Put her photo in the dictionary beside the name of the alternative religion of your choice and she'd look the part.
Even wearing a very brief swimsuit. Maybe especially wearing a very brief swimsuit.
Riley dredged in her mind and produced a name. "Hey, Jenny."
"Guess the shit's really hit the fan with this murder," Jenny said, shaking her head. "Is that what you came to tell Steve? That we should pack up and get out?"
Though the other woman's voice was casual, the question was, in some peculiar way Riley couldn't define, some sort of challenge. She was sure of that, even if she didn't understand what lay behind it.
At least…I think I'm sure.
"I was just stretching my legs after lunch," she said mildly. "Steve was the one who wanted to talk to me."
"Should we pack up and leave?" Jenny asked.
"Not my place to say. But there's been a murder, and plenty of evidence left behind to point toward the occult. So if I were you, I'd be careful. Maybe stick close to the house. Maybe keep my beliefs to myself for the duration."
"If you were us."
Riley nodded. "Something like this happens, and people get jumpy as hell. Things snowball. So I'd lay low for a while. If I were you."
"Understood." Jenny smiled. She linked her arm with Steve's and with her free hand reached out to pat Riley on the shoulder. "You don't worry about us. We'll be fine."
…the candlelight cast dancing shadows around the room and shimmered off the velvet hangings and silken robes. On the wall above the altar hung an inverted cross fashioned of some metallic material that also caught the light. Below the inverted cross was the usual platform, and upon it the altar.
She was naked. Her head raised on a pillow, she lay in the center of the rectangular platform so that one of its long edges came to the backs of her widely parted knees. Her arms were stretched out to either side, and each hand grasped a silver candlestick containing a black candle.
The candles were lit.
Her body was pale, her long black hair arranged to frame her bold nakedness with no attempt to coyly conceal. Her lush breasts were tipped with artificially blood-red nipples, and as Riley watched, the robed celebrant-the "priest" conducting the ceremony-stepped between the altar's spread legs and dipped his thumb into the silver cup he held, then drew with the viscous liquid an inverted cross onto the pale flesh of her lower stomach.
Red. Blood.
The room smelled of incense and blood, and Riley had to breathe through her mouth to avoid coughing.
Couldn't cough.
Couldn't give herself away.
She peered through the narrow opening in the draperies, trying to look for anything familiar in the robed individuals. Height, build, a gesture-anything to help her identify at least one of them. But it was an exercise in futility. They were eerily featureless, their faces concealed by the hoods.
They were chanting in low voices, in Latin, and she could only catch a few words of what they were saying.
"…Magni Dei Nostri Satanas…"
Riley sat up with a smothered gasp, her heart pounding.
A Black Mass. That was what she'd seen, part of a version of the satanic ceremony known as a Black Mass.
Seen? Seen when? Seen where?
She was in bed, Riley realized. In her own bed, in her own bedroom of the beach house with moonlight streaming through the blinds on the windows. When she turned her head cautiously, it was to see Ash sleeping beside her. Beyond him she saw the clock on the nightstand.
5:30 A.M.
Wednesday?
No, that wasn't right. That couldn't be right. She'd been on the beach, talking to Steve and Jenny, and it had been no later than three or so on Tuesday afternoon. And then…
Here. Now. Waking in bed with Ash.
More than twelve hours later.
Resisting panic, she slipped from the bed without waking him. She found one of her sleep-shirts on the floor and put it on, then crept from the bedroom.
As usual, several lights had been left on dimly in the main living area of the house, and the blinds in there were firmly closed against the night. The latter fact told her only that she must have, as usual, closed all the blinds at dusk; Riley disliked the exposed sensation of uncovered windows at night, especially when people were likely to walk along the beach on the other side of those windows.
A holdover from her army days, when being too visible and presenting too much of a target had never been a good idea.
Riley paused for a moment and held out her hands, studying them. Not too shaky, but hardly steady. Rather the way she felt inside.
She went to the kitchen to collect an energy bar and a glass of orange juice. The TV remote was on the breakfast bar, so she used it to turn the set on, hitting the MUTE button as she did so. Automatically turning it to CNN, hopeful of verifying the date, she swore softly to see a commercial for some diet product.
Figured.
She got her juice and the PowerBar, then carried both to the small table in one corner of the living area, where it looked like she'd been working on her laptop.
Looks like? Jesus. Why don't I remember this?
It would have been easy to panic.
Very easy.
She sat down and tapped a key to take the computer out of sleep mode. When the dark screen brightened, the first thing she did was check the time and date, just to confirm that this was indeed very early on Wednesday. And it was.
She'd lost more than twelve hours.
But there was lost…and then there was lost.
From the looks of things, she'd been functional, even working. In one window was an FBI report on recent occult activities in the U.S., while another window contained the beginning of a report apparently written by her.
"Huh," she murmured. "Since when do I write-Oh."
The first line explained the otherwise inexplicable: Since I have no idea what the long-term effects of my current situation might be, I've decided to keep this written journal/report for the remainder of the investigation.
Current situation? That was worded so ambiguously she must have feared someone else might read it. Maybe Ash, for instance, since he apparently spent most nights here.
In any case, the rest of the entry was pretty bare-bones, detailing only the previous morning's visit to the sheriff's department, the autopsy results on their murder victim, and her visits with the sheriff to the arson sites. Not a word about her stroll up the beach and meeting/conversation with Steve and Jenny.
Then again, maybe she'd imagined all that. Or dreamed it.
Like the Black Mass, where Jenny had served as the altar. Maybe Riley had dreamed that? It had certainly seemed unreal, at least in a sense. Blood. Blood played no part in a Black Mass, despite popular belief; it was supposed to be a ceremony all about mocking traditional Christian beliefs and ceremonies, twisting and corrupting them. Blasphemous, certainly, from any conventional point of view, but neither dangerous nor inherently evil, and it didn't involve blood or actual sacrifice.
At least, it wasn't supposed to.
Riley looked around the quiet, peaceful space, listened to the surf pounding out on the beach, and wondered what was real. What she could trust. What she could believe in.
Had she actually witnessed that ceremony?
Had she dreamed it?
A touch on the nape of her neck found the burns left by a Taser. That was real. The man sleeping in her bed was certainly real.
Though the presence of both in her life was baffling.
She didn't sleep with men she barely knew, most especially during an ongoing investigation. And her training and experience made it highly unlikely that anyone could sneak up and blindside her with a Taser attack. Particularly in a situation where all her instincts and senses would have been on alert.