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the demon. Keep such slaughter from happening again.

She set the candle near the girl’s head and lit it. Next, she drew a circle in chalk. To contain the girl and all the blood, she had to draw it clear to the walls. She paused a moment to take direction, found north, and drew the proper symbols, the ancient signs that communed with the stars overhead and the elements on earth, that opened doors between worlds.

Lydia watched her with eyes like frosted glass.

“Rest easy, my dear,” Amelia murmured. “Soon you can tell me what you know, and I’ll stop the thing that did this.”

She lit the sage, set it smoldering. Placed the mirror by the candle. It reflected golden light back into the room. Amelia knelt before it, and watched Lydia.

The smoke from the incense set Amelia’s eyes watering. Closing them in a moment of dizziness, she drew a breath. Her mind was entering another state. Opening passages, picturing a great ironbound block of a door that separated the world of the living and the world of the dead.

“Lydia Harcourt, I need to speak with you,” she said, and imagined the door cracking open.

Fog appeared in the mirror.

“Lydia. Can you hear me?” Amelia breathed slowly to keep her heart from racing. If she panicked now, she’d lose the trail and would never vanquish this creature. She focused all her attention on the room, the door, the body, the dead eyes.

“Lydia, please. I know it’s difficult. I want to help. Can you hear me?”

The eyes blinked.

Amelia’s heart jumped, and she steadied her breathing. The dead eyes swiveled to look up at her, and something stared out of them. Amelia found the courage to look back.

“Lydia. I know you can’t speak. But I need you to remember what happened. Think of who did this to you, live through it one more time, just once. I’ll see it in the mirror here. Then I can find what did this. Punish it. Do you understand? Can you do this for me?”

The eyes blinked.

“Oh my dear, thank you.” Amelia brushed a strand of the girl’s chestnut hair off her forehead, as if she could still feel comfort. But who could say what she felt, with the door open? Even if it was only a crack. “Follow the light. Show me in the mirror.”

The mirror presented an image of fog. Figures began to emerge. A dark form had the shape of a man, tall and stout, but it was featureless. When it reached, the fingers were as long as its arm, and it had claws, extending, curling. In the mirror, Lydia showed a picture of herself, her mouth open to scream as one of the claws raked across her neck.

“Lydia, you must try to remember. Where did it go?”

The shadow in the mirror took on red eyes. Again and again, the claw tore through her throat, and she fell before she could make a sound. That was all she had, all she could give Amelia. The corpse, its gaze still locked on her, blinked again, and a tear slid from the outside corner of its eye, down its cheek.

Amelia sat back and clenched her hands in her lap. What was she doing here? Abusing the dead for no good purpose. She fancied herself a wizard, an arcane scholar, a demon hunter. She’d traveled the world to learn what she knew. It all should have been good for something.

She touched Lydia’s face and closed her eyes. “Sleep, Lydia. Leave this world. May the next treat you better.” In her mind, she closed the door, slid shut the bolt. The mirror was a mirror again. She snuffed the candle with her finger.

Then she heard footsteps on the porch. Perhaps Lydia had had time to scream after all.

The rumble of a carriage and horses came up from the road beyond. More steps on the porch. Her heart in her ears, Amelia was too shocked to move, so when the men opened the door, they found her kneeling by the body with blood on her hands and the occult circle drawn around her.

Cañon City, Colorado, Four Months Later

Doors, passages, worlds. A skillful magus could travel between them by his thoughts alone, or so Amelia had read. In the East she had seen orange-clad monks who could stop their own breathing by meditation and seemed to be dead, but they awoke safely.

Did she believe a person could travel between life and death? Pass through that iron door and return unharmed?

The bricks of the prison where she was housed were old enough, at least by this country’s standards. Their roots stretched into the earth. They had seen forty years of life and death. They had passages and portals the wardens did not know about. Lying on her canvas cot at night, she traveled them. She bound together a bit of candle and a lock of hair and burned them until neither remained.

Would it work?

The iron door was open wide, gaping like a mouth.

They had cut her dark hair short and put her in a poor cotton dress, a bleached gray prison uniform. They had let her keep her boots, thank God. These boots had traveled the world and were well broken in, comfortable. At least her feet were not sore. The boots would walk her to the scaffold. She could travel between worlds, but not escape a steel-barred prison. A sore irony.

The day was blustery, a wind pouring from the mountains, carrying dust and the promise of rain. For now the sky was hazy, washed out by an arid sun. A crowd of spectators had gathered, all men in proper suits and hats, hairy mustaches making their frowns seem fiercer, more judgmental. They were all no doubt horrified at what she’d done. What they thought she’d done. The bastards had no idea. They would truly be horrified if they knew what lived in the world, dime-novel monsters they could not believe.

She stood on the platform. A man tied her hands in front of her. A noose hung. Part of her wanted to look away, but part of her studied it. She had seen men hanged, but had never seen a noose from this angle, so close. The knot had been tied correctly. She had never seen a woman hanged.

Her thoughts were scattered, her mind already partway gone. Not through the door, but into a little room she had built beside the door with hair, candle, and incantation. She would fool that iron slab. Doors and rooms existed between life and death.

The candle, the hair. The light, her life.

How had it come to this? part of her wailed. Her parents had been right, she should have stayed home, married the unremarkable suit they’d put in front of her. Too late, the scientific part of her mind reprimanded. She followed this path of her own free will and she must continue on. When the path seemed to end, you blazed a new trail through the wilderness.

“Amelia Parker, you have been tried and convicted for the murder of Lydia Harcourt and sentenced to death according to the laws of the state of Colorado.”

She cleared her throat and tried not to sound nervous. Her voice came out halting anyway. “Lady Amelia Parker. I’d prefer my title entered into the records, if you please.” Her throat closed, and she swallowed. Just a little longer. Stay focused on that room beside the iron door.

“Lady Amelia Parker, do you have any last words?”

“None whatsoever. Thank you.”

“Then may God have mercy on your soul.”

Closing her eyes, she left the scaffold. It was a strange feeling. She merely thought, Breathe out. Breathe it all out. Focus on the small symbols she had built, make them real, go there. Light, life, the room beside the door. Then she was watching a slim waif of a girl standing on the scaffold. It was her, pale and despairing. She’d hardly eaten for days and it showed. The prison dress hung limply on her. Hood over her head, rope around her neck. Still she could see. Was pleased the body did not tremble. But the executioners had to guide it into place, as if the person was no longer truly conscious.

The floor dropped with a creak and a snap, and everything went dark.

Cañon City, Colorado, The Present

Cormac took another step forward in line and tried not to think too hard. This place was built on routine, rhythm. If he let himself fall into it, the days flew by. He’d be out of here in no time, if he could keep up the rhythm