chunks of property on the outskirts of town thirty-three years ago. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of the complaints were baseless or manufactured—no one wanted drifters, runaways, and former drug addicts taking up residence on what used to be family farms.” Agent Sterling set those complaints aside and opened the thickest file. “Approximately nine months after the establishment of Serenity Ranch, the local sheriff’s department opened up an investigation of the group’s involvement in the murders of Anna and Todd Kyle.”

  “Nightshade’s parents?” I asked. Sterling nodded. For the next hour, she, Dean, Sloane, and I pieced through every bit of evidence the investigation had managed to obtain.

  It wasn’t much.

  At the time of the murders, Anna and Todd Kyle were a young married couple with a nine-year-old son. Anna’s father, Malcolm Lowell, lived with them. Reading between the lines, I inferred that Malcolm was the one with money—the one who’d owned the house, the one who’d refused to sell his land to Holland Darby when the interloper was buying up all of their neighbors’. There had been some kind of altercation involving the two men. Words were exchanged. Threats were implied.

  And that night, someone had broken into Malcolm Lowell’s house, butchered his daughter and son-in-law, and viciously attacked Malcolm, stabbing him seventeen times and leaving him to bleed out on the floor. According to the police report, nine-year-old Mason had been home the whole time.

  Did you hear them screaming? Did you hide? The old woman at the diner had said that most people in Gaither believed that Mason Kyle had seen his parents murdered, but the report gave no such indication.

  Malcolm—Nightshade’s grandfather—was the one who had called 911. By the time medical assistance had arrived, he had been holding on to his life by a thread. The old man survived. His daughter and son-in-law had not. In the aftermath of the attack, Malcolm Lowell had been unable to provide a physical description of his attacker, but suspicion had fallen almost immediately on the occupants of Serenity Ranch.

  “I’ve been working on a time line.” Sloane had made use of the hotel’s complimentary notepad, ripping out page after page and laying them along the floor, scrawling a note on each. She pointed to the leftmost one. “Thirty-three years ago, Holland Darby establishes his commune on the outskirts of town. Less than a year after that, Anna and Todd Kyle are murdered. Twenty-seven years ago, the poison Master who would eventually go on to choose Nightshade as his apprentice killed nine people, completing his initiation into the Masters’ ranks.”

  I followed the logic of Sloane’s calculation: Nightshade had completed his initiation kills six years earlier. The cult operated on a twenty-one-year cycle. Ergo, the poison Master before Nightshade had been initiated two to three years after Anna and Todd Kyle had been murdered.

  What’s the connection?

  “Scenario one,” I said. “The Master who eventually trained Nightshade as his apprentice lived in Gaither during the time of the murders. We know the Masters favor Pythias who have violence and abuse in their past—it’s possible a similar criteria is used in the selection of killers.” I closed my eyes for a moment and let the logic take hold. “The previous Master knew what Mason had seen and survived, and marked him for recruitment.”

  Dean met my gaze. “Scenario two: I’m the Master who recruited Nightshade. I’m also the person who killed Anna and Todd Kyle. I was never caught, and the case got just enough local press to attract the attention of the Masters, who offered to channel my potential into so much more.” He ran the tips of the fingers on his right hand over my left. “I accepted the offer and learned to kill without a trace, without mercy.”

  Beside me, Sloane shivered.

  “Years later,” Dean continued quietly, “when it was time for me to choose an apprentice of my own, I remembered Mason Kyle. Maybe I didn’t realize he was in the house when I killed his family. Or maybe,” he continued, his voice nothing like his own, “I chose to let him live. Either way, he’s mine.”

  Silence fell over the room. If Nightshade’s parents had been murdered by one of the Masters, solving the Kyle murders might lead us straight to the person who’d recruited Nightshade.

  Find one Master, follow the trail.

  “Scenario three.” Agent Sterling, who had been remarkably quiet as Dean and I had sorted through our thoughts, added her voice to the mix. “The UNSUB in the Kyle murders killed Nightshade’s parents so that little Mason Kyle would be more suited to becoming a killer himself someday.” She stood up and began pacing the room. I’d never seen her so intent. “I know the Nightshade case inside and out. The killer we were looking for was brilliant, narcissistic, with a need to win and to one-up all competitors. And yet, during his last interrogation, Nightshade accepted that the Pythia was going to have him killed. He didn’t fight it. He didn’t turn on the other Masters to save himself.”

  “He was loyal,” I translated.

  “You think that loyalty might date back to childhood.” Dean lifted his gaze to Sterling’s. “You think our UNSUB started grooming Nightshade to join the Masters when he was just a boy.”

  Sloane frowned. “Nightshade’s parents were killed one thousand, eight hundred, and eighty-seven days before Nightshade’s Master completed his own initiation kills,” she pointed out. “Barring anomalies in the space-time continuum, it seems unlikely that someone could have begun grooming an apprentice to take their place before that someone had a place.”

  Sloane’s hands fluttered, a sure sign of anxiety. She calmed herself, turning to the remainder of the time lin
e. “Nine years after Mason Kyle’s parents were murdered, Mason left Gaither and never came back. That puts his exodus at roughly twenty-four years ago. About twelve years after that, Cassie and her mother moved to town.” Sloane’s blue eyes darted toward mine. I could see her trying to calculate the odds that continuing would hurt me.

  I saved her the trouble. “Six years after my mom and I left Gaither, Nightshade killed nine people, taking his seat at the Masters’ table. Less than two months after that, my mother was taken.”

  My mom and Nightshade had lived in this town more than a decade apart. But one or more of the Masters must have kept tabs on them thereafter. You have a long memory. You have an eye for potential. And you can be very, very patient.

  “Assuming the attack on the Kyle family was perpetrated by someone aged sixteen or over,” Sloane said, “we’re looking for an UNSUB no younger than his late forties—and possibly substantially older.”

  I thought of the senior citizens back at the diner, the old man who’d invited us into the apothecary museum.

  “We need to know what the police didn’t put in the official file,” Dean said. “Gossip. Theories.”

  “Luckily for you,” Lia commented, strolling back into the room, “gossip is one of my specialties.” She was wearing a long black skirt and a multilayered top that hung off her shoulders. She’d rimmed her eyes in thick, dark liner, and wore two-inch-wide copper bangles on her wrists. “On a scale of one to ten,” she said, “how psychic do I look?”

  “Six-point-four,” Sloane replied without hesitation.

  “Psychic?” I asked. I was fairly certain I did not want to know where this was going.

  “Lia and I were talking about our little chat with Ree at the Not-A-Diner,” Michael said, coming up behind Lia with a look on his face that made me think they’d been doing a lot more than talking. “And we both seemed to recall Ree saying something about a widow with a big mouth and a penchant for psychics.”

  Lia arched an eyebrow at me. I knew that eyebrow arch. It did not bode well.

  “No way,” I said. “I spent most of my childhood helping my mom con people into thinking she was psychic. I’m not going to help you do the same.”

  Sloane looked at me, looked at Lia, then looked at me again. “There is a very high probability,” she whispered, “that Lia’s about to tell you that you’re lying.”

  It could be worse, I told myself as I adjusted the camera pin on my lapel and Lia leaned forward to ring the town gossip’s doorbell. Lia could have chosen a more destructive outlet for her issues.

  “Can I help you?” The woman who answered the door was in her early fifties, with vivid red hair that wouldn’t have looked natural even if she were two decades younger. Her sense of fashion tended toward skintight and shiny.

  You wear bright pink lipstick, even in your own home. The house is classic, understated—everything you’re not.

  “If you’re Marcela Waite, I believe that we can help you,” Lia murmured.

  Even a Natural liar’s credibility could only take us so far. As much as I loathed doing it, I picked up the slack. “My name is Cassie Hobbes. You knew my mother, Lorelai. She helped you connect to loved ones on the other side.”

  Recognition sparked in Marcela’s eyes.

  “Forty-four percent of psychics believe in UFOs,” Sloane blurted out. “But twice that believe in extraterrestrials.”

  “The spirit realm speaks to Sloane in numbers,” Lia said solemnly.

  “You have four dogs buried in your yard.” Sloane rocked back on her heels. “And you replaced four hundred and seventy-nine shingles on your roof last year.”

  Marcela’s hand flew to her chest. Clearly, it had not—and would not—occur to her that Sloane was simply good at math and extremely observant.

  “Do you have a message for me?” Marcela asked, her eyes alight.

  “My mother passed away several years ago,” I said, sticking to the story we’d told Ree. “I came to Gaither to scatter her ashes, but before I do…”

  “Yes?” Marcela said breathlessly.

  “Her spirit asked me to come here and do a reading for you.”

  I was a horrible person.

  As Marcela Waite served us tea and sat down across from me in her formal sitting room, I pushed down a stab of guilt and forced myself to focus on her BPE instead. Behavior. Personality. Environment.

  This was your husband’s house. He came from money. You didn’t. He never pressured you to change, and you haven’t—but you also haven’t altered his décor. My gut said that she’d loved him.

  “You’re a very spiritual person,” I said, feeling more like my mother than I had in a very long time. “I’m sensing that you have a touch of the Gift yourself.”

  Most people liked to consider themselves intuitive, and 90 percent of this job was telling the client what they wanted to hear.

  “You’ve been having dreams,” I continued. “Tell me about them.”

  As our hostess launched into a description of her dream from the night before, I wondered how my mother could have done this for so many years.

  You did what you had to do, I thought. You did it for me. But deep down, I also had to admit, You liked playing the game. You liked the power.

  It took me a moment to realize that Marcela had stopped talking.

  “There are two sides to the dream you’ve described,” I said automatically. “The different sides represent two paths, a decision you have to make.”

  The trick to my mother’s trade had always been to stay vague until the client gave you cues about how to proceed.

  “New versus old,” I continued. “To forgive or not to forgive. To apologize or to bite your tongue.” There was no reaction from Marcela, so I got a bit more personal. “You wonder what your husband would want you to do.”

  That opened the floodgates. “His sister has been so nasty to me! It’s pretty rich, the way she looks down on me when she’s on marriage number four!”

  Your husband’s sister never thought you were good enough for him—and she let you know it from day one.

  Sloane cleared her throat. “There are fifty-six anagrams of the name Marcela, including caramel, a calmer, and lace arm.”

  Marcela gasped. “Caramel was my Harold’s favorite candy.” Her brow furrowed. “Harold wants me to be calmer? More patient with his sister?”

  Lia took that as her cue. “I smell caramel,” she said, her eyes focusing on something in the distance. “Harold is here. He’s with us.” She latched on to my hand as she turned her weighty gaze to Marcela Waite. “He wants you to know that he knows how his sister can be.”

  “He didn’t always see it when he was alive,” I added, elaborating on Lia’s statement to make it more consistent with my profile of Marcela. “But he sees everything now. He knows it’s hard, but he’s counting on you to be the bigger person. Because he knows you can be.”

  “He said that?” Marcela asked softly.

  “He doesn’t say much,” I replied. “In spirit form, he doesn’t have to.”

  Marcela closed her eyes and bowed her head. You needed to hear that he supports you. You needed to remember that he loved you, too.

  I could almost believe that we were doing a good thing here, but then Lia arched her back, her body contorting itself into an unnatural position.

  “Help.” Lia pitched her voice into a high, nails-on-chalkboard whisper. “I can’t find my son. There’s blood. So much blood—”

  I gave Lia’s hand a warning squeeze. This wasn’t how I would have chosen to bring the conversation around to the Kyle murders, but Lia—in true Lia fashion—hadn’t left me much of a choice.

  I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “Tell me your name, spirit,” I said.

  “Anna,” Lia hissed. “My name was Anna.”

  Luckily for us, Marcela Waite—like most gossips and lovers of gold lamé leggings—had a finely tuned sense of melodrama. I was fairly certain she’d enjoyed Lia’s performance ev
en more than talking to her dead husband.

  “It must have been Anna Kyle,” Marcela told us, tapping red fingernails against the side of her teacup. “I was nineteen when she and her husband were murdered. That poor woman.”

  “What happened?” I asked. We’d put on our show. Now it was time for the town gossip to put on hers.

  “Anna Kyle was stabbed to death in her own kitchen. The husband, too,” Marcela said in a hushed voice. “And Anna’s daddy barely made it out alive.”

  “And her son?” I asked. “She said she couldn’t find her son.”

  “He was there,” Marcela told us. “Saw the whole thing.” That echoed the sentiment we’d heard at the diner, but contradicted the official report that Agent Sterling had dug up. “You ask me, there was something not quite right with that boy. He was a rowdy one, always running around with the children of those people.”

  I filed the reference to those people away for future consideration.

  “How awful,” Lia murmured. “It’s a miracle the killer left the boy alive.”

  Marcela pursed her lips. Even without Michael present to read her, I recognized the look of a woman on the verge of saying something that she knew she shouldn’t.

  “I don’t hold with gossip, mind you,” Marcela hedged, “but some folks say that little Mason knew the killer. Some folks think he didn’t just witness the murders.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They think he watched.”

  Sloane frowned. “Why would anyone think that?”

  Marcela didn’t even try to resist answering. “I told you about Anna’s daddy? He was stabbed over and over, had to have surgery, and when he woke up, he told the police he never saw the attacker.”

  “But?” Lia prompted.

  “But after that, Malcolm Lowell refused to have anything to do with his grandson. He wouldn’t take custody of his own flesh and blood, couldn’t even look at him. Old Malcolm never spoke a word to the boy again.”