He laughed and raised the volume. From where I stood, I couldn’t see the screen, but I could hear the tape. The voices on it were distorted. Home-movie quality.

I cast a blur spell and crept across the carpet until I could see the screen. It was blocked by a light green shirt. Someone with his back to the camera. Typical. The shirt moved aside. A shot of flesh. A naked female leg. Oh, yeah. A very typical home movie, the kind video recorders were made for. This I did not need to see.

I started to turn away when the camera pulled back and I saw the full image. A girl, no older than Savannah, naked and bound to a bed. Bloodstained bedding.

“Here it comes.” The woman’s voice rose a few notches, and she imitated the girl’s sobs. “I want my mommy!”

With a roar, I launched myself at the woman on the sofa. My hands flew for her throat, nails out. I hit her, passed right through, and tumbled into darkness.

Chapter 3

3

I LANDED HARD ON THE MARBLE FLOOR OF THE throne room. It didn’t hurt. I wished it did. I even slammed my fist into the floor, hoping for a jolt of pain to knock the rage from my brain, but my hand only bounced off as if I’d socked a pillow.

I scrambled to my feet. The middle Fate stood there, watching me.

“Send me back,” I said.

“Eve, you—”

“Send me back now! You can’t show me that and then rip me out of there before I can do anything about it.”

“You can’t do anything about it,” she said softly. “It’s over. Long over. What you saw was a memory.”

I rubbed my face. A memory. A glimpse into the past. I stared at the white wall, let it clear my mind. I didn’t have a clue who the people had been. Obviously serial killers and probably infamous, but I’d never been one to follow crime. In my world, the killers I had to worry about were the ones in my little black book, not the ones on the eleven o’clock news.

When I glanced up, the elderly Fate was at the spinning wheel, and I braced myself, sure she’d jump on me for an answer. Yet she didn’t even look up. Just clipped off the length of yarn the middle Fate had measured out for her, then handed it to a wraith-clerk. Then the child Fate took over and threaded the spinning wheel. She lifted her eyes to mine, then quickly looked back down.