She took one final glance at the easel but stopped. Her heart nearly dropped through the floor. “Wait!” she said, and stared at the young nun in the still shot. If she layered on the years, weathering the nun’s skin, adding wrinkles and the harshness that decades of disappointment can etch upon the skin, she recognized the nun as a young Sister Ignatia.

Val’s nerves stretched thin. Her heart raced. Not just a nun, not just the woman who had grasped her five-year-old arm in her strong fingers with their sharp nails, whose rosary reminded a child of a silvery snake, but also the monster who haunted her dreams—the demon that besieged her subconscious, a being that had, over the years, transformed from a cruel witch of a woman to a creature with her tiny teeth, slithering silver rosary, and talonlike hands.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, a chill that brought a rash of goose bumps to her skin running through her. All these years, the terror she’d felt was because of a nun who yelled, a nun who slapped at her fingers with a ruler, a nun who seemed to enjoy inflicting pain.

Val shuddered, told herself it was silly, when so many of the people at the orphanage had been kind.

“Valerie?” Slade asked, his eyes darkening with concern, his fingers still strong around her elbow.

“I’m . . . I’m fine,” she managed, forcing a weak smile. In truth, she knew that the images from her youth, the fear and the pain, would probably be with her for the rest of her life.

“We don’t have to stay.” It wasn’t just that the situation made him uncomfortable, she saw, but that he was seriously worried about her.

“I said I’m fine. Come on.” She headed for the dining area where they took seats at one of the many tables scattered throughout the cavernous room and waited as others joined them and drinks were brought. Beer and wine were available, though no hard drinks were on the menu.

Before they were served, Father Thomas, a tall, dark-haired man with an easy smile and sharp eyes, walked to the microphone and introduced himself and his staff on the raised dais.

Sister Ignatia, an honored guest, was wheeled in. She was shriveled and humpbacked, her face thin and drawn, etched with wrinkles that made it seem she was a wax figure melting into her habit.

This was the woman who had caused so many of Val’s nightmares? This tiny, withered piece of flesh in a nun’s habit? How could this poor old woman still permeate Val’s subconscious and bring on the night terrors?

Unable to get out of her chair, Ignatia was parked at one of the closest tables to the dais. She barely moved, just huddled in the chair, a handwoven afghan tossed across her lap, a silver cross danging from her neck.