Original Sin

Her breaths came sharp and quick as she replayed the last hour, from seeing Frank drive into the parking lot to her grabbing his keys and driving away in his car. Her car. From sideswiping a car taking the turn out of town to taking the top down to hitting nearly one hundred on her drive. Reckless. Foolish.

She didn’t understand why she’d done it. Except that she wanted this car. This Mustang. It had to be hers. The urge had been so powerful, so overwhelming, that she couldn’t see anything but the need to have it.

She needed to go back. To apologize. Maybe he’d understand. Maybe Frank would forgive her.

No.

She cried. The car reminded her of what could have been, of the choices and decisions she’d made-right and wrong.

It’s your car now.

Go back.

Go forward.

The bend in the road up ahead was so sharp that directly forward led into the ocean. Straight down to the rocky coastline below.

They won’t let you keep the car. They’ll give it back to Frank and you’ll be arrested. Lose your job. Maybe go to jail.

They’re not going to let you keep the car.

They’re going to take your car.

Bea put the car in drive and pressed the accelerator, turned the wheel sharply to the left, and she was flying … flying off the cliff. She held on to the steering wheel as her body pulled from the seat-the old Mustang didn’t have seat belts. Then she was flying. Flying, falling, hearing but not seeing the crashing waves, the salty mist reaching up to catch her.

She hit a protruding rock, her body bouncing off and into the water, where it was tossed onto more rocks.

By then she was dead.

SEVENTEEN

Lonely, lonely, lonely-your spirits sinkin’ down

You find you’re not the only stranger in this town

— BILLY SQUIRE, “Lonely Is the Night”

Moira slowed Jared’s truck to a crawl as she neared the end of the narrow road, the windshield wipers moving intermittently back and forth, visibility so poor she was unsure she was even going in the right direction anymore.

Then she saw the broken sign, so weathered from age it was colorless.

LCOME TO P AC GE RESOO ETS

Her heart raced as she realized this was an abandoned motel or lodge of some sort, with separate cabins all boarded up. She released the brake just enough that the truck moved forward, the road turning to gravel overgrown with small shrubs. A sign posted on the first cabin read:

Property of the State of California

Trespassers will be prosecuted

Each abandoned cabin appeared to be a large, single room facing the ocean, far off the main road and obscured by trees. In the dark, Lily could have easily passed by and not known they were here. A perfect hiding place.

She stopped the truck, turned off the ignition, and walked cautiously through the weed-strewn central courtyard. The cabins were about twenty, perhaps thirty feet apart. Cypress and eucalyptus trees shielded the area from view. Only a few hundred yards away was the main access road into the mountains-the access road Lily had found-but unless you knew these cabins were here, you wouldn’t find them.

Moira stumbled over tree roots and caught herself on the leaves of a prickly shrub.

“Damn.” She pulled two thin, sharp thorns from her right palm as she righted herself. She shivered uncontrollably, her wet clothes plastered to her skin, her hair heavy with the weight of rainwater down her back. She wanted nothing more than to get back into the warm truck and return to her miserable motel and sleep.

She didn’t believe in luck, but a spike of adrenaline hit her bloodstream as she thought of her luck in finding this place. If, in fact, Rafe Cooper was here. Could it be logic? Maybe. But still … the whole thing felt oddly fortuitous to her. She didn’t like being manipulated, by either humans or supernatural beings.

“There are always signs, there is always a helping hand. It’s understanding the signs, accepting the help, which is difficult for everyone-and you. That’s where your bias, your fear, your arrogance, and your ignorance will get you killed if you can’t see the truth.”

“Shut up, Rico,” she muttered again. She wished she’d never trained with him, because she couldn’t get his damn lectures out of her head. She pushed aside her concerns-the idea that this place was a sign she’d somehow unknowingly followed-and walked among the cabins.

Each cabin was locked tight, windows boarded up, locks on the doors, all in disrepair, abandoned for many years. But there was something different about the third cabin from the end. She stared, tilted her head, and squinted through the still fog.

She approached the house cautiously, walked the perimeter slowly.

Then she saw what had caught her eye.

The front door was splintered just a bit, the freshly split wood bright against the weathered door frame.

The lock was still on the knob, but the doorjamb had been broken. Moira hesitated. Human or possessed? She didn’t know what was going on with Raphael Cooper, but she couldn’t take chances. She pulled out a large crucifix on a chain from a deep pocket inside her jacket and put it around her neck, then pulled the Beretta out of her concealed pocket holster.

No movement, no sign of anyone watching. She opened all her senses, listened, felt the atmosphere around her. No electrical charge in the air. No smell of sulphur or rotting meat. No extreme heat from one of Hell’s gateways, nor the ice-cold sensation of ghosts. Nothing. Still, that didn’t mean that her truck hadn’t drawn attention, or that there wasn’t a way for Cooper to see out a crack in the barricaded windows-if it was Cooper inside. She didn’t think he was dangerous-he’d saved Lily and stopped Fiona- but Moira couldn’t afford to be wrong.

She pushed on the door firmly and it opened, a thick sliver of wood falling to the ground.

In the darkness, Moira caught sight of a gutted kitchenette to the right and a door in the rear. As her eyes adjusted to the near black, the only light coming from the diminishing gray day behind her, she saw a man in hospital scrubs huddled in the far corner of the empty room.

She approached cautiously and said, “Cooper? Raphael Cooper?”

He didn’t move. She squatted, the crucifix swinging on her chain between them, and checked his pulse. It was strong. She let out a long breath.

“What happened to you last night?” she whispered.

She pulled out a flashlight, turned it on, and popped out the bottom to rest on the wood floor. The glow lit the entire room like a lantern. The scrubs Cooper wore were torn. His skin was cold, and he was huddled tightly for warmth, though sweat and a day’s growth of beard covered his face. His hair was longer than in his picture, damp and curling at the ends from the moisture. As she watched, his body began to shake and he shouted out a command of sorts.

It was in Spanish, a language Moira recognized but didn’t understand beyond the basics. He continued, his