I looked up at another face. “Lisa’s standing right here. Along with three others.”

I rose and followed the voice giving instructions, but under its cowl I saw only a black pit. When I tried to move the hood, my fingers passed through it.

I walked up to the next figure and had to stoop to peer under the hood—she was about six inches shorter than me.

“Stacey Pasolini.”

Gabriel’s brows lifted. I sidestepped to the last figure, a man only a little taller than me.

“Eddie Hilton,” I said. Then I rhymed off their vital stats—approximate height and weight, hair color, eye color—and Gabriel nodded and said, “Yes, that’s correct.” I knew it was. I’d stared at enough photos to recognize my mother’s third and fourth victims.

We already knew Pasolini and Hilton were killers. That’s why the Cŵn Annwn made the deal with my mother—in exchange for them curing my spina bifida she would exact justice on four murderers whose crimes fell outside their purview. As for what exactly Pasolini and Hilton had done, Ioan didn’t know the details and didn’t care. Their prey was guilty, and theirs is absolute justice—no extenuating circumstances considered.

We’d investigated Pasolini and Hilton ourselves, but it seemed impossible to find a victim when you only knew the killers.

I moved back to the figure who was instructing Marty Tyson. “Let’s get a look at you.”

I shone my penlight under the cowl, but it was like shining it into a black hole, the light disappearing as soon as it left the source.

“Damn it,” I said. “I can’t see a face at all.”

“But you see a figure, correct?”

“Right. Okay. Height is…” The figure wobbled, and I cursed under my breath. “Taller than me, shorter than you. An average man or very tall woman. Weight…” Again the figure shimmered, and I had to rely on my initial impression. “Slender. That’s all I can say. Thin to average. As for build, the cloak hides it, but—”

The figures evaporated.

CAPRICIOUS

The moment Gabriel stepped from the fun house, his phone buzzed with an incoming message. They had cell service again.

“Please tell me it’s a complete coincidence that we got service as soon as I received my vision message,” Olivia said.

“Given the number of times it’s happened, I sincerely doubt it.”

“When I say ‘please tell me,’ I mean ‘please lie to me.’ ”

“Ah. Well, perhaps the cell phone outage was caused by the snowfall, which interfered with the electromagnetic field and thereby disrupted cellular frequency reception.”

“Not a science major, were you?”

“No.”

“Me neither, so it sounds totally legit.”

He called for a tow truck as they walked to where the hound waited. Then he surreptitiously checked that incoming text. When it wasn’t the one he was expecting, he grumbled under his breath.