The Candles Are Burning (Into Shadow, #6)

by Veronica G. Henry

Go back. His voice was a somber blues note in her head. I’ll be waiting.

“The candles are burning,” his associate began. “Ever burning. Some are just starting; others are nearing their end. I have come to gift you with news of another ending.”

Her muscles went taut with the realization that the music was in her head. It was a dirge, the song of a funeral march overlaid with a thousand wailing voices.

It was a prophecy. Maggie’s mother and her grandmothers had had the sight, but not like this. They hadn’t seen death. Someone was going to die.

Thousands of those wickedly prophetic flames crept in and out of the procession.

“She has the forbidden knowledge,” a voice hissed as soon as Jackson closed the door.

“Grief,” he said, moving behind his oversize desk. He needed solidity, the separation, now. “That and one too many sleepless nights. You heard her.”

was little more than a risky guess, but maybe, just maybe, she could use the sight, the sight of her mothers, to her advantage.

Maggie stood there in a stupor. The face that lay lifeless in that casket was her own.

“What he means to say is that death is not yours to see or foretell. I am the keeper of the candles.”

She came through on the other side in a cavernous underground chamber that went on as far as she could see. From the hard-packed earth beneath her feet to every outcropping scaling walls with no ceiling—candles. Poised in ornate candlesticks, candelabras, gilded jars. Every one different. A dizzying, infinite collective. All burning, all in various stages of melt. Maggie couldn’t make sense of it.

You’re a monster. And a cruel one at that.

Glory be, Maggie thought. He didn’t want them to leave, and not because of some duty. Reaper, Death—it was lonely, just like her.

“I see why Mr. Stone held you in such high regard. You are . . . extraordinary,”

“Pack up, baby. We’re going to New York.”