Page 46 of Devotion

“I swear, I don’t know what Sunshine sees in him. I guess he can read her to sleep. I wouldn’t stay awake past page one.” He cleared his throat and began reading from the book in his hands. “Ireland has a long and storied past,” he read, his voice deeper, clearly impersonating Caleb. “The lush green hills and rich landscape have afforded the people of the Emerald Isle?—”

“Guys!” I shouted, stopping Kingston as I picked up the false book. “Look at this.”

Kingston dropped the book and came to my side. “I’ve always wanted one of those,” he murmured.

“What’s inside?” Thorne asked.

I shook my head, picking up an item at random and looking it over. “Seems like mementos.”

“Tell me that bastard has a four-leaf clover.”

Carefully picking out the first item, I frowned at the whorl of hair tied with a black ribbon. “Hair? Whose hair would he want to keep?”

Kingston snatched it and sniffed the lock. “It’s not Sunday—or Eden. Which is a good fucking thing because we haven’t given her a first haircut, and if that bastard thinks he gets to cut her hair without me...”

“It smells like Caleb,” Thorne said.

“Why would he have his own hair?”

“Because he’s a creep,” Kingston answered nearlyinstantly. “What’s that?” He grabbed a folded-up piece of paper from the recess in the book.

“Holy shit,” Thorne breathed.

“Yeah. Caleb was a babe,” Kingston murmured.

“Kingston, this can’t have been long before he was turned. He looks exactly the same,” Thorne corrected.

“I don’t know. He looks different here.”

I glanced down at the paper, which I now realized was an old newspaper clipping from the year 1922.

Local Boy Returns to Warg Island to Serve as New Pastor.

Caleb’s portrait in black and white showed a man dressed in the traditional garb of a priest. Kingston was right. He looked different, even if this was the same year he was turned. I thought it was the hope shining in his eyes.

“Guys,” Thorne whispered, a different bit of paper clutched between his fingers.

No, not paper, I realized. It was a photograph.

I glanced over to see the image it had captured while Kingston all but climbed over my lap to do the same. Maybe it was because I’d seen so many pictures of Tor and myself growing up that I instantly recognized what I was seeing. Even if it was a grainy black-and-white photo, faded with age, the portrait couldn’t have been clearer. Two dark-haired boys with knobby knees and short pants, the same smile curling their lips, one’s arm thrown around the other’s shoulders. Twins.

“Why the fuck did he cross out that one’s eyes?” Kingston asked. “Only fucking serial killers do shit like this.”

I stared at the scratches in the picture, the deep lines forming an X on one little boy’s eyes, and couldn’t help but agree. There was something sinister about the markings.

Thorne reached into the box and pulled out one last thing. At first I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, just a long brownish strip of stiff fabric. But when he turned it over, a few patches of white remained.

“This is Caleb’s blood.”

“Is that his . . . collar?” I asked.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Kingston muttered as Thorne replaced the bloodied collar.

I shook my head, unable to answer the question but feeling like we were missing some vital piece of information. Caleb was not a sentimental man—or at least he hadn’t been before Sunday. This wasn’t like him at all.

A shadow darkened the open doorway, and Kingston dropped the lock of hair as he flinched.

Caleb’s voice had us all standing stock-still as it boomed through the bedroom. “Where is my fecking wife?”

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