I almost stepped on her. There was something particularly disturbing about that. My hands shaking, I shoved the hair back from my face, tucked it behind my ears, and knelt next to her.

Maybe this one is different. A thin hope at best, but I clung to it, my fingers wrapping around the tiny wolf fetish that hung from a cord around my neck. The stone figure in my hand offered a small amount of reassurance, calmed me.

Maybe my first impression was wrong…maybe she was still alive. Maybe, unlike the first girl I’d found dead on my doorstep only weeks before, this one still lived.

I repeated the words in my mind: maybe she is different…

A prayer to Artemis leaving my lips, I reached out, ready to lay my fingers against her throat. As I did, I couldn’t help but take in her youth, her closed eyes. So innocent. So like Harmony.

My fingers curled back into my palm and my heart pounded; the words echoed through my head. Harmony. A flash of panic, then forced calm. It wasn’t Harmony. My daughter was asleep, safe inside. I stood anyway, started to turn back to the wide double door of the old school behind me-to check-but I stopped myself. My need to see her was just maternal instinct pushed into overdrive. I had to stay calm, controlled. I couldn’t leave this girl alone, not yet. I glanced back at her.

I took a deep breath and kneeled again, but even as I did, I knew I was lying to myself. There was no heart beating inside the body beside me.

Still, I pressed my fingers to the girl’s throat.

Her neck was stiff, hard to my touch. I ran my fingers down her arm, met with the same cold, unresponsive feel. She wasn’t alive, hadn’t been for hours.

A curse formed in the back of my head, but I tamped it down. Whoever, whatever this girl had been, she’d suffered enough indignities. I had no right to add to them. My duty now was to ease her passage, not soil it with my own anger, frustration, and fear.