Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two by Deirdre Dore Page A

have dropped that ribbon walking home one day; there’s no reason to suspect that this is evidence of anything.”
    “Well, Tyler,” she replied patiently, “I know that and so does Tavey, but you know how we all get about Summer.”
    He knew. Boy, did he know.
    He sighed. “She won’t like it if I come out there, Raquel, and it doesn’t sound like it’s necessary.” He heard the sound of a powerful engine and figured she must be getting on her bike. It was a good day for it, sunny and warm.
    “It’s not,” Raquel agreed. “But on the chance that it’s something, I wanted you to know about it.”
    Tyler could think of only one reason why he in particular would need to know. “You think that if it does turn out to be something, she’ll go after Abraham again?”
    “It doesn’t take much. She’s already convinced because of that book. You’re lucky she hasn’t gone over there already.”
    Tyler mentally cursed. He knew why she hadn’t gone over there. He’d promised to talk to his uncle himself.
    “All right,” Tyler muttered. “Consider me warned. I’m headed over to my uncle’s place anyway. Let me know what you find out.”
    “You got it.”
    Tyler scowled. This was just perfect . . . now she would be even more determined to find evidence that his uncle was guilty. She was like a dog with a damn bone.
    He glanced at the file sitting on the front seat of his truck. He’d called his uncle to tell him he was stopping by, but the old man hadn’t answered. Nothing unusual about that—Abraham didn’t care much for phones—but Tyler itched to get over to the property nonetheless. He pressed his foot a little harder on the accelerator as he drove northwest out of town and into the foothills, hoping his gut was wrong.

    HE PULLED ONTO the winding dirt road that led up to his uncle’s property, glad he’d had the gravel repoured earlier in the spring. When the cabin came into sight, Tyler let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding; on some level he’d been expecting to see that nothing remained but charred rubble.
    He parked his truck on the side of the house, where he’d had additional gravel poured, and stepped out.
    “Uncle,” he shouted, “it’s Tyler.” Uncle Abraham liked plenty of warning.
    His uncle’s raspy voice scratched its way through an open window in the kitchen. “Get in here, son. These girls are drivin’ me crazy.”
    “What girls?” Tyler shouted back, hurrying around the house to the front door. The cabin had a big porch with a rocking chair and a hooked rug. Tyler snatched open the screen door and stepped inside.
    Something immediately struck Tyler as wrong, though he couldn’t put his finger on it at first. He made his way through his grandfather’s dimly lit living room, which was a tribute to the fashion of the late 1970s: gold velvet armchairs flanked by round piecrust tables and topped with enormous lamps dripping with tassels.
    Tyler followed the sound of female voices to the right through the living room and into the kitchen, where he stopped, astonished.
    “What the hell?”
    His uncle, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn out, sat hunched over a cup of coffee at the small round kitchen table he’d built himself.
    “They showed up this mornin’ and started cleanin’ the place.” The old man scowled into his coffee.
    Tyler blinked at the three identical teenagers cleaning his uncle’s kitchen. He recognized them—the Triplets, who had been kidnapped by the serial killer last year. They were the youngest members of Summer’s family, the witch family that lived on the land to the east of his uncle.
    One of them was wearing a kerchief and scrubbing his uncle’s ancient mustard-colored double oven while another swept and the third wiped down the small square window above the sink. The dingy white curtain that usually covered it had been taken down.
    Tyler realized that the strange something-out-of-place feeling he’d had earlier had