“Emma.” Stefan’s voice dropped an octave. It was beyond gentle: low, deep, and soothing. Once again, I could feel that calm, cool stillness radiating from him. “It’s all right. It’s been hard, I know. So very, very difficult. And I can tell that you have tried, my dear. You’ve tried so very hard. But it’s all right. You don’t have to carry the burden alone. We’re here to help.”

It shouldn’t have worked, of course. Now, Cody, okay. That I could see. Handsome Officer Down-low looked reassuring in his dark blue policeman’s uniform. There shouldn’t have been anything remotely reassuring about a tall, ice-eyed ghoul with a vaguely European accent clad in motorcycle boots and a black leather vest with outlaw-biker-gang colors turning up on an old lady’s doorstep and telling her everything was all right.

But it did work.

Emma Sudbury’s chin quivered. She closed the door long enough to disengage the chain, and opened it to admit us.

At close range, she looked even worse. Her skin was sallow, her thinning white hair lank and yellowish, plastered to her skull. She closed the door, her gnarled fingers trembling as she knitted them together. “Have you found her? Have you found Mary? Oh, God! What has she done?”

My heart ached for her, and I had an itchy feeling along my shoulder blades. If I’d had wings I would have wrapped them around her. “That’s just it, ma’am,” I said softly. “We’re looking for Mary. What can you tell us?”

Her voice shrank to a whisper. “She’s gone.”

“Can you tell us—” Cody began.

Stefan held up one hand, unexpected compassion in his ice-blue eyes. “It’s all right. It’s your story, too, Emma. Will you tell us? Will you let us help you?”

She did.

And yeah, it was a pretty terrible story.

Mary Sudbury, younger of two obedient daughters raised in a Pentecostal household in southern Indiana, had wed young in the 1950s in an environment wherein women were encouraged to submit to and obey their husbands, even if they were harsh and abusive, as Mary’s husband proved to be. Still, she did her duty. She left her family and moved with her husband to a suburb of Chicago, bore him a son, and did her best to raise the infant until the day her mind snapped and she heard the voice of God telling her what to do to save herself and her infant child.

“She drowned him in the bathtub,” Emma whispered. “Drowned the babe and cut her own wrists. But she came back.”

“She was a true believer,” Stefan murmured. “And neither heaven nor hell would have her.”

She nodded. “She came back.”

He touched her liver-spotted hand. “I know.”

“Why? And how?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “No one does.”