“Just follow me, okay?” Lucia snapped. She wasn’t usually bossy, but tonight, oh, sweet heavens, she had to be. As for her sanity, even she was beginning to doubt it. But she kept hurrying forward. She hoped she was wrong—oh, please, let her be mistaken—that the voice she’d heard was only her imagination, but the hairs lifting on the back of her arms told her differently.

“I don’t know about this,” Edwina said, her voice wavering as Lucia shouldered open the double doors and stepped outside. A stiff wind smelling of the Mississippi hit her full in the face. Clouds scudded over the moon, dimming the stars.

Lucia didn’t wait for the other nun but hurried along the pathway, through open gates and into the cemetery.

Please God, be with me.

She tried to reach out to the Lord despite the evil whisper that prodded her along.

Edwina, who had been lagging behind, caught up with her just inside the cemetery gate.

“Are you out of your mind?” Edwina’s pale eyes drilled into hers as the tombs and crypts impeded their paths.

Maybe, Lucia thought, but didn’t have time to consider her sanity. She didn’t answer, just picked up the pace, running now. Although the voice of the demon no longer propelled her, she knew precisely where she was going, and she was afraid of what she might find.

Please let me be wrong, she thought wildly, her heart racing as the night wind teased her hair. Let this be a mistake!

Lucia’s steps didn’t falter as her eyes locked upon the angel statue from the vision. An unworldly gray, her wings were spread wide, her arms uplifted, dirt and grit trailing from her eyes like the tracks of her tears.

Just like in the vision.

And at the statue’s base, in front of the tomb, lay the still form of a dead woman.

Sister Edwina turned the corner behind her and let out a skull-shattering scream.

Thin moonlight shimmered over the corpse. This woman, like Camille, was dressed in a tattered wedding gown, its gauzy folds lifting with the gusts of wind that scraped through the cemetery, rattling the branches of the trees, moaning softly.

“Holy Father, no!” Edwina cried as Lucia bent down to see if there was a breath of life in the small body. Edwina let out a low, grief-filled moan. “Not Asteria . . .” She wrapped her arms around her midsection and fell to her knees, weeping.

Sister Asteria stared up at them, her gaze fixed on the night sky.

Lucia’s hands flew to Asteria’s wrist, searching for signs of life . . . hoping . . . praying.

But Asteria had no pulse.

She didn’t breathe.

She lay motionless.

Her soul, presumably, already rising.

Tears rained from Lucia’s eyes.

A prayer came to her lips, its cadence broken by her sobs.

And the midnight bells were finally silent.

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 34