With those words, Erasmus Kramer left the way he came, and when he was gone, the prisoner returned to her writing table. A bowl of blood was not the most disquieting image she’d seen in the revenant’s vision of the future, and she shuddered at some of the horrors she’d brushed against while exploring his mind. If this Dark Star was truly capable of such dire work, then she was almost glad for her slender neck and her husband’s reckless selfishness.

With a simple glance at the candle, she induced the wick to ignite itself again, and she finished the letter she’d been writing. At the bottom, she signed her name—Anne Boleyn.

How odd to suddenly hope she would die before it was too late.

21

When Adriana regains consciousness, she’s disoriented and scared, and I set her up on the living room sofa to recover while I suffer a complete mental breakdown. I try my parents’ cell phones at least a dozen times each with no answer, and I’m such a mess that it takes me fifteen minutes to remember what restaurant they were eating at tonight. My call reaches a recorded voice, telling me the place closed an hour earlier, and I go into free fall.

I’m on the kitchen floor, hugging my knees to my chest, ugly-crying when Adriana finds me. She doesn’t say anything, just sits down beside me and puts her arm around my shoulders. We stay like that until I’m capable of speaking again, and I can finally tell her everything—from the beginning.

“Why didn’t you say something?” She stares at me in a daze—shocked and angry, but perhaps most of all hurt.

“I didn’t want you to have to be part of this,” I whisper, my voice rough and broken. “I didn’t want them to come after you, too.” It seems a useless thing to say at this point. But Daphne is dead, and my parents are gone, and there’s no time to think of something better. “What happened? What did he say to you?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I can’t…” She’s pale, still trembling as though she’s cold, although we’ve been inside long enough for her to warm up by now. “The gate in our back fence was banging in the wind, and my dad got mad at me because he said I must’ve left it open. So I went out to shut it, and when I got there—”

“Rasputin?”