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At least Ted hadn’t heard them. He was down watching the Bad Man, for what little good it did him.

And they said the dead were frightening. The Bad Man was far more terrifying a creature than Brenda and Ted had ever been, despite Rachel-Ann’s silly panic every time she spied them.

He’d been so young, so handsome, so charming, and the group of gypsylike young people who sprawled all over La Casa adored him. Brenda had seen that kind of charisma in the past. She was too young to remember Valentino, but she’d worked with others who’d had it in spades. If the Bad Man had decided to use his acting talent he could have reached the top.

There was no question that he could act. They watched him manipulate his followers, lie and bewitch and trick them, all without them guessing what lay behind his charming façade.

Of course they were doing all sorts of drugs, which could have accounted for their absurd gullibility. They treated the Bad Man like he was the voice of God.

But they hadn’t known what he could do. Most of those poor, credulous fools hadn’t watched him, as Ted and Brenda had. They never questioned what happened to the young man who’d played guitar and sung like an angel and used a hypodermic needle to inject drugs into his arms. And no one knew about the red-haired girl who’d come back to meet the Bad Man down by the pool house. The woman he’d drowned in that pool, while her desperate hands scratched at his face and arms. The baby he’d been ready to throw in after her mother without even thinking.

It made no difference that after a long, horrifying moment he’d stepped back from the edge of the pool, the baby still in his arms. Brenda had hidden her face against Ted’s chest, trembling in horror at their helplessness. The woman was already dead, floating facedown in the pool, and there had been nothing they could do but watch. The baby was safe, but for how long? Maybe he just had a different plan to dispose of it.

It was the last time they’d seen him, thank God. While the baby had screamed blue murder he’d taken the woman’s body out of the pool and dumped it in the trunk of his car. She and Ted had stood there, frozen and helpless, until she’d finally pushed away from him. “I can’t stand it,” she said and circled the pool to kneel by the tiny bundle lying on the ground screaming.

She already knew that no one could see her, no one could hear her. But she reached out and touched the furious, red face of the infant, stroking it gently, and to her amazement the screams began to quiet to dull sobs.

“Poor little one,” Brenda had crooned, feeling her heart break. She’d never had children—the studio had forbidden her to get pregnant during her two short-lived marriages—but looking at the poor little bundle of humanity made her want to take it in her arms and hold it tight against her body, soothing it.

But she couldn’t. There was no body warmth to calm the child, no voice to hear, nothing she could do.

The sobs shuddered to a stop, and the baby looked up at her, focusing intently on eyes she couldn’t see. “Poor baby,” she’d whispered, stroking its face, down the tiny, flailing arm to the baby’s dimpled hand.

And to Brenda’s astonishment, the baby’s fingers curled around hers, holding tight.

The man had pushed right through her when he came back, and the baby started to scream once more. Brenda had beaten on his back, yelling at him, but he hadn’t noticed. She might have been a fly, batting at his head. He walked away, with the crying baby in his arms, and she’d tried to follow, but once the car left the grounds she was trapped, bound to this place. All she could do was weep in Ted’s gentle arms.

The Bad Man had never returned to La Casa de Sombras, a small consolation. It wasn’t until the old lady came and took over, years later, bringing the girls and the brother, that Brenda and Ted began to feel cheerful again.

If there was punishment for their sins, that had been a major one, and it still haunted her. Bad enough that they were trapped on earth for their crime.