by Andrew Mayne
It was a letter. He sat back down on his bed and read it in the dim light streaming through the small window on the cell door.
I looked at their faces. Every. Single. One.
The old ones. The young ones.
The ones too trusting to realize how they were manipulated.
Some of them probably deserved to die. Not all.
Not most.
Not the little ones.
You twisted their beliefs to serve your own purposes.
Do they know what you are?
It doesn’t matter. I do.
It’s the faces of the little ones who died crying in the dark I want you to see as you try to tell yourself it was part of some grand plan.
I want those to be the last faces you’ll ever see. Because you won’t see my face.
You’ll never see me coming.
Heywood held the note close to his nose, hoping there would be some scent of her. But there was none. He read the note again, imagining her saying the words aloud. After the third time, he put his weapon back in its hiding place and took out his prized possession, the one he liked to touch as he lay awake in the middle of the night.
Folded into the pages of his Bible, next to Exodus 22:18, was the silky strand of black hair.
He rolled it between his fingers and thought of her.
She’d come to him. He didn’t know how. But she’d reached out to him.
He took her threat very seriously.
And it made him smile.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my parents, Jim and Pat. Thank you to my sounding boards, Justin Robert Young, Kenneth Montgomery, and Peter J. Wacks. Thank you to Joan Lawton and Erika Larsen for your kindness. Finally, special thanks to Hannah Wood and Erica Spellman Silverman for being Jessica’s biggest champions.
About the Author
Andrew Mayne started his first illusion tour while he was a teenager and was soon headlining in resorts and casinos around the world. He’s worked behind the scenes creatively for David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine. With the support of talk show host and amateur magician Johnny Carson, Andrew started a program to use magic to teach critical thinking skills in public schools for the James Randi Educational Foundation. Andrew’s “Wizard School” segments, teaching magic and science to children, aired nationwide on public television. He also starred in the reality show Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne.
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The Jessica Blackwood Novels
Black Fall
Name of the Devil
Angel Killer
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
black fall. Copyright © 2016 by AndrewMayne.com LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
first edition
Cover design by Sarah Brody
Cover photographs: © Lekcej / Getty Images (Woman); © Pingamranand / Getty Images (White House)
Digital Edition March 2017 ISBN: 9780062492166
Print ISBN: 9780062491985 (pbk.)
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