But Dan was moving already, pocketing his phone. The ghosts were beckoning him to make all speed. He drew his weapon.

He’d find Katie, and he would shoot anyone in his way.

The pain in Katie’s head was ungodly.

It felt like an axe was sticking into her skull!

But as she slowly regained consciousness, she knew nothing was protruding from her body.

Not yet.

She was tied up, though. Wrists bound together. Her feet, she saw, were free. If she could just manage to get up, she could run...

Where was she? Think! Her head was spinning. She closed her eyes, willing for the spinning and dizziness to stop.

Time might mean everything.

Think! Maybe she was in the stables.

She wasn’t. No, she would know the smell of the animals and the hay. No...

She was in a bedroom. Someone’s bedroom, and not her own. There was a closet on one wall, a sturdy oak dresser against another, and a window that looked out opposite where she sat. There was a bed, a big one. And...

A chair in front of a small desk. There was a jacket laid over the back of the chair. A big jacket.

A big jacket for a big man.

“Ah, love, you’re with me now!”

She swung around.

A big man. A tall man, and a big man. Oh, dear God, why hadn’t she seen...

Even now, she couldn’t believe.

Monty? Monty Trudeau, a stone-cold, vicious killer without an ounce of empathy?

“Monty,” she said. “You?”

He smiled, so pleased with himself.

“Katie, love, I can’t tell you what pleasure I derive from seeing your face right now! You’re so stunned! Yes, Katie, me. This is my place. My town. And I learned quickly I could seize all the power I wanted. I studied the city, you see. Studied it as you, my guides, never quite did. I learned so much, and I learned how to earn my way to immortality.”

“Monty, you are not going to live forever.”

He shook his head, hunching down in front of her. “Katie, you don’t understand the immortality situation. You see, I am not the Axeman’s Protégé. The media just had to go with that. No, I am the Axeman! I am the Axeman. The real thing. He died and was reborn time and time again, and now he lives in me.”

“So, you’re the Axeman of New Orleans.”

“In this shell.”

“Monty... My father... Why? I mean, you were forming this club of yours—”

“Club?” he demanded.

“Sorry, group?”

“The Six,” he said. “Just The Six. There is nothing else like us. Immortals.”

She started to laugh and then realized she shouldn’t. Her laughter angered him, and she had to figure out some way to get out. She had to escape, she had to survive...

Dan!