Krewe of Hunters The Evil Inside 4 by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

never thought that you could come here and solve all my problems with a simple chat with the dead. It’s never a simple ‘How do you do, and can you answer a question for me?’ But we are dealing with old stories and legends around here, true and enhanced.”
    “These murders aren’t legends,” she said.
    “No. But, but the natural ‘storytelling’ desire is to automatically say that the kid did it, neat and tidy and a juicy, repeatable story. That he freaked out because his father was a browbeating fanatic and he figured he could say that the house was filled with devils. People want to say this, for the newspapers at least. See what other stories are out there, from dead men or the living. I know that you can sort it all out.”
    “You do have faith in me,” she murmured.
    “Of course!” he said cheerfully. “Well, we’d best get on home, huh? I have a feeling it’s going to be an early morning.”
    “And why is that?”
    “Sam Hall is going to want me to visit his client with him,” Jamie said.
    “He hasn’t agreed to defend Malachi Smith yet,” she said.
    Jamie grinned. “Faith, lass. I live by it!” he said cheerfully.
     
     
    It was good to be back at Uncle Jamie’s house. She’d spent a lot of time coming up here as a teenager. She smiled, thinking of the past. She’d had local friends—girls who had been glad to see her—and she brought the excitement of the big city, Boston, along with her.
    They’d shopped at the wonderful stores; they’d played at being Wiccan, and it had surprised her at first that her Catholic parents hadn’t minded. They had been amused. But they had seen the wars fought in their own country over religion and economics and were tolerant.
    Jamie’s house was old, but the family had always seemed to agree that it was a benign house. Whatever ghosts remained, they were tolerant, as well.
    Jenna went to sleep in the familiar old bedroom her uncle had always referred to as “hers.” Jamie had allowed her to have her whims: there were posters of Gwen Stefani and No Doubt and other groups on the walls. They were a little incongruous there, since the bedroom was furnished entirely in period furniture, not from the seventeenth century, but the eighteenth century. Her bed was a four-poster; an old seafaring trunk sat at the foot of it, and a washstand with an antique ewer stood against the wall, along with an old wardrobe. To walk into the room—other than the posters and the stuffed Disney creatures on the shelves—was to walk into another time.
    She lay awake a long time, what she had learned from Jamie rushing through her head. She admired her uncle and his steadfast faith; all the evidence in the world might stand against Malachi Smith, but Jamie believed in him.
    When she fell asleep at last, she wasn’t sure that she had done so. The room still seemed to be bathed in a gray, half light. There seemed to be movement in her room, a movement of shadows, and then they stood still at the foot of her bed, staring at her.
    It was a group of women, and they were in the rather stern and drab shades of the late sixteen hundreds. Only one seemed to be in a slightly different color, and in the shadows Jenna thought it might be a dark crimson. They just stared at her, and even she, who was accustomed to meeting the dead, felt a deep unease. And then an old woman in the front lifted a hand toward her. She whispered something, and at first, Jenna couldn’t make out the words. She wanted to wake up; she wanted to reach over and turn on the bedside light or just let out a scream and run into the hallway.
    But then she comprehended the words the woman was trying to speak.
    “Don’t let the dead have died in vain.”
    Her throat was still tight; she was still so afraid. And, yet, she was the one who sought out those who had died.
    Words came at her again.
    “Don’t let the blood run, don’t let more blood run. Don’t let your blood run.”
     
     
    Sam Hall arrived at