Mary Sudbury’s head snapped up. “Did you kill my Raymond?” she asked me, not waiting for an answer. “Oh, you bad, bad girl! Did you kill my sweet boy Raymond? I’ll eat you up whole, I will!”

I didn’t expect her to rush me.

Silly me.

She was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. Faster, too. The back of my head hit the pavement with a cracking sound. Mary’s pretty, doll-like face loomed above mine as she inhaled deeply, her eyes like twin eclipsed moons. “Eat you up whole,” she crooned. “Oh, yes, I will!”

Feeling her hunger crawling over me, I panicked and stabbed her in the rib cage.

Her pupils shrank. “Ouch!”

“I’m sorry!” I said in anguish. “I don’t want to do this!”

A strange clarity settled over Mary Sudbury’s face, her pupils dwindling further. It was as though the pain had given her focus. Or maybe it was something more. Reaching between us, she fingered the inch of dauda-dagr’s blade that wasn’t buried in her flesh. “It burns with cold,” she mused. “Yet it purges, too.”

I yanked it free, feeling the blade grate against her ribs.

Mary rolled off me, staring into the outdoor lights of the Locksley residence, staring at the night sky, or maybe staring at nothing at all, not caring that she was injured and bleeding. “I murdered my son, didn’t I? My precious baby boy. I didn’t put him to sleep. I drowned him in the bathtub.” She turned her head toward me. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “You did.”

Her hands found mine, wrapped around dauda-dagr’s hilt. “Let it burn, so long as it makes an end to it. There has been too much suffering.” She guided the tip to a point beneath her breastbone. “Purge me.”

“You’re sure?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Help us, O God of our salvation,” she murmured. “For the glory of Thy name. Deliver us, and purge away our sins, for Thy name’s sake.” Her hands tightened on mine. “Now!”

I shoved dauda-dagr home.

It wasn’t as hard as Stefan had led me to believe, not with Mary positioning the blade at the exact right angle, anyway. Up and under the breastbone, not through it. Not as hard as it should have been.

Mary Sudbury sighed, shuddered, died . . . and vanished, her corporeal body taking leave of the mortal plane.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the night sky, wondering whether Mary had seen the terrible truth of her existence written in the black places between the stars, wondering whether that fleeting moment of sanity would cost her eternal damnation, wondering about the state of my own soul. I had a lot of unanswered questions.

“Daisy?” Cody squatted beside me, feeling at the back of my skull. “You okay? You’ve got quite a lump.”