One

The problem wasn't how often Cormac ended up in proximity to brutally murdered bodies. The problem was how often everyone else assumed he was the one responsible.

The guests who'd gathered at Wright House, a Victorian-era lodge in the mountains outside of Buena Vista, Colorado, were crammed in the kitchen, staring at the body of Monty Connor, which was lying face down on a steel prep table. Blood had dripped off the table and gathered in a wide, sticky pool on the floor. The blood was cool now, which meant the man had been dead for hours. That much blood, he'd probably been stabbed. They wouldn't know for sure without turning him over.

Beck Anderson, the house's owner, was a steel-haired woman in her sixties. She had been a friend of Cormac's father back in the day. Normally active and bustling, she was now frozen, with her arms around Frannie Ng, who had her face pressed to Beck's shoulder. Frannie, the young woman who was cooking for the guests, discovered the body when she came into the kitchen that morning to start coffee. Her scream had awakened the rest of the house and brought them stumbling in to see what was wrong: Cormac and Beck; Vane, just Vane, a professional psychic hired to assess whether the house was haunted; Lora Mirelli, the online personality Vane had brought to document his assessment; Monty Connor's wife June, hand over her mouth, pressed to the door frame after trying to stumble out the doorway and missing. And Glyn Farrow, another friend of Beck's, who was here because Cormac hadn't quite figured out why. He was near forty, British, neat in slacks and a pressed shirt—the only one of them not in pajamas and robes.

They were pressed to the edges of the room, in a half circle around the body. Cormac looked at each of them, noting whose eyes were wide and shocked and whose were more studious, curious. He and Glyn had somehow ended up on either end of the row, closest to the body. Both of them ready to step forward to touch it, to learn more about what had happened.

Amelia? Cormac asked the question at the back of his mind, to the not-quite-a-ghost who lived there. His constant companion, his trusted conscience. She was being unusually quiet.

I'm horrified. I... don't know what to think.

She retreated, full of anxiety that found its way into Cormac's nerves. He wanted to get out of here, to punch something.

"What do we do?" Beck asked in a thin, reedy voice. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Call the police, one should think," Glyn said.

"There's three feet of snow outside," Cormac said. "Police aren't coming." He glanced out the window over the kitchen sink. The blizzard that had made his drive up here last night harrowing was still on, thick snow pattering against the glass in the muted morning light. Nobody was going anywhere.

Likewise, no one could have arrived here in the middle of the night. Whoever killed Monty Connor was standing in this room.

"I'll call. I can at least call," Beck said, but didn't move. As if time had stuck, none of them moved.

"How did this happen?" Lora murmured. She was one of those twenty-somethings who'd managed to build a career off of Instagram and YouTube videos on paranormal topics. In flannel pajamas and an oversize sweater, she looked very different than her public persona, which involved lots of eye makeup, miniskirts, and black tights with spiderweb patterns.

"I'm guessing stab wound through the front of the ribs," Glyn said. "With that amount of blood, it had to be an artery pouring right out. We'll have to look to be sure, of course."

There was a big carving knife missing from the knife block on the back counter. The gap among the other polished brown handles was a glaring void.

"So where's the knife?" Cormac said, circling the table, careful to keep his socked feet out of the blood. He knelt, looking under the table, along the edges of the nearby cabinets. No knife. Monty's face was tilted to the right. He was a big man in his sixties, a musician and performer, an old-school cowboy poet in a snap-front plaid shirt, with a fringe of white hair brushing his neck, just like Buffalo Bill. His eyes were half open. He must have bled out in seconds.

"He could be lying on top of it," Glyn said. He glanced over at the knife block—he'd noticed it, too. "I rather think at this point the weapon itself is less important than the person who wielded it. As Mr. Bennett observed, there's enough snow outside that no one could have come up the mountain during the night."

"What are you saying?" Vane said, which was almost laughable for a psychic. Like Lora, his public persona—all black, showy jewelry and lots of glaring—was gone. He wore a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, and without eyeliner his face seemed plain and tired.

"It had to have been one of us," Cormac answered.

"Indeed," Glyn said, studying him with a calculating furrow to his brow. "Tell us, Mr. Bennett. What did you spend time in prison for?"

They all turned their gazes from the body to Cormac. The mysterious man who'd come in from the snow, who didn't say much, who didn't smile, who couldn't talk about his job. And who it turned out was a convicted felon.

He met Glyn's gaze and chuckled. "You know the answer to that or you wouldn't have asked."

Another long pause drew out, and Lora finally burst, "So what was it? What did you do?"

It had been self-defense. He had been protecting his friends. "Manslaughter," Cormac said. "At least, that's what they tell me."

They all looked again at the body and the awful pool of blood.

Yeah, today was going to go just great.