Black Candle

by H. P. Bayne

  Sully stared down into the child’s eyes, wide with unspoken meaning, with the message he’d never been able to impart.

  “Aiden?”

  So fixed was he on the small face that Sully temporarily forgot where he was. A question from Betty brought him back, had his gaze snapping from Aiden to his boss. “Did you say something, Sully?”

  Sully looked back down to his side. Aiden, whose little body had been pulled from the water sixteen years ago, was gone.

  There was no sign of him, nothing to tell Sully why he’d come here, what he needed.

  No proof he’d ever been here at all.

  “Sorry,” Sully said. “I thought I saw something.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Sully said.

  “That happen to you a lot?”

  Sully ran a hand along the bar’s smooth surface, wishing he had a stain of his own to focus on. Anything to distract him from her question, that sudden vision of Aiden, of the unseen world that constantly encroached on the life he’d struggled so hard to build for himself.

  He offered her as much truth as he could.

  “Yeah,” he said. “All the time.”

  Afterword

  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m working on additional books in the series, so stay tuned. Those of you on my mailing list will be the first to know when they’re ready. I’ll also provide some additional material to my subscribers you won’t find anywhere else.

  As an added note, I hate spam and won’t send it, either. And your privacy is important to me, so I won’t share your data.

  Thanks for reading!

  About the Author

  Fascinated by ghost stories and crime fiction, H.P. has been writing both for well over two decades, drawing on more than fifteen years in a career in a criminal justice setting. Raised on a farm on the Canadian Prairies, H.P. enjoys reading, portrait drawing, travel and spending time with family and friends.

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  For more information about The Sullivan Gray Series, visit hpbayne.com, or follow on social media by clicking the links below.

  Acknowledgments

  Cover art by Fiona Jayde Media

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  Photograph by innervision/depositphotos.com