I lowered my chin to my chest, reflected for a minute, and tried to slow my racing mind enough to draw on my past, my training. I didn’t practice the skills taught by my Amazon high priestess grandmother, but they were still a part of me, as impossible to deny as the horrible truth of this girl’s death.

Pretending the moisture threatening to escape the corners of my eyes didn’t exist, I took one more calming breath, then did the best I could to fold the girl’s stiff arms over her chest, touched my thumb against the bridge of her nose, and murmured another prayer. This one asking for free and peaceful passage of her spirit-that whatever took her life wouldn’t hold back her journey from this world to the next.

I tried to steel myself for what came next, but it was just as hard this time as last. The girl’s body sighed, not audibly, more of a feeling, a whisper of energy as her soul slipped from her form and wafted away, hopefully to join whatever loved ones had preceded her in death.

The ritual drained me, a piece of my own spirit leaving with hers, accompanying her. I’d recover, but not until her soul found peace. By performing the rites, I’d promised her that.

Normally, I would have been myself again in a matter of minutes, hours at the most, but I had yet to recover from the last one.

Which meant something was terribly wrong.

Like finding two dead girls on my doorstep wasn’t wrong enough.

I rested my weight back on my heels and stared down at her.

Just like the first one, she was young-under twenty. Older than Harmony, but not enough that I didn’t still fight the urge to go check on my sleeping child. I forced myself not to, though. Harmony was fine. No one had intruded our home. Only the yard…the steps. That was as far as my visitor had got.

After successfully reassuring myself, my attention went back to the girl.

Did the similarity between the two dead teens stop with their age? Only one way to know.