Shadows (Bayou Magic 1)

“I’m all ears,” I reply as I return to my seat. “I have plenty to say, as well, but I’m anxious to hear what your team found in the house.”

“More creepy shit than I like to think about,” he says, shaking his head. Asher looks bone-tired. “He kept meticulous journals, dating back to when he was young. And he stored them in chronological order.”

“That was thoughtful of him.”

“Everything in that house was spotless. Tidy. Precise.”

“Makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Oh, absolutely. He thrived on control, and that included his home. Everything had a place. He was clearly a planner. The girls he took may have been random in the heat of the moment, but he knew when he would take them, and he had a very particular type. He planned what he would do to them. Most likely, he practiced the same techniques for many years.”

“You’re right,” Asher confirms. “He was fifty-four years old when he died. The first journal dates back to when he was sixteen. That’s almost forty years of killing.”

“Surely, he didn’t start with humans.”

“Animals,” Asher says. “The family dog. A neighbor’s cat. It escalated from there. He documented names if he knew them, so we have lists of his victims. Many families will have answers to the disappearances of their loved ones because of this.”

“That’s something, I guess. What else?”

“My team has spent the better part of this past week poring through every journal. They took notes on what they read. We counted one hundred and seventy-four victims, starting with his mother when he was eighteen.”

“Christ Jesus.”

“Those are just the human victims. We didn’t count the animals, but there were a lot of those, as well. And, Cash, he wasn’t just after Brielle.”

“I saw the shrines for her sisters. He was going after them, too.”

“He’d already started.” Asher fishes out some photos and slaps them on the desk for me to see. “The eyeballs we found in that box? He said in a journal that he was collecting those for Daphne. Because she has the sight.”

“There were almost a hundred eyes in that box. They’re with the ME to determine if they’re from ninety-six different victims, or if he took both eyes from each victim.”

“He most likely took both,” I say and move to the next photo. “Is this blood?”

“Thirty pints of it,” Asher confirms. “It said in his notes that he was collecting it for Millie, because she’s a kitchen witch, and he thought she could use it for potions.”

“For fuck’s sake, what kind of potions could she make with human blood?”

“I don’t even want to guess,” Asher says, sighing loudly. “He took the hair for Brielle, simply because he had a thing for her brunette hair. In his notes, he says that he didn’t think he could take anything to help her gift of seeing shadows, but he could make sure no other women had hair nice enough to rival hers.”

“Sick fuck,” I whisper.

“So, he had trophies for each of the girls. The blood and eyes, he said, were the practice toys he’d played with to get ready for the main show. But he’d mastered his craft for Brielle and was nearing the end of the show. He’d planned to take her next week.”

My head whips up in surprise. “He had it planned?”

“That shouldn’t surprise you.”

I shake my head and try to detach from Brielle, remove myself as her lover, and think of this from a professional standpoint.

“You’re right. It shouldn’t. And now that I think about it, it doesn’t surprise me. What was the last entry in the journal?”

“Here.”

He flips to the last page of the journal and passes it to me.April 23,

She came to me. Finally! I’ve heard her in the room of fun, talking to the girls, and hoped that she’d come to me, and she finally did. She saw everything. I’ve kept the house spotless in hopes that she’d arrive soon. She seemed very pleased and didn’t even mind when I touched her. I don’t think it occurred to her that I could touch her during her dream-walking.

Brielle and the others always underestimated me. They didn’t know that I understood their gifts. That I share them. I could teach them so much! And I will, very soon.

Just a few more days, and Brielle will be here. In our home. I have to finish playing with the other toys first, but that won’t take long. I have a couple more experiments to run on them before I feel comfortable using the techniques on my Brielle. I want to give her the best experience of her life. I want to provide her with things that no one else ever has.

It’s going to be so beautiful!I toss the book on the desk and swallow hard.

“When will the autopsy be done?”

“Sometime this week,” Asher says. “The morgue’s been a little busy the past few weeks.”