Chapter 1

Once upon a time there lived a girl, not a princess, but just as beautiful as one and just as radiant and carefree. As sometimes in fairytales princesses are, this girl was abducted and held captive by a bad man, an evil man, a man who wanted to possess her beauty even though it would mean her destruction. No prince came riding in on a white steed to save her from his clutches, no hero appeared to whisk her away to a better life. Her story had no happily ever after ending.

This beautiful girl grew into a woman who only wanted to die. Even after she was saved—not by a prince but by someone as broken as she—that’s all she craved. And strove for. And tried and failed and tried and finally succeeded.

Her life is no more. She is barely remembered. All talk of her is talk only of The Fairytale Killer.

She will never truly be saved.

She is not avenged.

The work is not finished.

- Handwritten note from The Fairytale Killer 

Chapter 2

Eva

The thick, icy cold and damp morning fog, so typical for this time of year, is laying low to the ground, in places obscuring everything except a few feet of the road in front of us. Mark and I are driving to the hotel where I’m giving my lecture on the Fairytale Killer for the first time in a long time. The radio’s off, we’re not speaking and the low-hanging fog is casting a hazy white half light over the world making everything look creepy yet gorgeously dreamy at the same time.

I understand why this time of year gave rise to the legend of Halloween, or All Hallows Eve, as it was originally called. According to legend, the veil between our world and the world of the dead is thinnest on this night, allowing the souls of the dead to walk among the living. The real world just doesn’t look as substantial in all this mist. Especially in this foggy Dolenjska region countryside, the river lands, with its low rolling hills and wide open plains, currently shrouded by mists. I can easily imagine a ghost or two floating out of them. Or the headless horseman to come charging at us.

When the organizers of this conference first approached me, I said no to giving the lecture. I’m ready to leave the Fairytale Killer—the serial killer who made my career as a true crime writer, who brought Mark and I together and broke us apart for a time too, and who still haunts my nightmares—behind me. After the Fairytale Killer was captured he gave me an exclusive interview, which I turned into a bestselling book and then spent four years giving lectures on the topic all over the world. I think that’s enough.

Plus, even though I’m only just over four months along in my pregnancy, my morning sickness has been getting worse, rather than better, and the nesting has already started kicking in. Mark’s caught that bug too, and we’ve been spending most of our free time getting the house ready for a baby that’s not due for another five months. The sea-themed wallpaper I ordered for the nursery arrived yesterday and I’d much rather be spending the weekend hanging it up than talking about death and cruelty.

But the organizers of this international conference, aimed primarily at professionals, but open to the public as well, begged and cajoled me to come for weeks, until I finally relented. The conference is being held at Otočec Castle, which was once a castle but is now a five-star hotel. It’d be great if Mark and I could share the suite they gave me for the weekend, but I’m pretty sure they only offered it as a way to keep me in the hotel for the duration of the three-day event to answer questions about the Fairytale Killer. Mark is the one who actually caught him, and talking about any of it is actually his worst nightmare, so I didn’t even suggest it.

Not that he’d say yes. The Europol task force he’s heading just started new case—that of a refugee, a blond Afghan woman, who was found in the Dragonja River three days ago. The local police think she simply drowned, but Mark and the task force team aren’t so sure.

He’s only been working on the case for one day, but he’s already consumed by it, and if his glazed over eyes that are kind of absorbing the fog we’re driving through are anything to go by, he’s thinking about it right now.

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The mystery and crime fiction books by LJ Bourne DO NOT feature any steamy scenes, but the stories usually have romantic elements in them.