Stephanie poured herself another glass of wine with unsteady hands. “Don’t these children have parents?” she asked Jill, trailing off into a vague wave. “I mean… Kim’s father said he’d call…”

  “I think you need some sleep, Stephanie,” Jill said gently. “I’ll manage the children.”

  “Don’t you… tell me…” Stephanie swayed, blinking at the room like it had tilted. “This wine you get is so good.”

  Jill despised her. Sek—the old housekeeper—had basically raised Kim. Annie had disposed of her somehow. Jill never asked how. The plan had been to step into that void, to become the steady hand Kim needed. But Kim despised her for it. Despised her for taking Sek’s place. Despised her for the anti-werewolf meds slipped into every meal. Despised her even after the lies about being here to help.

  Werewolves were impossible to lie to—not because of magic, but because they read body language and tone better than words. Sarah’s arrival hadn’t helped. That little psychopath had hated her from the first sniff. Macy was the only small inroad—chatty, honest, never guarded. No surprise the wolves liked her. Macy never lied. Never even kept a feeling to herself.

  Kim’s mother had never been much of a mother. Loosening her grip further kept her out of the picture. Jill had hoped the absence would create a void she could fill. But a useless woman made twice as useless changed nothing.

  “Did your husband call today?” Jill asked as she guided Stephanie up the stairs.

  “I think… he texted.” Stephanie fumbled for her phone, then gave up.

  “That’s nice. Is he coming home soon?” Jill already knew the answer.

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  “Ummm… yeah…” Stephanie slurred. “Tomorrow or something.”

  Jill eased Stephanie onto the bed and pulled the covers up. For half a heartbeat she paused—watching the woman mumble incoherently, already half-gone. Then she straightened.

  In truth, Stephanie had disgusted her from the moment she’d heard about her. Drunk, disengaged, deranged. Married to a man who kept another wife and kids in another country—and she didn’t even know. Or didn’t care. As long as the wine flowed and the finer things stayed in reach.

  Jill was glad the wendigo had taken—and eaten—Kim’s father that weekend he was supposed to come home. Another vile man—too wrapped in his own selfish life to notice the wreckage he left in business or family. When he wasn’t cheating on his wife with his other wife, he was sleeping with any woman willing to get naked with a billionaire.

  No. She had done God’s work bringing Kim’s father down. God’s work speeding the destruction of Kim’s mother.

  God’s work.

  The words felt thinner every time she said them.

  It was all God’s work. She told herself again and again until the subtle doubts washed away—again.

  In a cave full of relics not far outside town, Annie stood staring into a fire. Jill’s image flickered in the flames. Annie whispered the same words back: “It’s all God’s work.”

  It hadn’t been hard at first to exploit the woman’s hunger for revenge. Keeping her committed—pushing her deeper into evil with every murder and betrayal—was getting harder. The woman was starting to waver.

  Annie whispered the mantra again, feeding it through the flames like a leash: “It’s all God’s work.”

  She would keep whispering until Jill believed it—or until the last flicker of conscience burned out.

  Annie was hardly the first Knight she had corrupted. She had been a Knight before Inanna. She had turned almost the entire Order before her husband and his dog Daniel ever hunted her down.

  “A wife’s work is never truly done,” she murmured, opening the locket around her neck.

  The photo inside showed her and Thomas—so young, so sure they could save the world together. Before the cancer took hold. Before she begged Mary to turn her. Before Mary refused and left her to die—before Inanna.

  Annie closed the locket with a soft click. The flame flickered across the gold one last time.