If he had turned from her or tried to stop her, she would finally know the evening by the lake all those years ago hadn’t darkened him forever or left its black mark on his soul. He didn’t. Though he was as somber as she was, they both moved with the same deliberate slowness that gave the universe time to show them a less macabre solution. To no avail. This was Scarlet Falls and solutions seldom if ever involved unicorns and cupcakes. He put the tools they would need in the trunk of his sports car. One long-handled shovel barely fit. Moonlight glinted off a newly purchased ax head before Creed closed the boot. For a second, she couldn’t think what the ax was for and then she realized a hundred year old coffin’s metal fittings might be fused shut. She pushed it from her mind. Since Creed drove, she carried the ragdoll. It was made somehow even more unsettling now that she knew why its hands and feet flopped with dead weight. Its button eyes gleamed in the dashboard lights. Trinity looked out the window.
