The Burning Girl (Haunted Collection Series)

Bright red flames emerge with the strike of a match, devouring everything in sight…Stefan Korzh’s desire to destroy the lives of everyone around him knows no bounds. Even as he’s hunted by enemies, Stefan shows no signs of slowing down. His deadly collection of antiques continues to spread and help his dreams become reality. Meanwhile, Victor Daniels and Tom Crane have managed to build some resemblance of an ordinary life. They remain more determined than ever in their fight against Stefan, and will stop at nothing to put an end to the horrors of the Korzh collection. But life tends to take nasty turns when ghosts are involved. Stefan’s latest threat is the fire-obsessed Molly, whose deadly ghost emerges from the pages of a novel. With the simple flick of a match, she satisfies her addiction for scorching buildings and burning flesh.Victor and Tom quickly find themselves in the middle of a bloody trail of chaos, chasing after an enemy that will test the limits of their strength.And they must hurry.Because it doesn’t take long before Molly craves her next fiery fix…

From the Inside Flap

Chapter 2: Inside and SafeJonathan closed the door and slid each lock into place. The bolts turned, and the tumblers clicked, and all was correct and proper with the door. He pulled the three packages closer, clutching them protectively to his thin chest. With his newest arrivals safe, he crawled along the narrow passage that led from the front door to the dining room. Towers of magazines and newspapers, each carefully held into place by webs of rough garden twine, met in haphazard arcs above his head. Between the periodicals and dailies, he heard the mice scatter and squeak. Jonathan didn't care what they did so long as they kept to their side of the barrier. Few dared to trespass his passages. Those that did remained on the floor, their broken and desiccated bodies serving as grim signposts to their rodent brethren. Jonathan paused at one point to squeeze past a pile of old index cards several feet thick. He hadn't been able to walk upright in his house in over ten years, and moving through it required patience and dexterity. Jonathan could crawl on his hands and knees, for most distances, although there were places where he was required to wiggle along with the grace of a snake, and the sense of comfort it provided, soothed him. With a sigh of pleasure, he slipped past the index cards and came to the entrance of the dining room. He hesitated and listened for the telltale whisper of an intruder. Once, in 1997, he had caught a man in the kitchen, and ever since then, he paused before he entered any room. Reasonably certain the living room was safe, Jonathan pushed aside the old packing crate that served as a door, and scrambled into the room. He turned on the single electric light and winced at the pain that flared up in his eyes. After his sight returned, Jonathan dragged himself to the hearth. With careful motions, he used a long thumbnail to slice open the first of the three packages. From the brown packaging, he removed a paperback copy of Tolkien's, The Hobbit. Jonathan turned the book over, inspecting the cover and the pages completely before nodding and setting it down beside him. The packaging material, he folded neatly and placed on his left. He repeated the process with the second and third books. They were both copies of The Hobbit as well. Jonathan smiled. Three hundred and sixty-five of them, he thought. One for each day of the year. He placed them on the last stack closest to the nearly obscured closet door and brought the wrapping to the hearth. In silence, Jonathan unfolded and refolded the papers three times each. With the ritual done, he left the living room and crawled towards the kitchen. His stomach had begun to rumble, and he knew it only did that when it was 3:57 PM. He had trained it to do that, just as he had trained the mice to stay on their side of the barriers. Jonathan reached the threshold between the hallway and the kitchen, and as he pushed aside the burlap sack that had contained potatoes when Carter had still been president, the floor transitioned from wood to linoleum. As always, his nose wrinkled at the strong, pervasive scent of cinnamon in the room, but there was little he could do about that. The corpse had taken on that smell sometime after the start of the new millennium. Jonathan gave the shrunken hand of the would-be thief a comforting pat and crawled past the man. The body sat exactly as it had for twenty-one years, head back and mouth open in surprise. The icepick Jonathan had used to kill the man still protruded from the base of the thief's skull. It hadn't seemed right to take it out. Jonathan had decided the man was happy with it in there.

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