Chapter One

I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will.
—Dylan

‘Hi love, you just dropped your glove.’

When she turned to face him, he was amazed. He remained totally in shock to the extent he became a blabbering idiot.

‘Just now as it fell from your coat pocket…’ he continued, ‘I caught it before it hit the wet ground… Honestly it didn’t get wet. I mean it’s a little wet, but only from the rain and not the pavement…agh…’ and mid-sentence he reluctantly turned and chased after his two mates.

She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever set his eyes on during his seventeen years on this earth. When she’d passed him a few life-changing seconds beforehand, she was walking, arms interlinked in the midst of two friends with her head bowed to the pavement. Consequently, he’d missed her green eyes, hidden by her long black hair, and he’d missed her quiet demeanour, but, most of all, he’d also missed the chance to make a connection.

He insisted his two mates, Brendan and Lefty, continue walking around the streets of Portrush with him until darkness fell ninety minutes later. He was working on the theory they’d bump into the three girls again. They’d discovered, to his cost, the only thing more difficult than finding someone in Portrush in the peak holiday season was finding someone on the deserted streets of Portrush during the off-peak season, when Ulster’s number one tourist centre reverted to its more comfortable status of winter ghost town, aka Ghostrush.

Thomas Barry—Tommy to his acquaintances, Tom to his good friends—minus his two mates was back on the streets the following morning, just before eight o’clock. He walked the short distance from his parents’ house in the sedate Antrim Gardens to the nearly (but not quite) refurbished railway station in Eglinton Street, passing the moth-balled Barry’s (historic) Amusement Arcade on the way. It was a journey just like he’d done most days of his life. Most other days of his life. though, he’d just taken Barry’s (no relation) and every other local landmark, for granted. That Sunday morning in October 1976 though he’d studied every nook and cranny around the streets of the Port as if his life depended on it.

He felt it did.

When his friends met up with him just before lunch time, he admitted to them he’d already had tea and toast in Portrush’s Holiday Hostel, with its ultra-colourful rooms; the once elegant Adelphi Hoteland The Atlantic Hotel, with its spectacular views, in the vain hope the three girls were out-of-towners. The other hotels and guest houses were all closed for the winter, he claimed. Still, he’d tried them all, “just in case, you understand.” He also, for one who’d always gone to great trouble to keep the majority of his feelings inarticulately to himself, articulately explained he felt for the sake of his well-being, if not his life, he needed to find this girl. He also admitted that, not only did he not know what he was going to say to her when, and if, he met her, but if such an accidental, on purpose, meet happened he’d be so tongue-tied again, he might even need to walk on past her. He just knew he really needed to find her. He told them he’d been awake all-night thinking about her. Lefty put him out of his misery by offering to take him to some of the out-of-town hotels. The two of them hopped on Lefty’s trusted red Vespa 125 scooter and headed off out past Kelly’s trailer park and bar and on to Castle Rock, Portstewart, Portballintrae and even Bushmills.

They returned just over an hour later with the Vespa’s petrol tank empty and their four arms all the one length.

Thomas Barry admitted to his two best friends he’d never felt so convinced about anything before in his life. A real-life girl had never ever had such an effect on him before. Isabella Adjani on the silver screen yes, but a real live human, certainly not. He most certainly accepted the fact he was never ever going to meet the long-haired, green-eyed girl again in his life.

He admitted how weird this feeling was to him.

Nonetheless he continued his search.

He thought of all the things he could have done, should have done. Perhaps all of them were things capable of scaring her off for life. But what did it matter now? He’d most certainly lost her for life.

The lads wanted to go to the Old Harbour Bar. Even with the new glitzy restaurant extension, accessed by a half a flight of wooden stairs, it was still the cosiest bar in the winter and their favourite watering hole. He declined, suggesting he might join them later. Once again, he took to the streets of Portrush. The same familiar streets he had taken for granted all his life, but which now took on major importance due to the fact they may be keeping him from finding the green-eyed girl. He tried chastising himself for feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t work. How could it possibly work when someone, something, a God even, if such a spirit existed, had allowed him to experience this special creature and then not equip him properly about how to approach her? He chastised himself further for not considering what he’d say to her if, or when, he met her. He’d already let himself down once by blabbering away when he had the perfect excuse to greet her. Equally he felt if he had something rehearsed it would have sounded too false, stifled, insincere and a chat up line. He kicked himself over his rap about her glove being wet not because he had let it fall on the wet pavement but because it had gotten damp in the rain.

He’d never been one for the chat up lines. They’d left those to Lefty. Funny enough this approach hadn’t worked out for their lead wingman either. Thomas Barry had often wondered if they’d become mates, “blood brothers” just so they could hang out together and look for girls. Anyway, they had launched their little gang, the BLTs. They even had their own unique motto: May the Sauce be With You. It was funny at the time. They’d picked it over a meal together in Morelli’s as they simultaneously chased the food-saving flavouring known as HP. They’d also debated using: Life is a Beach and Then the Tide Goes Out,. Considering their endgame objective, they had unanimously voted against this option on the grounds it was too negative. As he wandered around the deserted streets, now it had gotten down to the nitty-gritty, he wasn’t so sure about their motto either, or even about their gang in the first place. Lefty was always complaining three wasn’t a good number to hang out in. If they met two girls and got through the even more complicated task of chatting them up, then the girls would surely feel sorry for the additional boy they would have to exclude due to the mathematical impossibilities. He reckoned maybe they could possibly have made the problematic maths work down in the more liberal Belfast. In the meantime, they had agreed they would figure out such a scenario as and when it arose. Lefty had claimed the girls would probably make their preference known and they, the boys, would just have to deal with it. They’d been happy to leave the tactics to Lefty. Even though Lefty’s tactics had, so far, been 100% unsuccessful, they still left him in charge. The alternate didn’t bear thinking about.

Tommy wondered if it would be any easier if, and when, one of them found a girlfriend and peeled off their gang as it were. He wondered who’d be the first to find a girl. He thought if you were a betting man and you followed the odds, then Lefty should be the first to find a girl. But then what would they do? They’d surely be lost without the tactics man. Or would they?

‘At least the rain has stopped,’ he said aloud, as he rounded the corner of the forsaken Mark Street Lane and into the desolate Atlantic Avenue.

‘Hi Love,’ he thought he heard a ghostly breathy voice say, not much above a whisper, ‘you haven’t found another glove, have you?’

There she was, there right in front of him on what would now become the hallowed, Atlantic Avenue. His green-eyed girl’s green eyes were smiling straight at him.

He was so intent on finding her he pretty much nearly walked straight into her. He knew if she hadn’t spoken first, he would have walked past her. Lucky enough before he’d a chance to figure out what he was going to say she spoke again.

‘What am I like?’ she started, ‘I’m forever losing a glove, thankfully never both at the same time, mind you, always just the one at a time. The one you picked up for me I…’

‘I’ve been looking for you all day,’ he admitted, his voice sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

‘Mmmm,’ she replied, studying his face and sounding like she knew, and accepted, such an admission wasn’t as weird as he feared, ‘you’d look good with a moustache.’

Of all the things he’d imagined her to reply, and most of them also included her rushing off as quickly as her shapely legs would carry her, this was not even in the top 1000. It wasn’t as though he had actually come up with more than three possible replies.

Before he knew it, they were involved in a natural freewheeling conversation.

She seemed inclined to linger rather than to walk away.

At a very brief lull in the conversation, they both silently acknowledged they didn’t want the conversation to be stifled, so they spurted out their next questions simultaneously.

‘Do you live here?’ Tommy asked.

‘Who were you talking to as you walked around the corner?’ she asked over the top of his question.

‘No, I’m at the University of Ulster in Coleraine and one of my course mates invited me and another friend over to her parents’ house for the weekend. Her parents own a wee guest house over by the West Strand,’ she said in response to his question.

‘I was talking to myself,’ he admitted, ‘what’s your friend’s name?’

‘Gilly Hutchinson.’

‘Oh,’ he said, without even meaning to.

‘You know her?’

‘Well I know of her,’ he replied, ‘I know her sister.’

‘Which one?

‘Gilly would have been a few years ahead of me,’ Tommy replied.

‘Right,’ she replied, without allowing him to finish, ‘so you’d know the youngest, Emmi Mae.’

‘Yeah we were really good friends when we were…oh 13 ish and then she outgrew me.’

‘Ah yes, it happens at 13 or even 13-ish.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he offered more to himself, ‘so was that Gilly the blonde-haired girl with you yesterday?’

‘No, Gilly was swotting, you saw the eldest sister, Adele, who’s just great craic altogether.’

‘Okay, figures, I don’t know her at all,’ he replied.

He looked at his green-eyed girl out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t see her as well as he’d seen her yesterday when they’d met face to face. She still looked stunning even though her long dark hair covered the side of her face. He couldn’t see those amazing green eyes though. On the upside what he’d missed yesterday was her personal scents. She smelt of a blend of soap, shampoo, mixed with little hints of a heather based perfume. The combination was totally intoxicating. ‘I’m Tommy,’ he offered, extending his hand, and knowing it was an excuse to steal another glimpse of her stunning emerald eyes, ‘Tom Barry.’

‘I know,’ she said, offering her own hand in return.

‘You know?’ he said, surprised while noticing two of her top teeth protruded a wee bit to the extent it looked like her top lip was going to have trouble covering them.

‘Yes, Adele told me,’ she said, as she smiled, ‘she also said you weren’t part of the other Portrush Barry family.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ he said, still holding her soft skinned hand and shaking it gently, determined to never let it go again if he could get away with it. ‘’Fraid it also means I’ll not be able to get you free rides on the dodgems.’

‘I’d be more of a Barry’s Big Dipper kind of girl, anyway.’

‘Ditto on the Big Dipper, although I can’t pull any strings there either,’ he offered regretfully, while thinking he didn’t see her as being a Big Dipper kind of girl. All that screaming seems so alien to one so reserved and private. ‘I could get you a pony ride on the beach though if you wanted?’

‘Accepted,’ she replied, seeming content to leave her hand where it was, she leaned towards him, her nostrils wriggling the more they bridged the gap to his ear, ‘but not being part of the amusements also means you won’t smell of petrol and grease and candyfloss.’

‘Or Daulse and Yellowman,’ he added, attempting to complete her list and praying it was a compliment, ‘oh look…’ he continued and pointed with his free hand to the cuff of her red duffle coat, ‘there’s your missing glove, stuck up the sleeve of your coat.’

Sadly, for Tommy, this gave her an excuse to break away from him.

‘I’m Isabella,’ she said, retrieving her glove, ‘Isabella Scott and the pleasure to meet you on this wintery weekend, is all mine. That’s twice you saved me, Tommy, which means I’ll never forget you.’

And that, was how Tommy Barry and Isabella Scott first met.

Neither Isabella, her two friends, Gilly Hutchinson and Jane Murray nor Tommy Barry’s two friends, Lefty Kelly and Brendan ‘Brendy’ McCusker, would ever forget Tommy Barry. This fact was even more definite now that forty-three years later (bar three months) on Wednesday July 17th, 2019, the very same Tommy Barry died a very unnatural death.

***

Excerpt from Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove by Paul Charles. Copyright 2026 by Paul Charles. Reproduced with permission from Paul Charles. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The car bumped hard, the undercarriage hitting the edge of the shoulder, as it careened off the Garden State Parkway, heading for a stand of trees. The bump woke me up, and I jammed on the brakes and fought the steering wheel, cutting it hard left, but it was too late. The car fishtailed as the front smashed into a tree, the rear swinging right as the brakes took hold and crashing into another tree. I was flung forward, my hands coming off the wheel and banging against the console.

My hands were cut and bleeding as I sat staring at the road, the car twisted at a forty-five-degree angle. Pain throbbed from my right temple, and I realized I must have hit the windshield or the roof. A heaviness pressed down inside my head above my eyes, and I felt an urge to close them and go to sleep.

I forced myself to stay awake and get out of the car. I knew I was still technically drunk, but the crash had pumped enough adrenaline into my veins that I was hyper-aware, despite the likely concussion. I tried to open the trunk, but it was stuck shut, the right fender crunched in and bent on the top where it met the hatch.

A car passed going north on the other side of the Parkway. I looked back up the south-bound lane and saw no traffic. I stepped onto the road and half-jogged across, stepping over the median and across the north-bound lane. I glanced back at the car, slanted cock-eyed in the grass just past the Exit 6 sign for North Wildwood, then hurried through the grassy stretch alongside the road and into the woods that bordered it.

My only thought now was to avoid getting a DUI. I could deal with the car later. What a disaster. I had just bought the damn thing yesterday afternoon from a guy in Buena with a badly running nose and a burning desire to take my cash and go meet someone to make him well. That’s what I got for taking a lead on a cheap car from a guy holding up the end of the bar at a beer-and-a-shot place down the street from my house. I could have asked Lou to hook me up, but the price was right, and I just wanted something to get me through the summer. So I hitched a ride to Buena from a buddy who was headed to Margate, where I met Drew, the guy with the dripping nose. Drew had that pressing business to attend to, so he was fine with giving me the uncompleted paperwork.

Drew said, “Just see Mitch at the title place here next week, he’ll handle it.”

I trudged through the patch of woods, distancing myself from the Parkway. I came to a two-lane road and ran across that into deeper woods on the other side. I was about ready to just sleep under a tree there, when through a gap in the branches I saw an open field.

I pushed forward to the perimeter of the woods and stopped, trying to make out where I was. If it was somebody’s back yard, I would have to be careful. But there were no lights, just a dark field spreading out before me. I looked to my left and saw a brighter patch on the ground and a hundred yards beyond that a low building, maybe a garage?

I walked through tall grass to shorter grass, and as I got closer to the bright patch, I realized what it was: a sand trap.

I was on a fairway of Wildwood Country Club, the home course of my friend Lou Scolletta, whose house I was supposed to have been at four hours ago. There was probably a caddie shack I could hide out in, but I opted for a makeshift bed in the grass of a hollow a few fairways over. I lay down and, in the brief period before I passed out, wondered if this was the best way to prepare for the first day on my new job.

* * *

There was no way I wanted a full-time job working for Lou. I knew just enough about Lou to know not knowing anything more was the prudent path. The fact that he had just fired the prior manager for dipping in the till did not make the opportunity more appealing.

But there was a crazy part of me that thought running a place—a restaurant, not McNabb’s Tavern, the decrepit neighborhood tappie in Southwest Philly where until last year I humped kegs, mopped up fluids, breathed a lot of smoke and told myself I was the “manager”—might be something I could do. Because I was nowhere right now. No degree, no trade—just fifteen years of bartending that had ended when the last McNabb standing decided—wisely—that this was no way to make a living. The new owners didn’t need a mug like me in the fern bar that McNabb’s was to become.

I knew The Seabreeze, the quintessential Jersey Shore restaurant. When Lou bought it six years ago, I helped out a few weekends bartending when some of the corner boys he had hired just disappeared on him. It wasn’t hard finding someone to cover for me at McNabb’s. Our weekends were slower in the summer anyway, with a lot of folks going to the shore.

Lou and I hung out more back then. He bought the place in 1977 when I was thirty and Lou maybe thirty-seven. It was sort of a vanity project for him; his main business was a Cadillac dealership in South Philly. The following summer, he showed up at my bar with his son Davy—guess the kid was sixteen. He wanted Davy to get a summer job. Could we take him on, washing dishes, whatever? I wondered why he didn’t hire him at the dealership, but I guess he wanted him to work for someone else.

So I hired him, and he was okay, typical teenager, hardly said a word. There really wasn’t that much to do—we had a kitchen and did some sandwiches, but it wasn’t much to keep a dishwasher busy.

I guess that was the first favor I did for Lou. And I did owe him big, seeing as how his dad got me out of the draft back in 1967. Plus, Lou got me my first restaurant job, which was really a pretty good gig at a nice South Philly restaurant. But with Lou, you never felt like he was looking for payback. He just came off as a great guy, not like he was some connected dude that you had to say yes to. I’m sure he sold a lot of cars seeming like a great guy.

I used to give Davy a ride home sometimes, which often led to Concetta—Lou’s wife—asking me in to eat. There was always food, loads of food. She’d give me a plate of pasta, red wine out of a jug—might be ten o’clock in the evening, but so what? Then Lou would show up, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash that I was there. Then he had me down to a little mom-and-pop restaurant near his dealership for dinner, and I met some of his friends. They were mostly older and had gone to Bishop Neumann or Southern, but a few knew guys from Kingsessing, my old neighborhood in Southwest Philly.

I thought about that pasta and how a mick like me was going to run a real restaurant, and, as I passed out in the wet grass at 3:30 AM, whether Davy was still having the same nose-dripping problems as Drew from Buena, a path I saw him starting down two and a half years ago.

* * *

The sound of a mower woke me up. The guy running it looked like he had seen worse. He pointed me to the caddy shack and gave me some coins for the payphone. Thank God Lou picked up, but then that’s Lou, he’s not surprised if some fuckup calls him at dawn. I washed up as best I could with cold water and no soap in the filthy sink in the shack’s bathroom, then waited outside the locker room, not wanting to meet up with anyone, until Lou arrived.

What a night. Blitzed out of my mind, drinking stingers like I was twenty in Somers Point, dancing with those crazy chicks, trying to teach me to moonwalk like Michael Jackson on that Motown show a couple of months ago. It was the Friday after a Monday Fourth of July, and it felt like the bar itself was stumbling under the strain of a week-long bender.

I had just stopped in for something to eat, then met these girls, three of them, late teens, which led to my dancing lesson. As it got late and the stingers took their toll, I figured maybe I’d just crash in the back seat for a couple of hours, then get breakfast somewhere, rather than roll in drunk at four in the morning and freak out Concetta.

Then two of the girls disappeared and the last one, Sharon, became glued to a chair at my table—that is, her butt was glued to the chair, but her face ended up stuck to the table itself, her long brown hair straggling out into the sticky remains of many ungodly drinks. At closing time, I struggled her to her feet and managed to get her to moan out where she was staying in Sea Isle City, a couple of towns south. After she vomited in the parking lot, I got her into the back seat and drove as carefully as I could, taking Route 9 to avoid the faster traffic.

I got the girl out of the car at her shabby rental duplex, leaving her sprawled on a chaise lounge in the screened porch. I banged on the door until one of her roommates appeared in a long t-shirt. We got her into bed and I talked the roommate through how to make sure Sharon didn’t choke on her own vomit.

I sat in my car, worrying about the girl. I was old enough to be her father, but being plastered in a Somers Point bar at closing time didn’t exactly qualify me to be in loco parentis. I was just a more experienced wastrel, a thirty-six-year-old failed bartender who would have been a disappointment to someone, if there was anyone left to fill that role.

When I left the girl’s rental, I figured it wasn’t much farther to Wildwood, and what the hell, why not take the Parkway? But of course, that’s what impaired judgment is all about. So fatigue and drunkenness once more exacted their toll on a stupid Irishman, and here I was creeping around at dawn like an escaped convict.

***

Excerpt from Wildwood Exit by Joel E. Turner. Copyright 2025 by Joel E. Turner. Reproduced with permission from Joel E. Turner. All rights reserved.

ONE

Over the Water

Grief is a scab that I can’t stop picking at, no matter how hard I try. It pokes at me now as I sit in my truck on the deserted ferry dock, surrounded by dense morning fog and waiting for the boat to take me across an expanse of dark water to a house rumored to be cursed.

My fingers trace a photograph taped to my dashboard. My hand trembles, likely from an empty stomach or sleeplessness, as both are constant companions. But I outline the beloved face, forever frozen, like a precious object in amber. Lost to me in the real world, calling to me from the next.

The ferry slides into the dock in front of me with a bump against the pilings. A lone figure moves across the empty deck, while an old, grizzled seaman stays inside the tiny wheelhouse. One captain and one first mate.

Tying the ferry off with ropes thicker than my arm, the mate’s actions are practiced and steady. He lowers a ramp and waves me forward. Ever so slowly, I roll across the water, fighting against holding my breath—the superstition I’ve clung to my entire life every time I cross a bridge. The thirty-minute sail to Salish Island, and tiny Monk’s Rock where my new job awaits, won’t allow me the indulgence, so I might as well continue to breathe despite my need to cling to anything, even a silly belief, to keep me safe.

After parking the truck as the mate directs, I wait as he shoves bright orange chock blocks around all four wheels, as if, without a barrier, my vehicle might drive itself into the sea.

I open my door a crack; our eyes meet. “Can I get out?”

“Of course.”

The first mate is rugged, with an air of confidence like he’d be good in a crisis. Smooth skin on his cheeks. Bright, inquisitive eyes. Broad shoulders visible under the bulky uniform of dark green waterproof overalls and a yellow slicker.

He holds out his hand as I step out. “Careful. Parts of the deck can be slippery when it’s this wet.”

Electricity flies between our fingers, and I pull away as if he poses a threat. I don’t want to feel desire. Intimacy is dangerous. But what does it mean that I’m looking at men again?

He gives me an odd look. “We’ll be underway in a few minutes.” He walks back to the ramp, where two men unload a battered white cargo van. The three of them quickly stack boxes to one side, lashing them in place. No doubt provisions for an island that’s home to five hundred hearty souls—and me. At least for the time it takes to complete the finish carpentry in one enormous house.

I’d once been a very good carpenter. Before my life exploded into hospitals and medical visits, overwhelming helplessness and all the endless paperwork connected to dying. Since then, I’ve done a poor job of putting myself back together. The rough pieces of grownup life refusing to fit a new pattern now that I’m alone.

My mentor Bill Thomlinson had started this project less than a week ago but fell and broke his leg in multiple places. After he came through the surgery, metal pins in place, he convinced the homeowner to take a chance on me.

“You need this,” he said to me over the phone, his voice surprisingly strong for someone coming out of anesthesia. “I’m done watching you flail. This job can save you. Don’t let me down.”

Now I stand on the deck of a private ferry while the engines roar out a steady vibration under my feet, and wonder if I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Crossing to the rail, I pin my eyes where the horizon must lie out beyond the mist. Clouds above and waves below. Indistinguishable from each other because of the heavy air, thick like smoke. My stomach lurches at the thought of everything that swims underneath my feet and the unknown depth of the sea.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . focus on the future. Focus on the work.

All I know about the job ahead of me is that the original carpenter vanished, forcing the owner, Cameron Lang, to bring in someone else, but then Bill ended up with pins in his leg. Given that I haven’t slept in so long that I shouldn’t be trusted with power tools, I hope that whatever the curse is, it doesn’t come in threes.

When I feel like I’m losing my mind, it helps to ground myself with something physical, so I grip the hard, cold rail in my hands. No matter how much ending my life is a viable choice, some small part of me refuses to let death win again.

The fog brightens, and we cross a physical line in space, plunging into a blue so pure it hurts my eyes. I gasp and grip even tighter as the sky separates from the water, which now spreads out below me in an endless black void.

“Not quite got your sea legs?” The first mate watches me with barely disguised curiosity.

Salt spray traces tears down my cheeks. I must look like I’m crying. “I didn’t expect to come out of the fog so abruptly.”

“It does that sometimes. Now you see it, now you don’t. No matter how often we sail through a bank, it always feels like magic.”

“I can imagine.”

He lingers nearby. Maybe there’s little to do once the ferry is underway. Although small talk is beyond my ability, part of me longs to hear his voice again, even if I say things that sound insane.

The temperature drops as we head further out to sea.

We’re soon dodging between uninhabited land masses. “Some of these islands are so low they disappear in high tide.” He gestures to the slopes of land. Rocky outcroppings just under the surface. Dangerous, like unexploded mines in the sand.

Panic rises. The water below us taunts me—my troubles will be over if I simply fall into a watery grave. The voice becomes louder and more insistent that I should do something I can’t take back. To keep my mind off the words in my head, my eyes search for the defiant piece of US rock thrusting out of Canadian waters. If I can make it back to dry land, I can get through another day.

“That’s what you’re looking for.” The first mate’s breath tickles my ear as he comes closer, speaking over the hum of the engines, the slap of water on the hull, and the cry of seagulls. My gaze follows his arm to the far-off outline of Salish Island, where Monk’s Rock perches off the northern-most end, tethered to each other by the narrowest of bridges.

“Take this.” He presses a business card into my hand. “Just in case.” Under his name is a single word, handyman, and a phone number.

“Adrian Han?” I look up, his eyes capturing mine. “I thought you were the first mate.”

“I’m a lot of things.” His words are casual, but something reflects in his expression, an emotion I can’t put my finger on.

“You might realize at some point there’s a project you need help with. Nothing against your skills. Everyone needs another set of hands once in a while.”

“I have a helper.”

“Chuck, yeah. I’ve worked with him before.” His tone is carefully neutral.

My new boss made the arrangements for Chuck to help me with anything that requires two people. Am I going to regret his choice?

“How do you know why I’m here?”

Adrian’s carefree expression returns. “Emily Grace Turner. Carpenter. Here to finish the End of the World.”

It’s a jolt that he knows anything about me when I’ve worked so hard to become invisible. He reads me again, and his tone turns reassuring. “It’s a small town—people talk.” He gestures toward the wood rack that fits over my camper shell and the bumper sticker: Proud Member of the Carpenter’s Union. “Plus, your name was on your ferry registration.”

I chuckle for thinking his words are sinister until a darker emotion, one that looks like fear, crosses his face. “That house—” His lips purse as if he holds something back. “Just call if you need help. Anytime.”

The island takes clearer shape, and Adrian returns to the wheelhouse, his absence palpable, as if a physical hole remains in the air after he’s gone.

He’s taken his fear with him, except for the small part he’s left behind with me.

***

Excerpt from The Haunting of Emily Grace by Elena Taylor. Copyright 2025 by Elena Taylor. Reproduced with permission from Elena Taylor. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Vatican City, Rome – February 1740

The first symptom of the poisoning began as a fever.

Sitting at one of two long, white-silk-draped tables in the Sistine Chapel, along with sixty-seven of his fellow cardinal-electors, Pietro Ottoboni cast his vote for pope on the eighth day of the conclave to replace the late Pope Clement XII.

Enfeebled by fever, the seventy-three-year-old Ottoboni made his way toward the front of the chapel to a small altar below Michelangelo’s majestic fresco The Last Judgment, dropped his ballot onto a brass saucer, then tipped the saucer, letting the ballot fall into the large brass urn beneath it.

A few moments later, having returned to his seat, the cardinal collapsed onto the table, the high temperature having sapped his energy. Shocked, the other cardinals stood to better see what was happening to their colleague. The master of papal liturgical celebrations suspended the conclave while they moved Ottoboni to his apartment under the care of a Vatican physician.

Long considered favorite among the papabili to succeed Pope Clement, Pietro Ottoboni was born in the Most Serene Republic of Venice to a rich and noble family, whose most distinguished member was his grand-uncle, Pope Alexander VIII. Ottoboni had held every important post in the Vatican during an illustrious career and, as cardinal-bishop to several churches in Italy, his annual salary exceeded fifty thousand gold scudi—the present-day equivalent of six million dollars per year.

Cardinal Ottoboni had been a prolific paramour with a countless number of lovers, many of whom were married to the great patricians of Venice. In fact, the famous masks unique to Venetians were introduced not to ward off the plague, as many later believed, but to officially disguise the wearer’s identity—thus permitting anyone, noble or peasant, to do or say whatever one pleased. With this ingenious permissiveness, affari di cuore—affairs of the heart—were as common as the fleet of gondolas plying the canals of the celebrated city, without legal recourse. Having taken full advantage of this liberal device, Cardinal Ottoboni was known to have produced up to seventy children in his lifetime among his various mistresses.

Though he lived well in Rome’s grand Palazzo della Cancelleria, Ottoboni’s greatest passions were music and art, and he was a generous patron to some of the most renowned masters in both fields: Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giuseppe Crespi, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese—and most of all, to his close friend and protégé, the prodigious maestro di violino of Venice, Antonio Vivaldi.

As he lay on his deathbed, Ottoboni summoned Vivaldi to his side. In a low, rasping voice, the cardinal confided to his friend a tale of great importance, a scandalous operation run by the notoriously corrupt Cardinal Niccolò Coscia in league with the feared secret Mafia organization known as the Camorra.

In fact, he added with struggling breath, he was convinced it was Coscia, acting on orders from the Camorra, who had poisoned him to keep him from acting on what he knew. With information gleaned from one of his many spies, Ottoboni had discovered the ongoing scandal days earlier and approached Cardinal Coscia with a warning that he and his Camorra would soon be out of business, at least as far as the Vatican was concerned. Were it not for his required attendance in the papal conclave, he would have put a stop to it sooner, especially if he was elected pope, an elevation to supreme power that was expected by everyone.

The following day, however, Cardinal Ottoboni succumbed to the poison, killed for a secret now known only to Antonio Vivaldi.

Like most Italians, Vivaldi survived cautiously within the Camorra’s Venetian sphere of influence. The secret society’s tentacles reached into everyone’s life, and their strict enforcement of the seal of omertà—the sacred code of silence—ensured clan activities remained discreet and wholly within la familia. The family.

Since the late seventeenth century, the Camorra had carved out its territories, starting in Naples and moving northward into the Lombardy and Veneto regions of Italy, encompassing its most lucrative prizes, Milan and Venice. Competing with La Cosa Nostra in Sicily and the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, the Camorra’s criminal enterprises included prostitution, gambling, smuggling, kidnapping, and art theft—but also the unusual niche of producing and selling fine art forgeries of the highest order.

During the earlier reign of Pope Benedict XIII, who cared little for managing his vast realm of Papal States, Cardinal Niccolò Coscia oversaw all Vatican government operations, taking advantage of his authority to carry out substantial financial abuses, virtually draining the papal treasury. But his ongoing misdeeds eventually caught up with him. In 1731, he was charged with corruption, tried and convicted to ten years’ imprisonment, and excommunicated from the Church.

However, still not without influence, he managed to get his heavy sentence commuted to a mere fine. He was also mysteriously reinstated as a cardinal, allowing him to take part in the papal conclave of 1740—the one during which Cardinal Ottoboni had died.

* * *

With Ottoboni out of the way, Cardinal Niccolò Coscia could now carry out his master plan without hindrance. In his not-so-secret role as capo of the Roman Camorra, Coscia led development of the Veneto branch of the Mafia clan, based in Venice and headquartered in his own newly acquired Palazzo Feudatario on the Grand Canal. Purchased with funds he had discreetly absconded from the Vatican treasury, Feudatario would be a most fitting place to carry out his planned forgery operation of the Vatican’s most profound works of art.

Niccolò Coscia was a meticulous diarist and, owing to all the business he conducted outside the Church, he had created the first book to record the activities of his new organization, naming it Il Giornale Coscia della Camorra Veneta—The Coscia Journal of the Veneto Camorra. In it he would secretly record careful notations of all paintings by artist and title, including each work’s provenance and to whom the forgeries or originals were sold, depending on which he chose to return to the Vatican—for many were prominently displayed in public, while most were simply returned to the Vatican’s vast art storage vaults, unseen by anyone.

The Coscia Journal would be passed down to each capintesta, head of the Veneto Camorra, for generations.

Unfortunately for Coscia, Cardinal Ottoboni’s spies had discovered not only the Camorra’s abhorrent plan for art forgeries, but the very existence of the Coscia Journal for recording such transactions. At that point Ottoboni’s death was preordained, for no one could ever know such proof existed.

* * *

Antonio Vivaldi, who at age twenty-five was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, was now at a crossroads. He feared possessing knowledge of the treacherous secret passed on to him by his esteemed patron in his dying moments. Putting himself at odds with the Camorra was not just an unappealing prospect; it could end up costing him his life, depending on what he did with what he knew.

But Cardinal Ottoboni had one last request of his protégé.

Intent on stopping the sinful and unlawful activities of Cardinal Coscia, Ottoboni had pleaded with Vivaldi to see that Coscia was brought to justice, to pay for his felonious actions. Distressed by letting his friend and mentor die without the satisfaction of such a promise, Vivaldi agreed to do what he could. He would ensure that the authorities were informed, the Coscia Journal would be found, and the matter would be settled.

After the cardinal’s stately funeral, Vivaldi waited for the right moment to fulfill his promise. But as he waited, he became more apprehensive. He was just a lowly priest, after all, and not a very good one at that. The violin was his life, and teaching it was his life’s work. Besides, who would believe him? Where was the proof? And what would the Camorra do to him if he were to expose its business? He had seen the results of their retribution—those who crossed the Mafia were dealt with harshly. Beheadings were not uncommon, and those who weren’t beheaded were drawn and quartered—alive. No, he must find a way to honor his pledge without exposing himself to such horrible consequences.

An idea came to him: he would hide the messages in plain sight, in his musical compositions.

Picking up a sheet of staff lined manuscript paper, Vivaldi began to assemble the first of many, his Scherzo Tiaseno in Sol.

* * *

Venice, Italy—Present Day

An enormous flight of pigeons, hundreds of them, flocked overhead, diving for potato chips and bits of bread sticks tourists had enthusiastically tossed out for them, as Father Michael Dominic and Hana Sinclair made their way across the Piazza San Marco.

Despite the ban on pigeon-feeding in St. Mark’s Square, little children were oblivious to the law and more amused by the flapping gray-and-white spectacle than frightened by the few gendarmerie patrolling the square, whose policing efforts to stop the feeding were futile. Venetian health experts estimate over 130,000 pigeons had roosted in the historic center—well over optimal concentrations for such a small public space—and efforts to rid the city of the determined birds had failed miserably. The damage to the marble buildings and statuary was considerable, not to mention possible pathogenic health hazards.

Locals knew it was often prudent to cover one’s head with a newspaper or magazine when crossing the vast piazza, lest strollers subject themselves to the inevitable bombardment of bird droppings from above.

An old hand at the practice, Father Dominic had kept pages of the newspaper he had read at breakfast for that very purpose, knowing he and Hana had to cross the piazza in order to get to Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana, the Library of Saint Mark.

The director of the library had requested the Vatican’s help with a planned exhibition of manuscripts held in its stacks, and as Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, Michael Dominic had accepted the invitation, while also taking a week’s vacation time in the fabled city. At only thirty-one years old, his access to the Vatican’s vast number of historical manuscripts still humbled him. The Biblioteca Marciana was yet one more repository of ancient wonders that fascinated him.

Lovingly named La Serenissima by Italians devoted to its “most serene” natural and historical wonders, Venice was also Michael Dominic’s favorite city in the world. He loved its vibrancy, its rich history as a major world trading port up to and through the Renaissance period and, of course, the inherent romantic nature of the people and their ancient ways.

“I’m so glad you could join me, Hana,” Dominic said as they walked through the piazza. “Have you ever experienced Carnivale before?”

Holding the newspaper awkwardly over her stylish wide brim straw hat, Hana replied with a contented sigh. “I was here once, years ago, but Carnivale had just ended. I’ve been meaning to be here for the real festivities for some time now, and since my editors wanted a piece on the celebration for Le Monde’s Weekend Section, I volunteered for the assignment.”

She looked up at the priest and smiled. “Thanks for letting me tag along with you, Michael. I don’t mind that you have a little business to attend to. I need some time off myself and can always float around in a gondola and take notes while you’re occupied.”

Dominic laughed as he removed the newspaper from over his head, having passed the worst pigeon zone. He took Hana’s paper and tossed them both in a trash receptacle alongside the library façade. “I can just see you now, laid out on a shiny black gondola, that fetching hat drawing everyone’s eye as you cruise the canals. A fashion photographer’s dream. But let’s have some fun together while we’re here as well.”

“Agreed. I can get some writing done after dinner each night,” she said with a sly grin. “So, what’s in this library that you’ve been asked to weigh in on?”

“I’m meeting with Paolo Manetti, the curator of the Marciana’s Cardinal Bessarion Library, a special wing containing the original founder’s collection of books and precious manuscripts from 1468. The Vatican has an original translation of Homer’s Iliad, a companion version to his Odyssey, but the Marciana has the oldest actual texts of the Iliad. Manetti has asked me to consider lending ours to the Marciana for a temporary exhibition on Homer. They also have the only autograph copy of commentary on the Odyssey from the twelfth century, so it should be a fine showcase.”

Fascinated as she was by Dominic’s explanation, Hana’s eyes glazed as the warm sun took hold of her, her white cotton midi skirt fluttering in the light breeze. They had passed the tall brick Campanile and were now walking through the piazzetta between the Marciana Library and the Doge’s Palace, heading toward the entrance to the Grand Canal. It wasn’t quite noon yet, the appointed time for Dominic’s meeting, so they settled onto a stone bench near the traghetto, the gondola landing overlooking the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island across the lagoon. Vaporetti, gondolas, and sleek mahogany water taxis plied the calm waters as they sat there, each in their own dreamy state of mind, an effect Venice had on every visitor.

As the tower bells of the Campanile struck twelve, Dominic leaned back for a deep stretch to rouse himself, then stood and reached out for Hana’s hand to help her up. With one last glance over the lagoon, they headed toward the library.

Chapter 1

Present Day

The entrance to the Marciana Library Palace—heavy wooden doors flanked by two larger-than-life Greek marble statues—opened into the opulent vestibule, where a two-flight staircase took visitors to the upper loggias.

Looking up as they walked the marble halls, Hana fixated on the ceiling, which featured twenty-one roundels, circular oil paintings by seven notable Renaissance artists commissioned in 1556. They looked as fresh today as at the time they were painted, Hana mused, overwhelmed by their unusual spherical beauty. Reaching one of the reading rooms, sunlight streamed in from the high glass ceiling, bathing the three-story room in a diffused natural light. Surrounding the reading tables on all sides were a series of Doric arches with a handsome frieze on one wall featuring rosy-faced cherubs and garlands of fruit and flowers.

A slim, well-dressed man with long, black hair who looked to be in his fifties was walking toward them, a welcoming smile on his face. Dominic smiled in response as the man approached.

“Padre Michael, welcome back to the Marciana!” he beamed as he extended his hand.

“Paolo! What a great pleasure to see you again. This is my friend and colleague, Hana Sinclair. Hana, this is Paolo Manetti, curator of the Bessarion Library here.”

The three exchanged handshakes and pleasantries. Then Manetti turned, gesturing for them to follow him.

“We’ll be using my private office to view the Iliad. Better to keep tourists from flocking around us. I already have it set up.”

He led them through the upper loggia and down a corridor leading to various offices, entering a corner room that overlooked the piazzetta and the lagoon.

“Not only do you have a stunning library here, Signor Manetti,” Hana remarked, “but you probably have the best office in the building!”

Manetti grinned shyly. “Please, call me Paolo, Miss Sinclair. And yes, I am very fortunate to have such a wondrous place to work. What you see around you is my life. Like our friend Michael here, my love for antiquities of the Old World has no bounds.”

Dominic nodded in agreement, then turned to his companion. “Hana, if you’d like to better explore the library while Paolo and I are working, please feel free. We should only be a half hour or so. Take it all in; it truly is a marvelous old building filled with treasures you won’t find anywhere else.”

“I’ll do that, thanks. Just come find me when you’re ready.” Hana turned and left the office, making her way back to the reading rooms and their glorious artworks and statuary.

A large table in the center of Manetti’s office held several reference books, various implements for examining documents—a digital microscope, magnifying glass, blacklight, leather sandbag weights—and several large parchment manuscripts which had been laid out on it. One in particular was the chief item of interest: the only copy of the commentary on Homer’s Odyssey written entirely by the hand of the author.

Putting on a pair of white gloves, Dominic handled the manuscript guardedly, gazing at the beautiful script by the hand of Eustathius of Thessalonica, the Byzantine scholar and rhetorician of the twelfth century.

“This is our finest treasure, Michael, and one of the oldest in the library,” Manetti said. “It will be one of the principal features of our exhibition. But now, look at this.”

With a gentle flourish, he reached across the table and pulled over two comparable manuscripts.

“These are Venetus A and Venetus B, the oldest texts of Homer’s Iliad, with centuries of Greek scholia written in the margins.”

As Dominic recalled, since the first century, ancient commentators known as scholiasts would insert grammatical or explanatory notations, even critical commentary, in the margins of the manuscripts of early authors. Over time, centuries in fact, successive copyists or those who owned a particular manuscript altered the scholia, and sometimes the practice expanded so much that there was no longer room for scholia in the margins, so it became necessary to produce them as separate works. No copy machines, just dedicated scribes working with Egyptian reed pens and feather quills to patiently reproduce one-of-a-kind originals.

“These are truly extraordinary, Paolo,” Dominic declared, his hands shaking slightly as he held the ancient parchments. “I can certainly see why you’d want to share these in your exhibition. I can confidently say the Vatican will cooperate in any way we can. I’ll make arrangements for the original translation of Homer’s Iliad to be couriered to you when I return to Rome. I assume you’ll have appropriate security arrangements in place?”

“Of course, Michael. Apart from our own security detail, the federal Carabinieri has offered to provide full protection for us. We are simply the custodians of these masterpieces, but they are part of Italy’s proud heritage and the government takes that responsibility quite seriously.

“And thank you for your generous contribution, Michael,” he continued. “Your Iliad will be in excellent hands, I can assure you.”

“When we spoke last week,” Dominic said, “you mentioned another piece you wanted to discuss?”

Manetti turned somber. “Yes, there is something else I need to show you, and I’d like to get your opinion on it. This came to us recently from a local donor who wishes to remain publicly anonymous, and while its value is undeniable and a welcomed donation to our collection, I am not quite sure what to make of its meaning.”

The curator rummaged about the other manuscripts on the table, his gloved hands repositioning each document carefully, until he found what appeared to be an autograph musical manuscript, with staff lines and bars of musical notations, placed inside a small Mylar protective sleeve. While it was in relatively good condition, given its apparent antiquity, its corners had been chipped and there were many creases across the paper, as if someone had folded it many times at some point. Its size was quite small, a half sheet of standard paper at most.

“Well, this looks interesting, though I must admit I know little about musical manuscripts. Who is it by?” Dominic asked.

As he peered closely at the manuscript, Hana returned from her brief tour of the library and walked up to stand silently next to the two men. She glanced at the object of their attention while Manetti continued.

“This, my friend, was penned by the hand of Venice’s own maestro di violino Antonio Vivaldi. He gave it the title Scherzo Tiaseno in Sol, and it appears to be a scherzo in the truest, most literal meaning of that word—a joke! It is a fair enough piece of music, but nowhere near the level one would expect from a Baroque master like Vivaldi. If it is a joke, then the question is, why? And for whom? There must be more than meets the ear.

“This is marked as page two, so there may still exist a page one somewhere. The donor was rather circumspect on the matter, but as Vivaldi was her sixth great-grand-uncle, the provenance is well established.” Manetti looked up at Dominic questioningly and shrugged.

As Hana read the notes, she weighed in. “You’re right, Paolo. This isn’t anything close to what Vivaldi was known to have composed. And scherzos are normally in three, like a waltz, but this has the bar lines in the wrong place. There must be some other meaning to it.”

“You read music?!” Dominic asked her, somewhat taken aback.

“Of course, I studied music for years at St. Stevens School, and I play both the piano and cello,” she replied, a shy smile playing across her face.

“Will wonders never cease with you?” Dominic asked, grinning mischievously.

“Oh, please,” she said modestly. “We all have our secret talents. And I can hardly travel around with a cello.”

Turning to the curator, she asked, “Paolo, may I have a closer look at this?”

“Of course, signorina,” he said encouragingly.

Hana accepted the Mylar sleeve from Dominic and took a seat by one of the windows. Reading the music, she hummed the notes, emitting a series of high, low, and mid-range sounds which produced no tune whatsoever.

“Okay, this is really strange. There is nothing here that might even imply that an artist with Vivaldi’s genius was creating anything good, much less great. But why would he do that? From what I know, he wrote beautiful music feverishly, wasting not a precious second on something like this. But there must be a reason.”

“I completely agree, signorina,” Manetti said, nodding. “But what are we to do with this? We must have some kind of explanation for such an artifact if we are to display it.”

Hana had a thought. “Paolo, can you make a copy of this for me? I have an old friend, Dr. Livia Gallo, my former music teacher at St. Stevens, who is an expert in Vivaldi and other Baroque masters. Maybe she has some idea of what this might represent?”

Manetti was delighted. “Yes! I would be happy to provide you with a copy if it helps to better understand this. You must assure me that you will not share it with anyone else except your colleague, yes? Until we understand it better, I wouldn’t want speculations to be awkward for our donor.”

“Yes, of course, only Dr. Gallo will see it. For that matter, it’s small enough that I can just take a photo of it with my iPhone. Would that be acceptable?”

“Better yet,” Manetti replied. “That way there are no loose copies to get lost. Oh, and please do not use the flash.”

Hana returned the manuscript to the table, removed her phone from her bag, then took a full frame shot of the piece under natural light.

“Paolo,” Dominic asked, “might we get an introduction to your donor, this Vivaldi descendant? Hana and I may be able to get more relevant information from her that can assist Dr. Gallo. Where does she live?”

“Here in Venice, in one of the great palazzos on the Grand Canal. I don’t think the contessa would mind at all, actually. She’s quite the conversationalist.”

“A contessa?!” Hana asked, surprised.

“Oh yes, she comes from a very old noble line herself and married well, besides. Contessa Donatella Vivaldi Durazzo. She must be in her eighties now, a delightful woman, very generous in her philanthropy. She is one of the jewels of Venice, a wonderful patron of the arts, adored by everyone. She lives in Palazzo Grimaldi in the Dorsoduro, not far from the Guggenheim Museum. I would be pleased to make an introduction.”

“Excellent! We’ll be here all week, Paolo, and it would be a treat to see one of the famed palazzos on the Grand Canal,” Dominic said excitedly. “Not to mention meeting Italian nobility.”

Manetti smiled assuringly at his old friend.

“We’re staying at the Ca’ Sagredo, Paolo,” Hana said. “You can reach us there, but here’s my mobile number if you need us at any time.” She wrote down her number on a slip of paper and handed it to Manetti.

“Grazie, signorina. I will make the call this evening and let you know when she is available.”

“Where to now?” Hana asked Dominic as they left the building, having said their goodbyes to Manetti.

“I thought we’d have a bite of lunch at Quadri, then saunter over to St. Mark’s Basilica and say hello to a friend of mine from my seminary days. We’ve come all this way, and I’d hate to miss seeing him.”

“Lead the way,” Hana said breezily, placing her wide-brimmed straw hat back on her head. “I’m ready for some fresh seafood, aren’t you?”

“You bet. Just watch out for pigeons, though, as I’ve tossed the newspapers.”

Chapter 2

Among the many fine palazzos lining the Grand Canal is an understated, three-story ocher palace, somewhat more slender than its neighbors but nonetheless impressive. Its more observable features include a grand entrance off the gondola traghetto, with a black, scalloped awning over the brick staircase leading up from the water’s edge; several full-width balconies with ornamental balustrades at each end; heavily draped, arched picture windows overlooking the canal—and a cadre of armed security guards posted around the grounds of Palazzo Feudatario.

As a glossy mahogany water taxi approached the dock, two beefy men appeared from the palazzo’s entrance to greet the sole visitor on board, a priest called to administer last rites to the dying master of the house—a man known to all of Venice as Don Lucio Gambarini, the capintesta, or head-in-chief of the Veneto Camorra.

A stout man in his sixties, Don Gambarini had suffered a paralyzing stroke some weeks prior, and as his health had further declined, his death was not unexpected. In the meantime, the capintriti, heads of the twelve districts under Don Gambarini’s leadership, had assembled in the grand house, set to squabbling as to who would take over as leader of the clan when the great capintesta met his end.

But that was hardly on Gambarini’s mind when Father Carlo Rinaldo entered the formal master bedroom to hear the Don’s confession and administer extreme unction, the final anointing with last rites before death. Rinaldo had never met Gambarini before, though he was aware of the Don’s reputation, one deserving of a robust confession if he were truly repentant.

The large, well-appointed bedroom had many people standing around, vying for the boss’s attention should he wish to suddenly name one of them as his successor. But Gambarini would have none of it yet, demanding the bedroom be cleared except for the priest, who would hear his confession privately.

As everyone ambled out of the room, giving each other dark glances, the door was closed as Rinaldo placed a violet stole around his neck, then reached into his black leather bag and withdrew a small bottle of holy water, a crucifix, and his Bible.

“Don Gambarini, my name is Father Rinaldo, from St. Mark’s. Do you wish to make a confession?”

“Where is my regular priest, Father Viani?”

“I’m afraid he is on sabbatical, signore, and will not return for some time. He entrusted his duties to me in his absence.”

Gambarini looked wide-eyed at the priest for a long while, trembling, gauging his predicament. Rinaldo found terror in the man’s eyes. Not an uncommon occurrence for one so close to death, but there was something more. Some heavy burden the man was struggling with. All the priest could do was wait for his penitent to make the first move.

“Father, I do wish to make a confession,” Gambarini began, “but it is not one you are going to like.”

“I make no judgments at all, signore. I am but the Lord’s servant in this matter. He alone passes judgment. But that depends on how you wish to leave this life, carrying with you the dark burden of your transgressions, or absolved of sin in His light.” Rinaldo gestured upward as he said this.

Gambarini paused, glanced around the room, then looked deep into the priest’s eyes. “Before we begin, Father, I must ask of you an important favor, for my sins are so great, my penance must include some action on your part—but only after I am dead.

“What I am about to tell you involves a serious crime against the Vatican itself, an offense which has been ongoing for centuries, and still takes place to this very day. I fear I will not have God’s full absolution unless this matter is revealed once and for all. And you must be the one to tell it to others, so that it will stop. Is that agreeable?”

Such an unusual request completely mystified Rinaldo. Never had he been asked to play a part in a confessor’s penance. And to do so, he would have to break the sacred seal of the confessional; he was uncertain if having permission to do so by the penitent absolved him of that restraint. He would have to speak with someone about that later.

He walked across the room and picked up a chair. Placing it next to Gambarini’s bed, he took a seat. He paused a moment to consider the situation.

“Let me hear your confession, my son. If it is within my power, I will do my part as you ask.”

***

Excerpt from The Vivaldi Cipher by Gary McAvoy. Copyright 2021 by Gary McAvoy. Reproduced with permission from Gary McAvoy. All rights reserved.

From beginning of Chapter One…

Paradise isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Sure, Valerie Corbin knew she and her wife Kristen were supremely fortunate to now reside in the quaint, still-stuck-in-the-1970s town of Hilo on the magnificent Big Island of Hawai‘i—home to lush jungles, fiery volcanoes, black sand beaches, and coral reefs teeming with eye-popping tropical fish.

But at this moment, all she could focus on was the bull terrier-spaniel mix next door barking so loudly that it almost—though not quite—drowned out the whine of the pneumatic tools its owner was using on a jacked-up truck, the parts of which were currently scattered all across his driveway.

Letting loose a few choice words regarding both dog and man, Valerie slammed shut the window above the kitchen sink, then returned to the stove to poke at her potatoes simmering in a pot of water. At the sound of the back door opening, she looked up to see Kristen and her nephew, Sean, come inside from the lānai, Valerie and Kristen’s little white dog, Pua, trotting after them.

“We couldn’t take the racket anymore,” said Kristen, tossing her Outside magazine onto the counter. “Does he ever stop?”

“Who—Akoni or Larry?”

Kristen laughed. “Both, I guess. And yeah, I know the answer: rarely. Especially Akoni, with his constant yowling. Though I gotta say, it seems like Larry’s been working on his vehicles a hell of a lot more of late. And I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen that particular truck before. You think he’s started repairing other people’s vehicles, too?”

“Oh, God, I hope not. Though that would explain the increased frequency of the noise.” Valerie switched off the heat under her potatoes, then turned to Kristen. “I wonder if it’s legal to have a car repair business in this neighborhood. Maybe I should ask at tonight’s meeting if anyone knows.”

“Or maybe you could just talk to your neighbor about it,” put in Sean, who’d taken a seat at the kitchen table and was busy typing something into his phone.

Valerie and Kristen exchanged glances, after which Valerie replied, “Maybe later. But first we should figure out where we stand on the issue.”

Sean set down his phone with a shrug. “So what’s this thing you’re going to tonight, anyway?”

“It’s the monthly meeting for the neighborhood orchid society,” said Valerie, carrying the pot to the sink and dumping the steaming potatoes into a colander. “Shirley invited me—you know, the woman who lives at that house down the street with all those beautiful orchids in her tree ferns? I was admiring them the other day, and after we got talking, she invited me to come along tonight to see if I might be interested in joining. You wanna join me?”

Sean let loose his man bun, held in place by a wooden hair stick, and shook out his dirty-blond locks. “No can do; I’m working tonight at the hospital. It’s my first time in the ER, which should be interesting.”

Sean had come from Arkansas to do a three-month stint as a visiting nurse at the Hilo hospital and was now on his second week at the job—and at Valerie and Kristen’s house, where he’d be staying for the duration of his time on-island. “I didn’t know you were into orchids,” he said in a lazy drawl, pulling his hair back from his face and retying the bun.

“I wasn’t, not till we first got to Hilo. But they’re so amazing and, I dunno . . . other-worldly.”

Star Trek flowers, I call them,” said Kristen, and Valerie nodded.

“And they’re so easy to grow here, so I’m thinking it might be fun to try it myself. Plus, it’d be a great way to get to know some of the folks in the neighborhood a little better.”

“Like Larry?” asked Sean with a grin.

“Ha. I’m not so sure he’s really the orchid type . . .”

***

Excerpt from MURDER, LOCAL STYLE by Leslie Karst. Copyright 2026 by Leslie Karst. Reproduced with permission from Leslie Karst. All rights reserved.

ONE

Present Day, Los Angeles
Carly Bennett

Light blue on dirty blonde.

Creative writing professor Carly Bennett did a quick scan of her face from its reflection in the window that overlooked the University of Southern California quad and smoothed a crease in her pencil skirt.

If Carly had known that the dean of the English department would schedule a last-minute meeting with her, she would’ve picked a better outfit than one that screamed, “I had no time to take this to the cleaner, so I ran a fast iron over it. But thank God the skirt is black so no one can see the stain from when my coffee cup lid jimmied its way free this morning.”

Nothing like near first-degree burns on your thigh from an errant Starbucks Pike to jolt a person awake during LA’s slog of a commute.

No matter. Here she was.

And she’d be ready. Even though she needed to master her prep on the fly.

Carly turned the corner to the English department’s Office of the Dean and forged through her speaking points that she’d deliver to her boss, Bert Scanlon.

“Making the LA Times’s ‘Thirty-Under-Thirty’ list was a complete surprise, but I’m so happy that the article will shine a spotlight on the great work our team is doing under your leadership.”

Ack. Too mealy-mouthed. Plus, it made her sound like a big-headed brown-noser. And nobody likes that person.

“Thank you for the kind words. Please know how much I appreciate that you believe in me, and I swear, I won’t let you down.”

Better, and that sentiment was from the heart.

Carly pictured her face, front and center on the page when she’d pulled up the LA Times story that morning and hoped that the people she used to know from her early Malibu days saw it too.

Elitist jerks.

As for herself, Carly had read the write-up, over and over, until she could now recite it in perpetuity.

Carly passed by the USC English department’s wall of fame, which showcased its students’ esteemed awards through the years. She paused when she saw her name, capturing a moment in time from freshman year. Her: scared to near speechlessness amongst the far cooler co-eds but finding strength behind her pen.

Winner of the 2018 Undergraduate Writing Prize—First Place: Carly Bennett

Had she really come this far? Most would’ve marked her a losing bet at age twelve, her personal line of demarcation, but sometimes, even dark horses can come from behind and win the whole damn thing.

Four. Three. Two. One.

“You got this,” Carly whispered.

She reached for the security of her inhaler in her briefcase and entered Scanlon’s office.

Gretchyn Olson, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair was working the phone with precision. She held up a single finger when she saw Carly.

While she waited, Carly continued to clutch her briefcase in one hand and placed the other behind her back, where she dug a fingernail into a stray cuticle.

After a beat, Scanlon’s assistant put the call on hold.

“They’re waiting for you,” Gretchyn said. “Hang in there, kid. Sometimes, you need to play the game.”

They? And what game was she talking about?

Carly’s neck felt hot, but she made certain she was smiling when she entered the office, where she locked eyes with Scanlon, who rose to greet her. Scanlon had a Mr. Clean, shiny bald head, and his stomach struggled to stay behind the confines of the clasped gold buttons of his tweed coat.

Seated across from the dean of the English department was an unfamiliar male, who was well dressed, neatly manicured, and appeared to be in his early fifties.

Carly shot the stranger an equally polite smile. Who was this guy?

“Miss Bennett, thank you for taking time to swing by under such short notice,” Scanlon said.

“Of course, sir.”

Maybe the man was another reporter from the paper who covered the education beat and was writing a follow-up article on the English department.

“I don’t believe you’ve met Franklin Yeager. You taught Frank’s son, Landon, last semester.”

In that moment, Carly felt like someone had jabbed an ice pick into her high-flying helium balloon.

The room became very still as Carly struggled to find the appropriate response.

“In all due respect, if this is about my former student, I think any further discussion should be held in private and between the administration, but I was under the impression the incident and disciplinary action had been decided,” Carly said.

A robotic delivery, but at least she got the words out.

“There’ve been some developments that have been brought to my attention. I asked Frank to come in so we could clear the air, so to speak,” Scanlon said. “Please, sit, Miss Bennett.”

Carly kept her place, arms folded, standing above the men, but when Scanlon cleared his throat, she acquiesced and found a seat next to her former student’s father.

“Landon didn’t plagiarize the paper,” Yeager said.

Yes, he did! Carly wanted to scream. Instead, she slipped her hands underneath her legs, in case her palms started to sweat.

“If my son did cheat, I’d be the first to request that USC boot him out the door on his fanny,” Yeager continued. “But I know my kid, and I also know a liar, and Landon is beside himself over this false accusation. I’ll be honest with you, when Landon first told me about the whole mess, I was ready to call my lawyer, but since Bert is an old friend, I thought, why not try and hash things out man-to-man first.”

She had to respond. The words were there, ready to make her point, if only she could find the ability and the guts to say them.

“But he did ch-ch-cheat,” Carly said, despising the catch in her voice.

When was the last time she’d stuttered? Probably a year ago, during her annual review with Scanlon. She wondered if the universe would grant her a reprieve, and somehow the two men hadn’t picked up on her residual speech impediment, which still ambushed her in the worst possible moments, rising like an unkillable weed despite all her years of work to get rid of it.

She shot a glance at Yeager, whose mouth had turned up into a bow that resembled a smirk or, worse, pity.

If she were going down, at least she had to throw a punch.

“I want all my students to excel, and if they need extra time on an assignment, they know I’ll give it to them, and my door is always open if they need additional help. But the paper Landon wrote was a complete replica of one I received from a different student last year. We’re talking down to the semicolon.”

Carly looked to Scanlon, hoping for some back-up, but the dean kept his focus on Yeager.

“Then it wasn’t a case of cheating but purely accidental on Landon’s part,” Yeager said. “Or is the word coincidental? You’re the English whizzes in here, and I’m a businessman who wouldn’t know a semicolon from a hyphen, but I do know mistakes can be made, even by well-meaning young professors. How long have you been a teacher? You look more like a co-ed than a professor, and I mean that in the most complimentary of ways.”

Yeager chuckled, sounding to Carly like the laugh was cover so he wouldn’t sound like a creep.

Too late.

Carly fought to speak up and defend herself. But she remained still and silent, stuck between two powerful, rich males who were doing a very fine job of reeling in the young, errant female who didn’t know her place.

“This is my second year at USC.”

“Miss Bennett is still relatively new to our school as a professor, but she’s a rising star in our English department and did quite well as a student here before joining our professional fold.”

The heat that Carly had felt in her neck earlier had now exploded into a full-blown, five-alarm inferno, despite Scanlon throwing her a pseudo-bone.

Carly had crossed her legs and put a hand to her throat to try and cover her growing rash when she noticed Yeager was staring at something on the bottom of her black high heel. Whatever it was seemed to give him great satisfaction.

“Mr. Scanlon . . .” Carly pleaded, but the dean interrupted.

“I appreciate that you hold your students to the highest of standards, as you should, but since Frank is a trusted friend to the school, this time, we’ll expunge the previous disciplinary action and wipe the slate clean. Landon can resubmit the assignment and finish up the course through independent study, so he won’t lose credit. I have your word that Landon will be more careful in his work going forward, Frank?”

“You bet. My kid is a good boy, and I knew we could wrangle this problem to the ground. You have my word on my kid and on my continued support. Generations of Yeagers have supported this school, and we’ll continue the tradition. “Fight on for ol’ SC, our men fight on to victory!” Yeager warbled, hitting the notes of the USC fight song slightly off-key but with great confidence in his delivery.

When Yeager stood to shake the dean’s hand, Carly looked to the bottom of her high heel and saw a Macy’s close-out sale sticker still affixed to its outsole.

Her previous high-flying balloon was now bits of spent plastic that an entitled rich boy and his adult minions had tossed into the dumpster.

“No hard feelings, OK? New teachers can make mistakes with the best of them,” Yeager said.

He extended his hand to Carly.

You sold your integrity for a buck, and to a total cheese bag when you know I’m right! Carly wanted to scream to Scanlon.

Instead, Carly remained quiet and stared at Yeager’s outstretched hand.

Scanlon cleared his throat again.

“Miss Bennett, the matter has been settled,” Scanlon answered.

The dean’s eyes narrowed, and Carly followed his cue.

She reached for Yeager’s hand, gave it a quick shake, and regretted it the second her skin touched Yeager’s.

“That will be all, Miss Bennett.”

This was so unfair. She had to stand her ground.

“Is there something else you wanted to say?” Scanlon pressed.

Carly paused, searching for the words. They were right there, but when she jumped from the platform to catch the brass ring, she missed and spiraled into freefall.

“Miss Bennett?” Scanlon asked.

“Th–th–th–thank you, sir.”

She couldn’t remember leaving the office, but there she was, back in the lobby. Carly hurried past Gretchyn, and by the time she reached the corridor, she was certain that she heard the two men laughing from behind the office door.

“HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!”

*

After escaping the humiliation-fest in Scanlon’s office, Carly lowered her head so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact, or worse, engage in fake, idle chitchat after her fall, and continued her fast walk to the USC faculty bathroom. She had ten minutes until her advanced creative writing class started, which was threading the needle a bit, but the familiar vice was constricting her chest, and if she didn’t take a pull from her inhaler soon, she’d be in the throes of a full-fledged, not to mention very public, asthma attack.

She struggled for air and rushed into an open stall. Once inside, she slammed the door, snatched her inhaler from her briefcase, and gave it a quick shake. She heard the familiar whistling sound coming from her throat and shoved her rescue inhaler into her mouth.

Feeling like a five-hundred-pound man was now sitting on her chest, Carly fought to stay calm. She closed her eyes, forced herself to hold her breath for the requisite ten seconds between puffs and prayed for the corticosteroid to kick in.

When the tightness in her lungs loosened, she could see, plain as day, her old practice phrase, the one she’d started reciting at boarding school to help conquer her stutter.

When her breathing steadied to a normal inhale-in, exhale-out, she whispered the words aloud to find her center.

“The girl wore her hair in two braids, tied with two blue bows.”

Not bad. Her voice was clear and strong this time, unlike her herky-jerky performance earlier.

How had she let herself choke, and on such an epic scale?

Feeling like she was no longer dry-drowning from her asthma attack, Carly took one more hit of her inhaler. She squeezed the metal canister and pictured Scanlon’s and Yeager’s mugs, having a big old chuckle at her expense.

“Never again,” Carly whispered, not quite believing it, but at least it was a start.

She rose from crouching position in the stall, straightened her shoulders, and then shot her middle finger in the air.

“That’s bravery right there, giving the bird to a restroom door instead of standing up for yourself. Next time will be different.”

Carly exited the stall and was relieved to see the faculty bathroom was still empty.

She splashed cold water from the sink onto her face, then patted her sticky armpits with a wad of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall. A poor girl’s spa day.

Having no idea how much time had passed since the start of her asthma attack, Carly worried that she was late for her next class. She grabbed her phone from her briefcase to check the time and gasped.

On the home screen was a photo memory, which captured a hoped-for promise never to come.

Carly ran her finger over the image of her mother and studied her twelve-year-old self. The photo had been taken by her then soon-to-be stepbrother Julien, on the day she’d met him and the rest of the Whites.

A pang of melancholy cut through her. Everybody would’ve believed her if she were a rich boy.

***

Excerpt from Everyone Is Perfect Here by Jane Haseldine. Copyright 2026 by Jane Haseldine. Reproduced with permission from Jane Haseldine. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Thursday, October 12
4:59 p.m.

Robert Chan froze in place, staring at the shadows in his hallway.

From the bedroom where he stood, Chan couldn’t see the shadows’ origin, just the elliptical darkness, spreading across the walls, creeping down the hall. As the sun descended beyond the distant Golden Gate Bridge, a chill seized the air, but Chan didn’t feel it. His eyes were fixed on the hallway, studying the growing shadows, searching for signs of movement, or a flicker.

A sign they came from something alive.

Shadows had always terrified Chan. As a child, long after his parents had gone to sleep, he’d lie motionless in bed, his face half-hidden by the blankets, staring at the ceiling. Moonlight, filtering through the branches scratching outside his window, cast a dance of light and darkness above him. Lurking within this specter of shadows, he’d see the spirits of his grandmother’s tales, the kuei-shen — the phantoms of the deceased trapped between the world of the living and the dead. Too frightened to move, he’d lay immobilized, watching as the shape-shifting kuei transformed, taking the forms of lions and dragons. He’d see the kuei-shen as they descended upon him, feel them as they entered his flesh, melting into his soul. The chill of their deathly presence within.

He’d carried those visions throughout his adult life.

Still, no number of childhood nightmares could prepare him for what he faced now.

Chan’s eyes shot from the hallway to the suitcase lying upon his bed, lid propped half-open, socks and underwear dangling over the edge. He rushed to the case, stuffed in two pairs of grey slacks, then dashed back to the closet. Glancing at the rows of cotton shirts, he shoved the stripes aside and grabbed the white Oxfords. Less eye catching, he thought, more anonymous.

Anonymity had never been one of Chan’s concerns before. As a young and hungry engineer in the Medical Applications Division of CyberTech Systems, he’d done everything in his power to avoid it. In the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley, anonymity in the corporate workplace was the high-tech kiss of death. In order to advance to the high-paying executive levels, Chan had to stand out, be noticed. And he did. Clocking in a string of over fifty consecutive 80-hour weeks, his work habits routinely drew the notice of the upper levels of CTS management. His ascent through the ranks of engineers was unprecedented.

But that was before he found the files.

Now, all he hoped for was to get out alive.

Shoving the Oxfords into the suitcase, Chan glared at the manila envelope on his bed. His stomach tightened. The envelope looked so mundane, so ordinary, like it contained any number of IKEA catalogs or Publisher’s Clearing House winner entries. There were no outward clues as to what it contained. The deception. The hidden discovery that was causing his once carved-in-granite life to crumble around his ears.

He wanted to grab that envelope and rip it to pieces, shred it; pretend he’d never found the files; get back to his life of deadlines and coding assignments, his twice daily visit to Starbucks with Elizabeth, his routine afternoon stop at the Porsche dealer where he’d been eyeing the new Boxster, dreaming of himself behind the wheel.

But it was too late for that. He’d been working on AI programing for a team of researchers at San Francisco University Medical Center, a special project assigned to him by the CEO himself, Reginald Erickson. All the engineers knew he was working on this assignment. His cyber-trail through the CTS database easily traceable. Every keystroke monitored and replicated. Each step readily apparent to someone who knew where to look.

The ringing of the phone snapped Chan to attention. He jerked from the bed, his eyes darting to the receiver then beyond to the digital clock on the far wall.

It was 5:00 P.M.

Panic seized him. No one should be trying to reach him at this hour. Not here. Normally, he’d still be at CyberTech logging in another eighteen-hour day pounding out code. No one should know he was home.

The phone rang again. Chan winced. His eyes shot to the envelope. He had to get out of there. Get the files to the Federal Building; get the evidence into the hands of the Justice Department or the FBI or whoever, get filtered into the witness protection program and hope to start a new life as an elementary school teacher in Wichita or Amarillo or someplace else he’d never heard of. Let the Attorney General, the world, see what he’d discovered before it was too late. Maybe they could put a stop to this.

But how do you stop a Presidential election?

The phone rang a third time. Chan ignored it, shoved the folder deep into the suitcase, covered it with a sweatshirt and slammed the lid closed. Yanking the suitcase off the bed, he rushed to the front door.

At the doorway, he paused, for just a second, turning to take one last glance at his apartment, his home for the last six years. The delicate Chinese watercolors, the bonsai he’d trimmed each morning, the wooden crucifix above his bed for his daily prayer. It all seemed like such a waste of time now. His plans to become a chief engineer, create his own start-up, propose to Elizabeth next Valentine’s Day were worthless. Vanished like rain drops that never reached the ground.

He swallowed hard and ran into the hall.

He didn’t get more than two steps before the first shot rocked him. The force of the gunfire lifted him off the ground and sent him hurling backwards through the open doorway. He collapsed onto his back, his vision dimming, descending into a miasma of swirling reds and greys. Pain, like fire, ripped across his belly. A metallic smell filled his nostrils followed by the coppery taste of his own blood.

Chan tried to swallow the blood bubbling into his mouth, but couldn’t. He became vaguely aware of the gaping hole that now occupied his lower abdomen. Warmth flooded down his flank, collecting at the small of his back. Pools of blood gathered on the white carpet. His eyes half-focused, Chan watched, as each crimson pool began to morph into vague shapes, like clouds taking patterns. In the blood, he saw the faces of his mother and his father, both dead for years. He saw the face of a long-lost uncle, and his childhood friend, Wong, who’d died in a car accident. He saw Elizabeth.

The pain sank deeper into his belly. He fought for breath. With the last of his strength, he craned his head towards the door where he could just make out the silhouette of a lone figure, a bald man, standing over him. He concentrated hard, trying to cement the image, and slowly, a vision came into form. His eyes locked on the muzzle of the silenced 40 caliber H&K pistol now aimed at his chest.

Chan sighed and allowed his head to fall back. Around him, the bloody pools gathered into new shapes, like the shadows of his youth, forming lions and dragons.

Despite himself, Chan smiled. He closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to seep into his veins, bringing with it a quiet peace, the realization that he wouldn’t have to run anymore.

The kuei-shen had arrived.

***

Excerpt from Deadly Vision by T.D. Severin. Copyright 2025 by T.D. Severin. Reproduced with permission from T.D. Severin. All rights reserved.