Amanda Stevens - The Sinner

I am a living ghost, a wanderer in search of my purpose and place...

I’m a cemetery restorer by trade, but my calling has evolved from that of ghost seer to death walker to detective of lost souls. I solve the riddles of the dead so the dead will leave me alone.

I’ve come to Seven Gates Cemetery nursing a broken heart, but peace is hard to come by...for the ghosts here and for me. When the body of a young woman is discovered in a caged grave, I know that I’ve been summoned for a reason. Only I can unmask her killer. I want to trust the detective assigned to the case for he is a ghost seer like me. But how can I put my faith in anyone when supernatural forces are manipulating my every thought? When reality is ever-changing? And when the one person I thought I could trust above all others has turned into a diabolical stranger?

Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN series by Amanda Stevens

“The beginning of Stevens’ GRAVEYARD QUEEN series left this reviewer breathless. The author smoothly establishes characters and forms the foundation of future storylines with an edgy and beautiful writing style. Her story is full of twists and turns, with delicious and surprising conclusions. Readers will want to force themselves to slow down and enjoy the book instead of speeding through to the end, and they’ll anxiously await the next installment of this deceptively gritty series.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Restorer

“The Restorer is by turns creepy and disturbing, mixed with mystery and a bit of romance. Amelia is a strong character who has led a hard and—of necessity—secret life. She is not close to many people, and her feelings for Devlin disturb her greatly. Although at times unnerving, The Restorer is well written and intriguing, and an excellent beginning to a new series.”

—Misti Pyles, Fort Worth Examiner

“I could rhapsodize for hours about how much I enjoyed

The Restorer. Amanda Stevens has woven a web of intricate plot lines that elicit many emotions from her readers. This is a scary, provocative, chilling and totally mesmerizing book. I never wanted it to end and I’m going to be on pins and needles until the next book in THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN series comes out.”

—Fresh Fiction

The Sinner

Amanda Stevens

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Extract

Copyright

One

The caged grave was an anomaly in Beaufort County. In all my cemetery travels, I’d come across only a handful of mortsafes, all of them in Europe. They were a Scottish invention, cleverly devised and manufactured in the early nineteenth century as a means of thwarting the nefarious grave robbers who dug up fresh human remains for profit.

But body snatching wasn’t a modern-day concern, and from what I could see through the tall grass, the cage didn’t appear that old. No more than two or three decades, if that. The heavy iron grates had rusted in the salt air, but the rods and plates were still intact and I could see the dull gleam of a steel padlock on the gate.

My pulse quickened as I made my way along the overgrown pathway. It wasn’t every day I stumbled across such a fascinating find. Although stumbled was perhaps a misnomer because I’d been drawn to that desolate spot for a reason. Lured from my work in Seven Gates Cemetery by a presence as yet unknown to me.

For the past several months, I’d been working in a small graveyard that was located near the ruins of an old church in Ascension, South Carolina. Until now, there had been nothing unusual about the restoration. I gathered trash, cleaned headstones and chopped away overgrowth until sunset, and then I went home to a cool shower, a solitary dinner and an early bedtime.

It had become a welcome routine. Even my nights had been uneventful and mostly dreamless. The dog days of summer left me so drained that I slept the sleep of the dead as the Lowcountry sweltered in the August heat. The small air conditioner in my rental provided only the barest relief and so I’d taken to sleeping in the hammock on the screened porch. There was something intrinsically soothing about the sea breezes that swept in from the islands and the songbirds that serenaded me from the orange grove.

Here in this coastal oasis, Charleston seemed a million miles away and so did John Devlin. I told myself that’s what I wanted. After the events that had unfolded over a year ago in Kroll Cemetery, the gulf between us had widened until I’d felt I had no choice but to give Devlin the space he seemed to need.

His leave from the Charleston Police Department had turned into a permanent resignation, and the last I’d heard he was working for his grandfather, a situation I couldn’t have imagined a year ago. A lot of things had happened that I could never have imagined, not the least of which were the changes I’d undergone. The one constant, however, was the ache in my heart. After all this time, Devlin’s absence from my life still pained me.

Which was why a challenging restoration in a new location was a welcome distraction. Seven Gates had come at just the right time after a long, lonely winter of hibernation. Spring had brought resolve and renewed commitment to my work, and the peace and quiet of the cemetery had restored my rocky equilibrium. But I should have known the calm wouldn’t last for long. It never did.

A shadow passed across the landscape and I glanced skyward where a buzzard floated in lazy circles over the treetops. The day was hot and still. The Spanish moss hung nearly motionless from the live oaks and the resurrection fern clinging to the bark had curled and browned in the heat.

As I stood watching the vulture, my heart started to pound even harder. Nothing stirred. Animal, ghost or otherwise. And yet I knew something—someone—was there, hidden among the shadows.

Why did you bring me here? I silently implored as I turned to scour the woods behind me. What do you want from me?

No answer. Nothing but the silken rustle of the palmettos.

The mortsafe was an intriguing find, but I didn’t think it the sole reason I’d been drawn to this place. Nor was the isolation of the interment. Quarantined graves were hardly unique, and in bygone days, any number of reasons—suicide, thievery or suspicion of witchcraft—could have kept the deceased from a consecrated burial in the churchyard. No, something more was at play here. A mystery that had yet to reveal itself.

A stray breeze ruffled the damp tendrils that had escaped from my ponytail, and despite the heat, I felt the dance of frosty fingers up and down my spine. Another vulture joined the first and I tracked them for a moment longer before dropping my gaze to comb the shadowy tree line. I could have sworn I heard chanting coming from somewhere deep in the woods. A distant singsong that dissolved into silence as the wind died away.