Instinctively, I cast around to see if anyone had overheard his wild accusation. "You're out of your mind."

One trimmed brow arched in my direction. "I'm out of my mind? Baby, I'm the most sane person in a thirty mile radius. I'm telling you like it is, and you know it. Think about it."

I remembered now, how frightened and confused I'd been when I left the village office. I didn't understand what had happened at my father's house and the sight of the blood brought back the physical memory of my mother's death.

Even sitting in that booth, tucked safely in the corner of a familiar old bar with the man I loved across from me, I felt the warm stickiness of my mother's blood flowing through my fingers.

"I must admit," Aiden said. "None of us saw it coming. We weren't exactly sure what you'd do. That was the part that made the whole story so compelling. Jack's going to be able to retire off the last few days if he plays his cards right, but no one thought you'd whip out a pistol and shoot the one guy in town who wasn't in on any of it." He cocked his head. "Well, not including your father, of course."

Clawing through my memories, I could find nothing that would suggest I'd killed Dan Tanner. "He showed me the screens and I didn't know what to make of them, so I left. I ran away to try to find Jack."

"Dan Tanner told you Jack was behind it all and you shot him." Aiden drew the salt shaker between his long fingers and spun it back and forth, back and forth. The black band he wore on his right index finger clicked against the glass.

"I never crossed into Dad's field with Dan. It wasn't until Jack and I were walking together that I even realized he lived so close to Dad."

"Well, we had to move things around a little to jog your memory."

When I didn't say anything, he asked, "Who's idea was it to walk in the field instead of along the road?"

In the bunker, Dan had been sucking his teeth and the sound of it shredded the tissue paper wrapping of sanity I'd been clinging to. "You ever watch a horror movie? Pretty girl goes chasing a monster, she gets killed every time."

When I didn't answer, he kept talking.

"If you're determined, then go. You're most likely to find a hidden space where the transition spots are—doorways between rooms, places where you have to turn down a hall to get from one space to another. The dark hidden places you think are safe, almost never are. Don't trust anybody in this town, but least of all your brother."

"My brother's the only person I ever trusted in my life." I'd slipped the gun in my pocket moments after the police woman had pointed it out. She had no reason to take it from me. Owning a firearm wasn't only legal in rural Michigan, it was somewhat of an expectation. It's cold weight felt right in my hand in a way nothing else had felt right in days.

Aiden slide the salt shaker back into place next to the napkin holder. That was some amazing TV, baby. 'Time to re-evaluate.' Seriously, no writer could have scripted that line any better."

I couldn't think of anything to say. His version sounded true, but I remembered it another way too. "He loaned me his car."

"You stole his car and dumped it in the river."

My body recalled the sensation of being submerged in the frigid water and I shivered hard. "I didn't do that on purpose."

"No?" He shrugged. "Looked like it to all of us, but Jack thought you were done for. You would have been, too, if he hadn't been keeping an eye on every monitor. Most of us saw you leave Tanner's and go to the church." He leaned back then and rolled his eyes upward in a display of ecstatic wonder. Your baptism at the church—"

"Baptism?"

"The way Hobbs gave himself over like that. Man, that's religion, right there."

"Now he is a prince of Hell, feasting on the souls of his enemies." The words rolled off my tongue, a practiced response I'd heard my mother murmur to her grown-up friends in times of mourning.

"You tore out of there and no one knew where you were headed, but you have to understand, Jess, none of us were thinking straight just then. Watching that was... Man, baby, that was really something." He seemed to require a moment to pull himself together well enough to go on. "Jack was the only one who kept his eye on you."

His arms, carrying me to the car, had anchored me to this physical world. Only a moment earlier, I'd been certain I was ready to leave it.

"I want to talk to Jack"

Aiden leaned forward and again wrapped his big strong hands around mine. "That makes sense. Do you believe I've told you the truth?"

For some reason I couldn't put my finger on, answering that question awoke burning coals of anxiety deep in my gut. "Just give my brother a call, will you? I want to talk to him."

"I'm here, Jess." Jack strolled across the battered, beer-stained floor toward our table. No one else remained in the room. I couldn't say when the bartender and the town drunk left, but the three of us were alone with the video cameras. I slid to the right and my brother slipped into the booth next to me.

"I know it's a lot to process, Jess, and I'm sorry I tricked you. I didn't want it to be that way but, well, it had to be. That's all over now, though. No more tricks. No more lies."

Tears sprang to my eyes, overflowing my lower lids and cutting hot tracks down my cheeks. "Promise?"

"I promise."

"On our mother's grave?"

"I promise on our mother's grave." He reached up and wiped away my tear with his calloused thumb. "Aiden told you the truth. It's like he said. All of it."

Upon hearing my brother's confirmation, I suddenly recalled the sensation of squeezing the trigger—such a small, gentle motion to create so much chaos and destruction. So much satisfaction from a tiny gesture.

The men I loved held my hands and murmured words of reassurance that filtered through a gauzy veil of awareness and came to me as if through a dream.

My brother commanded, "Jess, look at me." His warm hands held my face, directed it toward his. "We're close now. You're here with me, and you know the score, but there's one thing we need to do before we sit on our thrones."

"They're not ours yet," I corrected.

"But they will be." His hands moved down to my shoulders. Righteous fire burned in his dark eyes. "They will be ours and it doesn't have to stop there, with taking our place in this town, this coven. Seventy-two generations of power, Jess. Imagine how that accumulates in the blood. No family is older or more pure than ours. Imagine what we could really do, if only we dare."

My hands trembled as if I were, once again, freezing in the river. When my brother wrapped them in his, his warmth and strength stilled them. "Don't be mad at Aiden for keeping secrets or deceiving you. He did it for all the right reasons, but even if he hadn't, it doesn't matter. No one else matters."

I glanced at Aiden and saw him nodding along as if absolutely agreeing that he was a man of no consequence.

"This isn't about Aiden or Dan Tanner. It's certainly not about Dad. All of them, all of humanity are pawns in our game. We hold all the cards." His eyes turned pure black and I was not afraid. "Tell me what you really and truly want, Jess."

My dry tongue rasped over my chapped lips in an attempt to soothe them. My voice sounded like winter-dead branches scraping against frosted glass. "I want to know how to bring my mother back."