WHEN ALEXANDRA SABIAN SINKS HER TEETH INTO AN INVESTIGATION, SHE DOESN’T LET GO.
Alex allowed a case involving murdered vamps to get personal and is suspended from the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation. Now she’s facing an official inquiry but has a chance to redeem herself. The catch: She must once again work with Varik Baudelaire, her former mentor and ex-fiancé, as he spearheads a search for a missing college student. But Varik has been keeping secrets from Alex, and his mysterious past is on a collision course with his present.
When Alex and Varik discover a carefully handcrafted doll at a crime scene, neither of them can see how close the danger really is or that a killer known as the Dollmaker has made Alex the object of his horrific desire. Now the only way out of the Dollmaker’s lair is through the twilight realm of the Shadowlands, where all secrets—for better or worse—will be revealed.
Release date:
July 5, 2011
Publisher:
Bantam
Print pages:
320
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NO MOON SHONE IN THE SKY WHEN HE DUMPED THE body. He hardly recognized the mangled mess before him as the vibrant young woman he’d known, even though their affair had been brief. Hair the color of darkest flames turned black with dried blood. A dull silver film encroached on the sparkling blue of her eyes.
Her jaw was marred by a dark smear as he traced its gentle curve. He pulled back and stuck his thumb in his mouth, coating his tongue with her blood. An electric charge jolted his spine. Memories that were not his own flickered through his consciousness, playing scenes from her life on the movie screen of his mind, until the film stopped in a crimson moment of violence.
The rags he’d used to wipe down the trunk and hide his fingerprints fell from his hand and greedily absorbed the blood pooling beneath the remains. Using his elbow, he slammed the trunk closed, blotting the macabre view from sight.
A falling star streaked across the glittering sky. He closed his eyes and made a wish he’d made a thousand times before. The vision of his wish coming true filled his mind.
“Soon.” His whisper sliced through the silent night like a blade. Without a second glance at the trunk-turned-tomb, he walked away.
one
November 17
ALEXANDRA SABIAN SEARCHED THE HALL OF RECORDS for clues that would lead her to a killer. The only problem with her search was that she had no suspects, no witnesses, and the body had been buried for forty-one years.
Her father, Bernard Sabian, had been murdered in the spring of 1968, when she was only five. Someone had left his staked and beheaded body in a cemetery near her childhood home.
Simply because he was a vampire, like her.
At least that was her theory.
In the two weeks since she’d discovered she could access the Hall of Records—a metaphysical storehouse for the memories and experiences of every man, woman, and child who’d walked the face of the earth—she’d been searching through the records, trying to locate her father’s. She hoped once she did that she would uncover the clues she needed to find his killer.
It wasn’t an easy task she’d set for herself, considering her father was a lost soul, one of the wandering spirits who roamed the neutral zone between the physical and spirit realms. He claimed he’d chosen his fate, had traded his passage to the spirit world in favor of remaining in the Shadowlands. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t accept that her father would willingly condemn himself to an eternity of unrest and was determined to give him the peace he deserved.
And her quest began in the Hall of Records.
Crystals housed in a black granite access terminal projected the large screen before her. Names scrolled by in one column while the adjacent column held a series of numbers showing the location of a door that led to that person’s memory.
She hadn’t actually tried accessing anyone’s memory yet. The thought of viewing a stranger’s most intimate recollections made her skin crawl. It was a violation of the worst order. However, if it helped find her father’s killer, it was an issue she was willing to work around.
The screen flashed from white to red and bold black letters appeared: ACCESS DENIED.
“Damn it,” Alex muttered and dropped her head into her hands. Every time she sought her father’s name she met the same result. Varying the combination of search parameters hadn’t worked either. Perhaps his records truly were lost.
Sighing, she looked around the Hall. It had transformed since the first time she’d entered as a result of her experiments to manipulate this “reality.” What had been a single endless hallway had become a huge ornate multi-level rotunda. Countless doors lay hidden in shadows on each level of the massive round building. Large golden Corinthian-style columns supported each level, and she craned her neck to count ten floors before darkness consumed the topmost levels. Although moonlight streamed through a circular opening in the apex of the rotunda’s unseen dome, none of it reached the lower levels. The only light came from the screen in front of her and the softly glowing crystals beside each door.
“All I need are some crickets chirping in the background,” she said to no one in particular. She turned her attention back to the screen, ready to try a different approach to her search.
Somewhere in the distant shadows overhead, a door opened and closed.
Alex jerked, reaching for a sidearm she didn’t possess. While she’d known others could access the Hall, she’d never been present when it happened. Forcing herself to relax, she waited to see if someone appeared or if she heard footsteps.
No noise broke the silence. No one showed themselves.
“Hello,” she called. “Is someone there?”
Only her echoed voice answered.
Frowning, Alex peered into the gloom overhead. Had she imagined it? No. She could feel unseen eyes watching her and sense a presence lurking in the darkness. A feeling of familiarity tickled her mind like a forgotten dream dancing at the edges of awareness.
A persistent, steady beeping sounded from her wrist. She checked her watch and sighed. It was time to leave the Hall behind and return to the real world.
Casting a final glance toward the hidden observer, she rose from her seat and headed for a simple wooden door nestled in a tiny alcove. A series of grinding noises behind her signaled the access terminal’s dissolution. It had taken several trips for her to become accustomed to the terminal’s disappearance when she was ready to leave. Without looking back, she knew the terminal and chair had dissolved and once more melded with the stone floor, leaving only smooth granite throughout the rotunda. Dim light filled the alcove as she opened the partially concealed door and stepped through.
The moon had reigned over the Hall’s interior, but once outside, Alex found a sun low on the horizon and the creeping gloom of twilight. Gravestones stretched to either side in endless rows, casting elongated shadows over soft spring grass. Looking over her shoulder as she walked away, the Hall’s door appeared as the entrance to a small mausoleum, what may have been a family name worn away long ago.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered and then smirked at the reference to Alice in Wonderland, one of her favorite childhood books. Sometimes she definitely felt like Alice chasing the rabbit.
Parting the Veil, the thin sliver of psychic energy that separated the physical and spiritual planes, required concentration and wasn’t a task she’d fully mastered. If she wasn’t careful in melding her consciousness with her physical body, a dozen nasty fates awaited her, the least being death.
Her physical body lay in a hotel room in a meditative trance. To an observer, she would appear to be in a really deep sleep. However, waking someone in such a trance could be deadly. Separating the consciousness from the body was a risk, but it was one she was willing to accept if she could find clues to solve her father’s murder.
She sighed and closed her eyes, pushing aside the random thoughts that crowded her mind. Once awake, she would be groggy and disoriented, like someone coming out from under anesthesia. In order to shift her consciousness from the Shadowlands and back to the real world, she had to remember details of the room.
Gradually she recalled the feel of the bed beneath her, the coolness of the air, and the hum of machinery from the nearby elevators. The sensation of a pit yawning beneath her made her stomach roll. She’d learned to keep her eyes tightly shut against the kaleidoscopic whirlwind of colors and shadows as she passed through the Veil and returned to the physical plane.
Alex slowly awoke from the dreamlike trance and alarms immediately sounded in her mind. Her skin prickled under the gaze of an unseen watcher.
Darkness cloaked her surroundings. Disoriented, she searched with her senses, probing for signs of life. She steadied and measured her breathing as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The greenish glow of a security light bathed the window beside the bed on which she lay and cast strange shadows on the wall.
Without turning her head, she looked around the small hotel room, trying to make sense of what she saw. One of the shadows in a far corner shifted and her focus narrowed on it. She eased her hand beneath her pillow, reaching for her loaded Glock G31 .357-caliber pistol.
The shadow detached from the wall and moved toward her.
Alex sat up quickly and aimed her pistol at the shadow as it launched itself onto the bed. Her finger found the trigger.
The shadow landed beside her with an inquisitive warble.
“Damn it, Dweezil,” Alex whispered, jerking her finger from the trigger as the large Maine coon cat swished its tail over her bare legs.
Dweezil head-butted her empty hand and purred.
She chuckled and scratched behind his large tufted ears with her free hand. “Don’t scare me like that. I almost shot you.”
His eyes flashed iridescent green in the light filtering through the window. He winked at her, as if to say, “Gotcha,” before moving to her still-warm pillow and curling into a tight ball.
“You sure are jumpy,” a voice announced from near the window.
Alex gasped and aimed her Glock at the newly perceived threat.
“It’s me, damn it!” A man’s silhouette raised his hands and the scent of sandalwood and cinnamon wafted toward her.
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