PROLOGUE

Fear was a foreign thing to Hoby.

He’d been big his whole life, taller and more built than most other people he knew. There was never any reason for him to be afraid of anything.

So why now?

It was nearing midnight, and Hoby strode through the dark halls of the old mansion, doing his final round before he could retire for the evening.

The job that Hoby had been hired for was the same as all his previous jobs. He was needed for only one thing—his size, strength, and protection.

The old man who owned the mansion—Hoby’s employer—was paying Hoby handsomely to be a private bodyguard, while also adhering to a few odd requests.

The first was that Hoby had to live inside the mansion.

Second, the lights were to be kept off inside, even at night, forcing Hoby to use a head torch just to see where he was going.

But more important than anything else, the employer was not to be disturbed when he was inside his study.

The evening patrol was all that Hoby’s employer required before Hoby could take the rest of the night off. Normally, that would be easy work, but making the rounds of the run-down mansion always made Hoby feel uneasy.

He didn’t like the way his heavy footsteps echoed off the grey, empty walls, which made it sound like he was always being followed.

There were random spots in certain rooms that were colder than others for no reason that Hoby could discern.

Even more disconcerting were the times Hoby swore he’d heard voices. He would spring into action and follow the sound to its source, only to find no one. Those instances made him wonder if his imagination was getting the better of him.

In those moments, Hoby would stiffen up and remind himself that he was strong and powerful.

As Hoby treaded through the quiet halls, he couldn’t help but wonder why his employer felt he needed protection in the first place.

The house was empty, mostly devoid of furniture and appliances. Even if someone were to break in, there was nothing of value to steal. That, and the old man was loved around town, so it was hard to imagine that he had a single enemy.

But that night, when Hoby approached the old man’s study, he found the door slightly ajar, which was unusual. He paused, feeling his curiosity bubble up. His employer had made it clear that he was to never be disturbed while he was inside his study.

Hoby decided he would not be doing his due diligence if he didn’t at least check to make sure his employer was all right in there. Deep down, though, he knew he was more interested in finding out what the old man was hiding.

He crept toward the open door, switching off his head torch so as not to be noticed. The study was illuminated only by the light of the fire that the old man kept roaring in the hearth every night.

Hoby peeked into the room. The old man was bowing on his knees in front of the fire, speaking in tongues as he prayed to the flames.

Hoby listened for a long time, but none of the words were intelligible to his ear.

I’ll leave him be, Hoby thought.

Hoby turned and stepped quietly away from the open door, but then he heard the old man finally say something that he could understand.

“The time has come.”

When Hoby looked back into the study, the old man was still on his knees, but now his back was straight as he gazed into the fire.

“We have been waiting a long time for this,” the old man said. “It is clear that you have ordained this moment. I will carry this out for you. I will serve you.”

The fire swelled in the hearth, bursting and expanding as if someone had thrown gas on the flames.

Hoby leapt back from the door, startled from what he’d seen. The old man had not moved a muscle, unafraid of the sudden burst of fire.

It was like the fire had responded to the old man’s promise to serve.

Hoby had seen enough. If he wanted to stay sane in the job, it was best to ignore what the old man did in the privacy of his own study.

Hoby tore himself away from the unusual sight and continued his patrol within the dark corridors of the mansion.

Still, the horrible tension within him remained—his body’s way of telling him that something was very wrong.

1.

“Any questions so far?”

Randolph Casey scanned the sparse collection of students. A quick head count gave him twenty-two, which was a decent turnout. The classroom they’d assigned him was still too big, which highlighted that his class was severely under attended.

“Good,” he said, turning his remote to the screen and clicking the button. The slide changed to display a single word in a large font.

MIMICRY.

“Today, we’ll talk about mimicry. Does anyone know what that means?”

The students stared at him, a few of them nodding.

“To pretend to be something,” said Stacy Thompson. She was his constant front row fan. Rand knew she was gunning for a 4.0, and that was why she worked so diligently in his class, not necessarily because she was interested in the subject material. Not that she had to work hard. His tests were the easiest in the entire Religious Studies department.

“Exactly. Its meaning in context to what we’re learning today, though, is that mimicry is a common weapon of evil spirits. They use it to gain our trust, confuse and frighten us, and even impersonate.”

Rand clicked the remote again and changed the slide.

THE CANTON FAMILY

“I think it was…” Rand looked at the ceiling as he tried to calculate the time in his head, “… maybe four years ago? Yeah, four years ago I met the Cantons. They were a family of five, with three daughters. The mother came to me because they were experiencing strange occurrences in their house. It all began with the youngest child—as it always does.” He clicked the remote and Laura’s name appeared on the slide. “She was five years old, and at least once a week she would tell her mom she’d seen one of her sisters somewhere in the house when they were really at school. Maybe in the bathroom putting on makeup, or in the bedroom flipping through clothes in the closet. She claimed she’d even spoken to them, and they’d answered her back. But her mother, Frances Canton, told her it was not possible, because the girls were at school, or out visiting a friend. When Frances checked the bedroom or bathroom, there would be nobody there. At first Frances thought her daughter was just confused, or imagining things because she missed her sisters, but then the situation got weird.”

Stacy Thompson shifted in her seat. A few of the other students exchanged nervous glances. Rand’s past stories often frightened his class. There were, of course, the token skeptics who leaned back in their chairs, amused grins on their faces, waiting to hear whatever nonsense he came up with next.

“The middle child, Ashley, was thirteen at the time, and told her parents one day that she had spotted her mother in the garden. When Frances came back an hour later with shopping bags, Ashley was confused. Frances told her daughter that she had been at the mall, and had not been in the garden all day. Ashley burst into hysterics and swore what she saw was real.

“This all came to a head when Frances became the target. She was a stay-at-home mom, and would spend a lot of time alone in the house. Several times, she heard her husband saying her name, or her daughter Laura calling out for her in the back of the house, or one of the bedrooms, clear as could be. It was unmistakably their voice. She would rush to the room, wondering what they were doing home—especially since she herself had dropped her daughters off at school, or watched her husband drive away to work. She would find no one in the house.”

Stacy Thompson cringed, as if watching an unnerving scene in a horror movie.

“That was when she came to me. Sure enough, my team and I sensed a presence in her home, and we were able to remove it before too much damage was done. Usually, people let this supernatural activity go on for too long because they don’t believe in it, and then it gets too strong. But Frances was a believer, and luckily she got in touch with me in time.”

Stacy Thompson raised her hand and didn’t wait to be called on before she said, “What’s the point of the spirit mimicking people?”

“To cause confusion and to frighten. Put yourself and your family in the Cantons’ shoes. If this kind of activity went on for a long time, you’d think you were crazy, right?” Rand let the question linger and got a few nods in return. “Imagine the arguments it could cause. Your brother or sister insisting you were home, yet you weren’t. Or spotting your father in the garage when he was supposed to be out of town. You see someone you know appear in places that don’t logically make any sense.”

“And it’s a spirit pretending to be these people?” Stacy asked.

“Precisely. It causes division in the family by making them argue and doubt each other. Then it’s easier for the spirit to take over and destroy them.”

Stacy shivered. His skeptics in the back row didn’t seem impressed, and likely thought there was no such thing as the Canton family.

But Rand remembered them well. Laura, the youngest, had drawn him a picture after he cleansed their home, and he still kept it in a frame in his home office. That particular spirit had put up a tough fight.

Rand clicked his remote again to move to the next slide.

MIMICRY TO GAIN TRUST

“Not all demons mimic people to scare and divide. There’s another tactic I’ve encountered, where they’ll do it to gain your trust. In this instance, the demon will appear to someone and pretend to be a child or a teenager, and make up a tragic story about how they died. The person communicating with the spirit will often want to help the ‘lonely ghost’ or be his friend. At that point, the demon has gained trust. This happens when people play with spirit boards or do other kinds of séances or rituals to talk to spirits. How many of you in here have ever used a spirit board?” A few hands went up. The class knew well by then how their teacher felt about spirit boards. “I hope you cut that out. People go into it wanting to contact someone specific, like a relative that’s passed. What they get is something completely different. And you have no idea who it is you’re talking to on the other line.”

Rand changed the slide to move on, but Stacy Thompson’s hand went up again. “Wait. Do you have any stories of times you dealt with this?”

“Yes, of course,” Rand said. “Recently, actually. It was…” He trailed off, flipped the remote around in his palm as he fidgeted, lost his train of thought for a moment. “Um. Yeah, it was a sick teenage girl in the hospital. She saw the ghost of her friend who had died a few months before of the same condition.” He looked at the floor between Stacy’s feet as he spoke. “But that ghost was not who he said he was. He was impersonating her friend to gain her trust, and it worked. And by the time I was called in to remove it, things had escalated very far.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat that came from thinking about Georgia Collins and her case. He hadn’t talked to her in a while, but his daughter Libby followed her on social media, and reported she was doing well.

“But you removed it, right?” Stacy asked, eyebrows going up.

“Yes,” Rand said.

And when he looked up, someone else had joined his class, sitting in the chair in the top-most corner of the stadium.

Shindael.

The demon’s frame was thin with light blue skin that made him look frozen. His face was smooth, featureless, without a nose and ears, except for small, pure-black eyes.

Rand stared at him for a long time, his mouth going dry and his skin turning to ice.

Stacy Thompson even followed his gaze, but was confused. She saw no one there.

Rand clenched his eyes closed for a few seconds and opened them again.

Shindael was gone.

“Mr. Casey?” Stacy asked.

Rand snapped back to reality. “I think that’ll be all for today. You can go.”

No one moved. They all stared at him blankly, some of them exchanging nervous glances between each other.

“Go on!” Rand said, louder and snappier than he’d meant to. All his students jumped into motion at once, closing their notebooks, picking up their bags, and streaming out the door.

Rand leaned on the podium, and the remote dropped from his loose grip. A sudden fatigue had taken over him, leaving him winded and weak, as if he’d run a mile with the flu.

That was typical when in close proximity to Shindael. The demon had appeared to Rand many times in the last several weeks. He knew Shindael was making good on his promise to torment him.

Stacy Thompson stayed behind after everyone else left, concern on her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Although he knew he didn’t sound convincing at all.

“It’s just… this is the third time you’ve canceled class in three weeks.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’re normal at the beginning, then you start to look pale and sick. Then you kick us out.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Rand said. “Just a bit under the weather.”

“For three weeks?”

Rand closed his laptop and gathered his books and shoved them into his bag. He slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll be all right.”

“Just making sure,” Stacy said, like she saw right through him.

“I appreciate it,” Rand said, walking away from her and up the stairs of the stadium classroom. “Have a good weekend, Stacy.”

It wasn’t like him to turn his back and run out on a student—or anyone—but he had to get out of that room. It felt tainted by Shindael’s momentary presence, closing in on Rand, suffocating him.