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Prologue

The sun was setting, casting a bloodred hue upon the land and the Merlin house

The house was quite odd, sitting on a spit of peninsula that stretched in a small curlicue from the Old Town ant--and in a state of neglect and decay that , breathing entity Shadosall activity that surrounded the place The fading gray paint created a trick of light in the co it seem as if there was a pulse in the façade of the place It sat, quiet, dor

Liaravel drive of the old house, dreading what he would find within, and thinking backUntil her mother had died, and her father had taken her away Cutter Merlin had stayed behind, either hter or left behind by his son-in-law Liah She’d been his eneirl who tortured him with spitballs while he’d slipped behind her to tie knots in her hair--and then, so the way, they’d become friends And then she had become the first real crush of his life, a dark-haired to wooodbye

And now…

He walked to the front door and knocked The house was nearly seven thousand square feet, and Cutter lived in it alone, so--with or without his sense of dread--there was no reason to fear because his initial knock wasn’t answered He pressed the buzzer for the doorbell, but he was certain that it hadn’t worked in years

He heard nothing within the house

He banged on the door again, but there was still no response

He stepped back on the porch As Jason Fried had reported, the one sohter in California, perhaps

But that wasn’t the case, and Liam knew it

Cutter Merlin hadn’t left the island in a decade

He walked around back The house itself sat on a solid coral-and-liroves Bony pines and low scruff foliage surrounded the house,to the barren, forgotten and forlorn appearance of the property Liaotten her keys, they had crept through the brush--once tended--to the rear of the house and the laundry room There was a loose screen over the washer and dryer, and it was a piece of cake to move it

Liam did so

He slipped the screen out and crawled in, then leapt down from the dryer to the floor

The odor assailed him immediately, and he knew

He just had to find the body

He flicked the switch, but the lights in the laundry roo ti door between the kitchen and the laundry roo to his touch In the kitchen, he flicked another light switch

A di hi to eat Flies buzzed around a bowl of tomato soup and the sandwich on the plate beside it Liam touched the bread; it was hard as a rock An odor different from the intense smell of death but nearly as bad rose fro rooave a beautiful view of the Gulf, a nificent site to watch the sunset But he couldn’t see the dying sun except for a sliver of light; the drapes had been drawn

There was a patina of dust over the house Cobwebs covered the chandelier over the dining table

"Cutter?" Lia to hi man could have remained in that house with the odor, a rand living rooh to filter in, but, trying another switch, Liam discovered that it, too, was dead

The room was cast in the eerie bloodred that was darkened by the shadows of the coht

It had once been beautiful, with Italian s and cris Over the years, it had become cluttered, and not with the usual accuazines or papers There were boxes everywhere A suit of armor--real--stood in a corner, near a Victorian coffin with aat the head and a painting beneath theto display how the dead ht have been shown A mummy case lay to one side of the fireplace, and an authentic voodoo altar lay to the right A glass dome covered a shrunken head he knew to be from New Guinea, and a stuffed raven took precedence on the mantel Everywhere you looked, there was an artifact from so apart Ani with African masks and feathered spears