The ghost was free of her and she was free of him.

  “Arthur Hill died crying like a baby,” Quinn said.

  The disappeared behind her gasped.

  “His last act was to whine about how his fan club didn’t recognize him,” Quinn continued. They needed to hear this and she needed to say it. “I was there with his son. We saw it all. I think he pissed himself as he died. We were both laughing. So. Hard.”

  “I think it’s time for that gag now,” the priest, Alton, said from behind his mask.

  The pressure on her left wrist eased as the boy there was handed a handkerchief and a length of torn cheesecloth.

  Quinn didn’t bite or resist, just opened her mouth. No reason to have him force the gag in and end up suffocating her.

  “Put her with the others,” Jason Alton said, yelling to be heard through the dead face of Arthur Hill. He turned to Dozer. “Brother Dunne, prepare the kindling. We begin the ceremony at dawn.”

  Twenty-Four

  THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW KETTLE SPRINGS

  Tabitha gasped to see the Adversary up close.

  No.

  She reminded herself that the Adversary was just a person—and that her name was Quinn Maybrook.

  The boys in white shirts, the ones Tabitha had glimpsed but never known the names of, closed the cell door behind the girl. Vivian Murray had called them Colby and Taylor. They told Quinn Maybrook to step to the bars. One of them reached through and untied the fabric knot from the back of her head that held a twisted wad of handkerchief in place in her mouth. Quinn coughed out the wet handkerchief like a dead snake.

  The boys left, but not before one of them took a meaningful, longing look in Mrs. Murray’s direction.

  She didn’t meet his gaze.

  The first thing Quinn said, upon regaining her voice, was a long string of profanity—all directed at Mrs. Murray.

  “It’s nice to see you too, Quinn,” was all Vivian Murray said in response.

  Quinn rolled her eyes, opening and closing her fists.

  Tabitha decided that if Quinn lunged at Vivian, she would put herself in the middle. She would try to protect the woman who’d saved her life, even if Tabitha knew there was little she’d be able to do to stop the bigger girl.

  The four of them in the jail cell were all close, knees nearly touching. The cell had been built for one person for an overnight stay, back when the town hadn’t even had a sheriff, just a volunteer neighborhood watch that traded the keys to the community building as needed.

  Tabitha had her legs curled beneath her. She’d taken a seat on the floor, leaving the bench for Lizzie, since she was with child, and Vivian Murray. It would take effort if she needed to spring to her feet.

  “Yeah. I’m not going to attack her,” Quinn Maybrook finally said to Tabitha. “You can relax.”

  Was Tabitha’s body language that easily read? Or did the Adversary have knowledge, sight beyond sight?

  No. She had to actively stop herself from remembering the rumors and impossibilities she’d heard townspeople whisper about the Adversary.

  There was a God. And God was great. But God hadn’t chosen a teenage girl as his nemesis.

  The older girl’s arms were misshapen, swollen, and crisscrossed with lines from where Colby and Taylor had peeled away whatever she’d wrapped there.

  “You’re local,” Quinn Maybrook said, pointing at Tabitha, then moved her finger over to Lizzie. “And you’re not.”

  Tabitha nodded. Lizzie did, too.

  “Can—” Quinn Maybrook started to ask something, then shook her head. “Jesus, it sounds so stupid to put it like this, but can you two tell me what you’re in for?”

  Lizzie didn’t answer.

  Tabitha wanted to answer, but found herself . . . hating the girl? Which wasn’t right. A year ago, she could say, truly, that she’d never hated anyone. But that number had grown quickly once the floodgates were open.

  “May I ask you a favor first?” Tabitha said.

  Quinn Maybrook nodded.

  “Can you please not do that?”

  “What?”

  “The profanity is fine, but, please, don’t say the Lord’s name like that, like it’s just another curse word. He’s not a curse.”

  Quinn Maybrook looked around them at the cell, condensation weeping from the stone walls, and then to the bucket in the corner that Lizzie had already needed to use twice.

  “Sure . . . ,” Quinn said, all the smugness of the secular world in her voice.

  Yes. Tabitha hated the girl, the same way that Quinn Maybrook seemed to hate herself.

  Then Quinn Maybrook did something Tabitha wasn’t expecting. She coughed, changed her loose fists into open hands, and said: “I apologize. I meant no disrespect.”

  Tabitha accepted her apology and introduced herself.

  “Your parents brought you here?” Quinn asked.

  “I’ve lived here my whole life, even before . . .”

  Tabitha wasn’t quite sure how to explain, but Quinn made a face like she somehow understood.

  “That makes sense. There was a town here and then . . . cuckoos.”

  Tabitha knew enough to know what Quinn meant. She even knew the term, from one of her old books. Brood parasites. Birds that laid their eggs in the nests of others. She smiled, happy to understand.

  “One of the townspeople I met, they mentioned a child.” Quinn pointed at Tabitha. “How many other kids are here?”

  Tabitha didn’t like being called a child, but she understood.

  Lizzie made a noise, a whimper, crossed her hands over her stomach.

  “There’s fifteen. All of them younger than me. But I’m the only one from before, who was already living here. My family is all that’s left of the original town.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They’ll kill you,” Lizzie said, speaking before Tabitha could think of a satisfactory way to answer. “The children are killers. They killed my boyfrie—” The woman stopped, corrected herself. “Fiancé. They aren’t kids here. They’re monsters.”

  Quinn nodded again. There was not only intelligence behind Quinn’s eyes, but an efficiency, like she was working through a mental checklist. Tabitha watched as those eyes made a decision, Quinn moving the possible rescue of children off her checklist, no longer a priority.

  “And you,” Quinn said, turning to Vivian Murray. “You’re here because they loved you. But now you’re in here”—she indicated the jail cell—“because you didn’t love them back.”

  “More or less,” Vivian said with a shrug. Vivian’s makeup was streaked, but only on one side of her face where she’d been rubbing at it.

  “But how are you out of prison?”

  “They bailed me out. He must have more money than he lets on, I think.”

  “Alton?” Quinn said the Pastor’s name like a question, then when Vivian Murray didn’t immediately respond: “It’s him, under that mask?”

  “Yes.”

  Quinn stood from where she’d squatted against the bars.

  “Okay. We—I have until dawn. How do we get out of here?”

  The other occupants stared back at her, Tabitha included.

  Outside there was the fall of hammers and the shunk-shunk of saws. The Pastor wasn’t letting the townspeople rest, they were already preparing for . . . something else.

  Quinn looked to the door, then the window of their cell. She estimated about ten feet between the shelves on the far wall and the bars of the cell.

  “If we can fashion something with our clothes,” Quinn said, “maybe I can fish my backpack off that hook. There’s all kinds of stuff in there we can use.”

  “How are you going to do that? Are you, like, a master fisherman now?” Vivian said.

  “My aim was good enough for your husband,” Quinn said.

  And for a moment, it seemed like Tabitha might need to intervene.

  “The fishing thing’s not going to work, our clothes are cotton. Too soft.” Vivian pointed to herself, then Tabitha.

  “I have a belt,” Lizzie said. They all turned to her, saw that she was looking down at her waist, a slight bulge that was maybe there, maybe Tabitha was imagining because she knew the woman was expecting. “Oh. No, I don’t. I guess they took it.”

  Quinn gave a frustrated grunt.

  “Look. I’m just trying to be proactive here.”

  “Did you bring a phone?” Vivian Murray asked. “Does anyone know you’re here? Did you even think to call the cops before storming in? Because that would have been proactive.”

  “Look,” Quinn said, “I’m getting real tired of your attitude—”

  “I have a knife,” Vivian Murray said.

  It wasn’t a threat; it was an epiphany.

  Quinn put her hands back into fists.

  “What?”

  “They searched you coming in, but no one searched the rest of us.” Vivian Murray looked over to Tabitha.

  “Let’s see it.”

  The woman then worked the steak knife out from the waist of her dress. She held it in two hands so they all could see.

  Quinn moved to grab it, but Mrs. Murray pulled it back.

  “Don’t trust me?” Quinn asked.

  Vivian Murray considered this.

  “Do you trust me?” Mrs. Murray asked.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good, at least we’re being honest,” Vivian Murray said, and handed the blade over.

  They were all silent for a moment, Quinn looking at the blade, hope in the girl’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” Quinn said finally.

  “Do it for Janet,” Vivian Murray said.

  Quinn’s expression darkened.

  “I barely knew her,” Quinn said. “But I knew her long enough to say: Don’t you fucking use her name.”

  And Vivian Murray, who had seemed to come alive in these last few minutes, stopped talking for the rest of their time together in the cell.

  Twenty-Five

  THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW KETTLE SPRINGS

  The ceremony was about to begin.

  Dozer collected Quinn from the jail, saying nothing to the other women in the cell beyond telling them to step back against the wall. Dozer growled at Quinn that his name was Dunne when she called him Dozer, then he gave Quinn some instructions that boiled down to: Don’t ruin the show or I’ll lop off your head.

  Outside, there was a horse cart and a very skinny horse. The horse wore a white hood, and a pom-pom nose made of red yarn had been attached to his bridle. Dozer helped Quinn step up into the cart, one wagon wheel groaning like it was about to fall off.

  Loaded into the cart, Quinn turned back to the building and saw that the missionary boys were waiting on either side of the door. They didn’t look up at her as the cart began its procession, stepping away inside the jailhouse instead.

  Quinn thought of that one guy in Alabama, Johnny’s friend, his skull they scalped clean, and the man with the copier on his head, and she worried for her fellow prisoners.

  But she didn’t worry too much. She had her own problems.

  The town was still lit by braziers and torches, but there was a faint blue-orange glow over the buildings to the east.

  As she moved closer to the church, the attendees of the ceremony began to sing and cheer.

  There was no uniformity to the clown faces.

  They leered up at Quinn as she rolled by, each of the masks done in a different style, out of different construction materials. Only a few of the handmade masks included Frendo’s signature porkpie hat.

  The face of Frendo the Clown also peered down at her from above: large paper, wood, and canvas builds hoisted up on poles, some with straggly arms like Muppets and others with large, articulated mouths like Chinese lion dance costumes.

  The town square had been given a makeover in the few hours she’d been in the jail cell: the villagers had decided to throw Mardi Gras.

  Behind her in the cart, Gabriel Dozer grunted. He had the head of his ax down at his feet, handle held between his knees so he could keep his arms out for balance.

  It was pageantry, it was old-world charm, but—and Quinn was no historian—it all seemed wrong. None of the decorations held up to scrutiny. None looked like they were quite right, once you looked closely at the materials and spotted a cardboard toilet paper roll or a wax-coated Dixie cup.

  Even the number of townspeople watching the parade was bolstered by fakery. About half the gathered crowd was asleep on their feet. Quinn could tell from their sideways lean and the tilt of their heads. The rowdier townspeople were chanting “Ad-ver-sar-ee” and “Ab-so-lution” as she passed—while the strung-out men and women were no more alert or spry than they’d been when Quinn had crawled through a crowd of them earlier.

  Quinn didn’t know why she took comfort in that, but she did. There weren’t that many people out there who could put up a fight. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to escape from her perch, then personally deliver an ass beating to every single inhabitant of this town, but, hey, she could fantasize.

  So close, but so far: everyone missing from her list had gathered in one place. She could end it all right here, right now, finish up and go home, if they weren’t about to kill her.

  No, she had to be realistic, accept that there wouldn’t be beatings for all.

  But there still could be beatings for one or two of them.

  Or.

  She felt the knife against her. She’d tucked the blade into her jeans, handle covered with her shirt.

  It wasn’t a beating she had in mind.

  But it wasn’t much of a knife, either.

  So maybe she could get one of them, if she was lucky.

  The question was: Which one? She’d have preferred Alton, but was she ever going to be close enough? She should choose some alternate targets, in case she wasn’t.

  Dozer was right behind her, a foot or two away and unaware she was armed.

  Killing either of them would bring her total in the last few hours to two bodies.

  A slow day as far as these things, her biannual survival of mass murders, went. Quinn didn’t know how many people she’d killed, total. She didn’t know her lifetime score. How fucked up was that? Any time she tried to count, after she reached the fourth or fifth death, she would feel on the verge of a panic attack and need to stop.

  A rod-puppet clown waved out over the cart, colliding with her. A crepe-paper streamer tore free, sticking to the blood and grime on her face.

  “Back up!” Gabriel Dozer yelled, pointing at the man working the puppet. Dozer used two fingers, turning them back toward the eyeholes of his mask in an I’m watching you motion.

  Quinn wondered if Jacksaw Dozer had ever had a grander ring entrance than this during his wrestling days.

  She also wondered if he would care that his wife was dead.

  It was something she could use to throw him off guard. She could lean over to him and whisper: Cheryl’s dead.

  But that felt like a betrayal to the woman. Cheryl Dozer hadn’t done much wrong . . . well, except for flipping over their car and trying to kill them.

  The hoofbeats slowed, then stopped. The woman who’d been leading the horse stroked the animal’s neck, soothing him still, wagon wheels rocking into place.

  Quinn looked back toward the jailhouse.

  They were only a few dozen yards from where the ride had started.

  Quinn was disappointed that the girl, Tabitha, Lizzie, and Vivian Fucking Murray weren’t let out of their cell to attend this “ceremony.”

  They could have helped Quinn by causing a distraction.

  Or something.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Jason Alton’s voice boomed.

  It was close enough to dawn to begin, apparently.

  Alton stood on a raised wooden platform, the stage bare except for a sprinkling of broken glass at his feet. He’d undergone a costume change. His new outfit was a simple black tunic with a Roman collar.

  He’d ditched the mask.

  The man looked more like he had in the cardboard cutout, maybe a little thinner and less groomed.

  “We have had setbacks, tonight,” he said.

  And he wasn’t just projecting his voice, speaking from his diaphragm. He was wearing a wireless microphone and there were speakers, hidden somewhere in the town square, amplifying his voice out over the crowd.

  That felt like more than an anachronism. It felt like cheating.

  “We’ve had delays. I’ve been shot. But not injured, of course.”

  The crowd cheered, yelled words of praise and support and hallelujahs.

  Alton stuck out his finger, stopping them.

  “It’s not all cause for celebration. The sacred host was despoiled. His leg, his holy leg, has been torn off. It was only for a moment, and maybe it was because the Adversary had drawn so near, but tonight greed overtook your friends and neighbors.”

  The crowd booed, and when the sound had begun to fade out, one woman screamed, “Forgive me!”

  Quinn was slightly lost.

  Beside her on the cart, Dozer must have interpreted her confusion as impatience, because he’d raised his ax, got the head pointed in the right direction.

  “It’s been a long time, since you’ve seen me like this,” Alton said, hand waving over his face, free at last of Arthur Hill’s skin. A clean hand. A clean face. So somewhere in town there was a bar of soap.

  “Believe me, brothers and sisters, I do not say anything I’m about to say lightly. Arthur Hill has taught us all so much. And I do not give up the visage of that great man because I’m through learning. I do so because I believe the host should be whole—as whole as possible—because we are closing a chapter here. This blessed Sunday morning we are ending persecution that you all, every one of you, have faced down and survived.”

  Alton looked to Quinn for the first time, then beyond her to Dozer, giving the man a slight wave of his hand.

  “As prophesized, the Adversary has arrived. She’s found our sanctuary and she’s tried to kill me. Well, she failed, so what do you say to that?”