She’d had a bad feeling about Detective Perez for a while, but it was all crystal clear now. It was Detective Perez whose thread had connected her to the fallen Shepherd Nicholas Woland. She’d not understood how threads worked back then, but Perez was only one degree of separation from Woland, which meant they’d met face-to-face. And now it made sense why Detective Perez had been the police officer in charge of her kidnapping case . . . and why Perez had been the only police officer to show up at her old house when the Dark Ones had tried to kidnap her a second time.

She’s been working for Victor the entire time.

Sarah Beth tried to scream, tried to warn her mom, but her lungs suddenly felt like they were filled with cotton—each breath a labor to get any oxygen at all.

I’m hyperventilating, she told herself. I need to . . . I need to calm down . . . and focus.

“The last time we played together, Rachel, was in Kenny’s basement all those years ago,” Victor said, his attention laser focused on her mom, “but it feels like yesterday.”

Sarah Beth saw her mother’s expression morph from one of fury to wide-eyed disbelief.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Victor hissed. “Surely you recognize this face?”

Her mom shrieked and began to backpedal, the pistol now wavering and unsteady in her two-handed grip.

What’s Victor talking about? Sarah Beth wondered.

“As for you, Maria, my ever-loyal lieutenant,” Victor continued. “An Oscar-worthy performance as usual . . . She’s my Eve, that one, manipulating poor, hapless Jed from the beginning. We thought for sure, given your history, you’d sniff her out, Rachel, but no, you’re as trusting and naive as you were the day of the bonfire.”

Sarah Beth watched her mom turn to look at Detective Perez. “I trusted you. . . . How could you betray us like that?”

“I’m sorry,” Perez said, looking down at the floor. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“We always have a choice,” her mom growled and firmed up her firing stance. The muzzle flashed and another gunshot split the air, but Sarah Beth knew it was a miss by Victor’s lack of reaction.

“Die,” her mom said, firing and walking toward Victor.

As her mom fearlessly advanced on Victor and the legion of demons inside him, she squeezed the trigger again and again, her face a portrait of rage and strength.

Crack, crack, crack, crack . . . click.

With dismay on her face, her mom kept squeezing the trigger: Click, click, click.

Seemingly unharmed, Victor howled with laughter. “Just for that, your daughter gets to watch us savage you before we kill both of you,” he said with a snarl and charged.

“Mom!” Sarah Beth screamed, clambering to her feet.