alive.
We reached the crime scene, but Maggie did not stop; she had covered every inch of it already. She waved at the guard as she passed and he saluted her in return, a sign of his respect for her dedication. She followed the path upward into the forest above the field where the young woman’s body had been found. As Maggie investigated a patch of trampled bushes just off the main path several hundred yards from the hilltop, our peace was abruptly shattered. I was flooded with a sense of doom so acute it felt as if the world had inverted and the very earth had moved through me in doing so. I was left with a choking, cold, all-consuming sensation that both smothered me and stripped me bare. I was stunned into inaction, frozen by an unseen source of pure evil.
Yet I saw no one there.
Maggie continued her search along the forest floor, examining broken branches and trampled leaves, oblivious to the feelings that overwhelmed me. The first wave of sensation passed, but my conviction that evil was present lingered. I sniffed the air carefully, trying to determine where the feeling was coming from. A shadow passed behind a sycamore that guarded one edge of the grove. I was there within seconds but found no one. Yet I knew the force was human, not a lingering essence, but human.
There was someone else in the grove with us.
I had seen dark shapes often since I had died; they lived just outside my peripheral vision, a tribe of distorted skulls, grasping limbs, visible only in black outlines of deformed bodies that grew, then melted into the shadows before I could fix them in my sight. But they were real, and they were of my netherworld. That much I knew.
This was different. This was a man.
The evil passed behind me now, manifesting as an icy draft on the back of my neck. A foul, decaying smell filled my being. I turned around in a circle, slowly, hyper-vigilant of all I saw.
I saw no one.
But I knew that he could see her. And he would remember her face.
Maggie was bent over the roots of a tree, examining nicks in its gnarled surfaces, pushing aside leaves with her hands, unaware that she was not alone. I waited, completely still, suddenly certain that a fourth presence had joined us, this one less human than the other.
I was confused by the signals that assaulted me. Smell, noise, touch, empathy. My hearing had grown acute over the past few months and I imagined I could hear a rapid heartbeat nearby—or maybe I really could hear it. Or was it my own remembered pulse? No, it was real. It was someone’s heartbeat, someone very much a human. I detected a light snick-snick, no more than a whisper: feet creeping over dry leaves. A corporeal presence. Very human. And very much a danger to Maggie.
A human who remained hidden, watching Maggie and waiting.
But waiting for what?
Maggie knelt near the base of a large oak tree and ran her fingers over the bark. She took a penknife from her pocket and pried an infinitesimal bit of matter from under a groove in the gnarled surface, bagging it carefully. She backed away from the tree with deliberate steps and walked slowly in a circle around it, her eyes never leaving the trunk, her vision focused about three feet off the ground. She did not disturb the carpet of leaves pushed up against the base of the tree, but tiptoed carefully outside of its range.
As she moved behind the trunk, I saw him at last: a man, hiding behind a nearby tree. I could not see his face in the shadows, but I could tell that he was tall. Tall and very, very still.
Before I could react, before I could so much as move an inch, the man made a sound as if he were choking. He took off through the trees, pushing through bushes and fallen branches in his panic, without regard for the noise he was making, or for Maggie, who drew her gun the instant she heard him and took off in pursuit, her courage rising without hesitation.
I followed, wondering how I could be of help, but stopped abruptly when I saw Alissa Hayes standing in the spot where the man had waited. Her face was sad, but her eyes glittered with something close to triumph. She looked at me. Our eyes held. Contact. I understood: the man had