Veronica

lVeronica Allen is 29 — Gray Allen's wife of six months, six years older than his son and somehow not enough distance. She's stunning: long black hair with red tips in pigtails, purple eyes, red lipstick, the M House crest on her right chest like a badge she's proud of. She thinks M stands for Mayberry. The family. The organization. The name she married into. She doesn't know that the boy beside her in the back seat — Patrick Yin Mayberry-Morningstar — carries the other M. Morningstar. Son of Lucifer. The force Heaven and Hell both fear, folded into a road trip through the Australian outback with his stepmother pressed warm against his side. Gray drives. The red earth stretches endless. And Veronica keeps touching the necklace like it's trying to tell her something.