I nodded and moved forward. Aiden matched my pace, his fingers lingering on my spine. Perhaps he sensed just how close to the edge I was.
That niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right within that house grew stronger the closer we got, but Monty was right—other than the shroud, which in itself appeared to be little more than some kind of anomalous stain few would ever see or notice, there was absolutely no indication of any kind of supernatural entity nearby.
But there certainly had been, and very recently. The shroud would have dissipated otherwise.
I crossed the neatly mowed lawn, then skirted the rose bed that lined the front patio, my pace only slowing when I approached the shroud. Stepping into it was not unlike stepping into a kind of supernatural fog—it clung unpleasantly to my skin, but there was no threat or harm in it. I continued up the steps and along the patio to the door. It was locked, but that was easily enough remedied.
“Just as well you witches are generally a law-abiding lot,” Aiden said as I pushed the door open. “Because you’d sure as hell make brilliant burglars.”
“It’s that whole ‘what you do to others comes back threefold’ rule thing that keeps us on the straight and narrow more than anything else.” My gaze swept the dark hall beyond. Shapes loomed, and the warm air was musky and stale.
“Anything?” Aiden asked.
“The soucouyant isn’t here.” I pulled the small bottle out of my pocket. Though the directional pull was fading, it still seemed to be suggesting there was something here to be found.
I stepped warily into the house. The light coming from the twin spells wrapped around the dying ember provided just enough light to pick out the coat stand to our left and the three doors farther down the hall. The light flickered and briefly pinned the first doorway.
I edged forward, every sense on high alert. Neither my psychic senses nor my witch ones were picking up anything untoward, and yet the certainty that something was here grew.
I stopped in the doorway. The room was darker than the hall thanks to the closed curtains, and the dying embers of the spell weren’t doing much to lift the gloom.
“Can I turn on the light?” I asked.
“Not without a glove. I’ll do it.” He pulled on a glove from the seemingly endless supply of them he had in his pockets, and then flicked on the light.
The abrupt brightness not only had me blinking but also revealed the room’s horrifying secret.
Lying on the top of the queen-sized bed that dominated the small room was a body.
Or rather, the complete skin of one.
Eight
Aiden stepped passed me and walked across to the bed. “Does this mean our two separate cases just collided? That we have, in fact, only the one soucouyant rather than two?”
I stopped beside him. The skin on the bed looked remarkably intact. In fact, it rather reminded me of a life-sized doll that had simply been deflated. There was nothing hasty or messy about the way this skin had been left lying here. Even her hair—which was cut short and gray—looked immaculate.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The other skins we’ve found were left in untidy piles—this was a deliberate choice. The others weren’t.”
Aiden frowned. “What makes you think the other skins were abandoned involuntarily?”
I hesitated and waved a hand in frustration. “Gut instinct, nothing more.”
Out in the hall, footsteps echoed. “Aiden? Liz? You found anything?”
“You might say that,” Aiden replied. “We’re in the bedroom to the right of the front door.”
I glanced around as Monty stepped into the room. “We might not have found the soucouyant, but I think we’ve just found her skin.”
“Well, I’ll be....” Monty stopped beside me. “I know the legends all said that they left their skin to go hunting, but I hadn’t believed it actually happened.”
“If this is the soucouyant’s real skin,” Aiden asked, “then where did she get the one she was wearing in the club?”
“There is one legend that says soucouyants are capable of taking on the form of a beautiful woman,” I said. “But maybe they have to shed their actual skin before they can take a different form.”
“So what do we do with this one?” Aiden asked.
“We salt it, and stop her from claiming it again,” Monty said. “And then we set a trap for the bitch.”