“Dammit.” Hollis sighed and waited, brows raised in hopeful question that at least some information might be forthcoming.

“This is an old town,” Daniel said. “Very old. And the Five have been here since the beginning of Salem. They made the beginning.”

Diana frowned, but Hollis, remembering the case file, said, “Yeah. The original five families who settled this town, this valley, hundreds of years ago, and are mostly still in charge. Let’s see . . . Cavendish, Deverell, Blackwood, and, um . . . Ainsworth. And Hales. The Five.”

“The Five?” Diana asked, hearing emphasis.

“Yeah, that’s the way it’s written in the reports. Anyway. They still mostly run the town, like I said. Own the major businesses, employ most of the townsfolk one way or another. Oh, and one of the Five was the monster here a couple months ago. A Cavendish elder. Wanted to be a god. Or something like that. Usual psychopathic bullshit, made even worse because he was psychic. Only the Five refer to being psychic as having Talents.”

Diana returned her attention to Daniel. “Okay. What about the Five? Now, I mean. Or what’s coming?”

“It’s already here,” Daniel said. “Only not one of the Five.” He considered. “Possibly not. But definitely hunting them.”

Hollis eyed him. “To kill them.”

“Yes. Serial. A killer murdering members of the Five. In . . . odd ways.”

Hollis said, “Odd ways the local militia— No, they’re local deputies now. After that last case blew up in their faces they became official law enforcement. They can’t handle it?”

“No,” Daniel replied, again simply.

“Hitting too close to home?” Diana guessed.

“That. And so many of them have such good shields hiding what they can do, even from each other. Especially those they don’t know about. So they can’t use their psychic tools the way you usually can. To hunt monsters.”

Hollis crossed her arms across her breasts and began to absently rub her hands up and down, conscious of cold silk and very cold flesh underneath. The coldness of this place was settling in her bones, aching. “Okay. And?”

Daniel smiled that oddly adult smile. “Why don’t I show you?” Before either woman could respond, he waved a careless arm toward his left and the street.

Both women turned their heads to look.

“Oh, shit,” Hollis murmured with hardly any voice.

Coming toward them in an odd halting or limping walk, several people who had been very obviously and very gruesomely killed were just suddenly there. Crossing the street. One man’s head was oddly shaped, the top of it flattened just above his eyebrows in an utterly unnatural way. Another hugged his middle, where glistening intestines and other organs tried to escape from a gash straight down, from just below his chest to his crotch.

A burn victim lurched toward them, seared flesh dropping in tattered bits from its blackened body with every step. A woman staggered a bit, clutching the handle of a very large knife buried to its hilt in her chest. Another woman made an eerie moaning sound and was carrying her severed arm as though it were an infant, both the limb and her body still bleeding.