Alannah didn’t have an answer for her. She checked over her shoulder, looking for something about him she could describe, something more helpful than explaining that a man appeared out of nowhere and offered his company. How threatening did it sound when she put it like that? A man who didn’t sound salacious at all, but something else.

Instead of his identity, all she could pick out was the knife.  The knife and a bone-white smile.

“Help me!” she screamed, breaking into a sprint. Someone would look out one of the glowing apartment windows and call the police. Someone would do something.

Her heel caught in a grate, sending her reeling into a wall. In a second, he was looming over her, flashing the kind of smile that sent goosebumps rising over her skin.

A strangled cry shredded her throat as white-hot pain radiated through her chest. It took seeing the hilt of the knife against her skin to understand, to connect the pain to the blade. As swiftly as it went in, he pulled it out again. Alannah thrashed, sending something skittering across the sidewalk.

It was the knife. He had dropped the knife. She kicked it further away, darting out of reach only to hit the ground hard.

Dizziness hit Alannah as she crawled across the sidewalk. It was nearly impossible to grip anything. Each beat of her heart made her fainter and fainter. There was a hedge ahead; all she had to do was get behind it and wait. Someone would do something.

“Alannah, what’s happening?” he called in a mocking whine.

Alannah curled as small as she could behind the hedge, her vision spinning. This was why Sylvia stayed in all the time. She wished more than anything that Sylvia had just come out with her this one time.

Or that she’d stayed at home with Sylvia instead. Tears pin-pricked her eyes, but she clamped her jaw shut in silence.

Then came the blaring tune of her ringtone.

Alannah clapped a hand over her mouth. She could see it, just out of reach, Sylvia’s name bright across the screen.

A long shadow stretched toward her. The knife was raised like a macabre shadow puppet. He stepped around the hedge, leaning down over the phone to wordlessly answer the call. Sylvia’s muffled voice called out for her.

He raised one finger to his lips and Alannah screamed until her voice went hoarse.

The knife glinted like a slice of crescent moon in the night.

CHAPTER ONE

Ruby Hunter was not much of a mourner, but this was not a funeral either.

It was a cemetery and there was a headstone, but it was long past the time for saying her prayers.