She suspected the detective was using the alcohol as a lubricant to loosen her lips. The question was why. She’d felt dark intent from Maria earlier in the kitchen—just a snippet, but it was enough to make her question her perception of the woman. Since that moment, Rachel’s mind had been in overdrive, reassessing everything Detective Maria Perez had said and done since the day they’d first met.

Why did she turn up at our old house alone, without backup, the night the Dark Ones tried to kidnap Sarah Beth for a second time? When exactly did she enter the house, and which one of the kidnappers shot her? When and why did her romantic interest in Jed start? Why is she working so hard to kindle a friendship with me? And why does she ask so many questions about Sarah Beth and St. George’s?

Am I being paranoid?

Maybe.

Probably.

But it felt right to be skeptical.

It felt right to be suspicious.

Sarah Beth had never warmed to the detective, and now Rachel was beginning to wonder if her daughter’s misgivings were rooted in something deeper than adolescent jealousy and competition for “Uncle” Jed’s very limited time.

“Are you sure you don’t want any more?” Maria asked as she topped off her own glass. “If you say no, I’m apt to polish off the rest of the bottle myself.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said with a laugh. “After two glasses I’m ready for bed.”

Maria set the almost-empty bottle down on the table and checked her phone. “Still not a peep from Jed.” She looked up at Rachel. “Have you heard from David?”

“Nope,” she said without bothering to glance at her phone.

She felt a palpable uneasiness from the detective.

No, not unease . . . it’s urgency. Maria wants something and wants it desperately.

Her daughter had reawakened a dormant gift inside her, a gift Rachel had tried to pretend away for nearly two decades. But the gift was real, and it wasn’t just something that depended on Sarah Beth. For a while, that’s how she thought it worked—that she was a passenger pedaling on the back of a tandem bicycle while Sarah Beth navigated from the front. She realized now that metaphor was wrong. They were both cyclists in this road race.

I’ve just been drafting off my daughter, taking it easy and pedaling with my head down while she did all the hard work, Rachel thought. But not anymore. It’s time for me to take control.