With a sickening spasm, Brianna understood that she was staring at what remained of the missing twin brothers, Garrett and Gavin Reeves, both originally from Phoenix. She had to call the police, to alert the authorities that she had found them, but before she could make a move, one of the skulls twisted on its chalky vertebrae to stare at her. “End this,” it hissed over the rumble of the wind.

“What?”

“End this, or there will be others.” The wind was picking up, growling over the flat landscape, whipping up sand as it moved. “Their blood will be on your hands.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, you know, Brianna.” The skeleton raised a bony hand to stroke the unmoving skull of its twin. “You know.” The wind roared as a sandstorm arose and swept over the area. As Brianna watched helplessly, the second set of bones was blown from the gravesite and scattered over the desert plain, leaving the remaining skeleton intact and untouched and very much alone.

Overhead, the vultures circled again, screeching loudly.

Brianna’s eyes flew open. For a second she was disoriented and blinking in the darkness. The dream, so vivid and real, receded as her cell phone rang again. Automatically she reached onto the nightstand where her phone glowed dimly as it jangled again. Tanisha Lefevre’s photograph and number appeared on the screen.

Tanisha was a friend whom she’d met through the support group Brianna managed, a group for people who were struggling with the loss of their twin siblings. “Twinless twins,” some called them. Tanisha had been one of the first members to join. As Brianna reached for the still-ringing phone, she had to push St. Ives, her overweight cat, off the pillow. No doubt his purring had been the source of the rumbling in her dreams.

“Hello?” she answered, blinking and trying to shove aside the disturbing images from her nightmare. “Tanisha? Are you okay?”

“No,” was the quick answer. “Not really and I, uh, I know it’s late.”

Brianna glanced at the clock. Nearly two a.m. “Real late.”

“Yeah, yeah, I said I know. But I couldn’t sleep, kept having weird dreams about Allacia. I’m sorry, but I had to talk to someone.”

“No problem,” Brianna said, scooting up in the bed and propping a pillow behind her. She flipped on the bedside lamp while St. Ives hopped down and padded over to the glass door overlooking the patio of her small house. “What happened?”