Hadley stepped into the gray light and saw the thing more clearly. It wasn’t a plain crossbar like the others. This one had a loop on top, onto which a long gold chain was attached. The top of the amulet. Once it was attached to the other pieces, it became a necklace.

Hadley stepped over a gnarled root of the Acacia tree and stooped to pick it up. Her fingers met someone else’s. She looked up and found herself face-to-face with Oliver Ginn.

“Hello, Miss Bacall,” he said, snatching the crossbar out of the mud.

She jerked away and stumbled to her feet.

“Doing a little afternoon grave robbing?” He wiped mud from the crossbar with the cuff of his dark coat sleeve as drizzle beaded on the brim of his hat.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” she said, grabbing.

Long fingers closed around the chain as he yanked it out of her reach. “If we’re being accurate, it doesn’t belong to anyone but the ancient priestesses back in the desert. Your father was a fool to track down the pieces. A bigger fool to send children out to reclaim it after your mother spent all that effort to keep it out of his hands.”

“She apparently meant to keep it out of your hands as well, Oliver. Or Noel. Whatever the hell you want to call yourself.”

“Ah,” he said, lifting his head to squint at her. The face she’d once thought handsome and young hadn’t changed, but the knowledge that he was unnatural made the hollows of his cheeks seem gaunter; the light behind his eyes, dimmer. “I’ve been Oliver for many years now,” he said softly. “But I won’t lie—I enjoy hearing ‘Noel’ on your lips. Reminds me so much of Vera.”

“Don’t mistake me for my mother.”

“No, you are so much colder than she ever was. But I see now that the aloofness is a defense. You grew up alone, without the warmth that a mother provides.”

“Indeed, I did. Because even when she was alive, she was no mother. She handed me over to the staff and went about her merry way. She was too busy cuckolding my father to bother raising a child.”

“She loved you. You and your father, unfortunately. Archie certainly didn’t deserve the emotion she wasted on him. He was more concerned about advancing his career than giving her what she needed.”

“Yes, he certainly didn’t give her what you did—namely, an arcane magical spell that took her life.”

Oliver’s brows snapped together. “It saved her life. And yours, as well.”

“It also cursed me!”

“Cursed? How? You didn’t die after eight years like your mother. You’re standing here now, aren’t you?” he said, his gaze sliding over her in a way that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. “You know, when I heard the amulet base had been found, I expected to see your father scrambling to get his hands on it. I did not expect to find you—looking more like your mother than I could have ever dreamed.”

“Why? Did you expect the Mori specters to have taken my soul eight years after my mother died and passed along her curse to me?”

His eyes flicked to hers. “I had no idea that would happen. Or that it had. Not until the night of the museum party. When I saw the reapers climbing the walls, I thought they were finally coming for me. Then I thought they were coming for you, that it was happening all over again. I’d just found you, and they were taking you away from me again—”

Hadley opened her mouth to protest, but he was in another world, eyes glazed over and haunted. After a moment, he floated back down to terra firma. “But when I realized the reapers were responding to your command, it was the most extraordinary revelation. Hadley, don’t you understand? You wield the power of a goddess. The hounds of Set respond to your command. You took down my griffin—”

“You sent those magical creatures to kill us.”

“I sent them to fetch these,” he said, holding up the chain. The crossbar swung in the air, dangling in the mist. “Neither would have harmed you.”

“Your fire-breathing golem burned Lowe.”

His eyes darkened. “I said they wouldn’t harm you, not that Nordic cretin. And you should be blaming him for putting you in harm’s way, right from the beginning. Both him and your greedy father—you can’t imagine how furious I was to discover that he’d sent you to meet Magnusson at the train station in Salt Lake City.”

Hadley recoiled. “You sent those two goons after Lowe?”

“I paid them to retrieve the amulet base using whatever means necessary. Magnusson should’ve been dead in Chicago, and if it weren’t for their incompetence he would have been. I only learned after the fact that the woman with whom he escaped on the train was you. And when your loudmouthed lover, George Houston—”

“George?” Dear God! His name alone was enough to flip her panic into a true anger that stirred up the Mori. She felt them sniffing from the hedgerow, beyond the great Acacia tree.

“Oh, yes. A lout who can be bought with a single drink is no one you should be sharing a bed with,” he scolded in a manner that exposed the old man hiding behind his youthful facade. “Houston told me he’d overheard your father instructing you to meet up with Magnusson at the Flood Mansion party. I couldn’t believe he’d use his own daughter to do his dirty work.”

He was mistaken about that, but she didn’t say this. Her gaze shot beyond Noel’s shoulder to see her father in his wheelchair, blindly cutting two muddy ruts through the dead grass.