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  Christopher waved a hand. “If you’re worried about your job—”

  “I’m worried about the girl, actually.”

  The archbishop blinked. “Why on earth for, John? Have you been paying attention at all?”

  “Have you?” John sat more upright in his seat, eyes focused and livid. “A woman I served has been killed and her house burned down… by your Reverend Inspector.” The title was still hard to say without cringing. “The Church is hunting a child. I’d like to know why I shouldn’t be concerned.”

  “The girl is hardly innocent,” the archbishop said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” John asked.

  “Well,” said Christopher leaning back into his chair. “She had more than once spoken of seeing demons—just like her mother, I might add—and has scared the living daylights out of her classmates. The Barkley girl was in tears after one incident. Her father would have lynched her himself had he known where to look.”

  “The only way that Donatella Barkley could produce tears is if she tore a dress. And even then, I’d question the authenticity.”

  “That may be,” Boroughs said. “But we have more than that account. There is also the issue of her friend, the Montegut girl.”

  “Melissa?”

  “Missing for over a week. Her father has been frantic. It’s bad enough that her mother is ill. There are a number of people who feel that the Skyla child might have had something to do with it. They were friends, you know.”

  At that, John laughed. “You can’t be serious, Chris. She’s eleven.”

  Christopher held his hands out submissively. “Look John, the citizens of this city are scared. They feel as though the Devil himself has been roosting under their noses for years. It’s very unsettling. I wouldn’t be surprised if Skyla turns up dead at their hands.”

  “That would certainly make your job easier,” John said.

  “It would, actually,” Christopher said. “Yours too. In fact, if you would try thinking about the big picture once in a while you might find yourself moving up for a change. I transferred you to this parish hoping you’d seize the opportunity.”

  “I’m not in this job to be popular,” John said, irritable.

  “Well, you aren’t going to grow your congregation by telling people what they don’t want to hear every day. I mean seriously, John. Forgiving demons? Blessing witches? You really think that those folks are going to try and forget about the poor Elleby woman? Her family has been writing my office daily demanding your resignation. They aren’t just going to let that go. You’ll be bleeding members for years.”

  “Let them go then.” John hadn’t meant to shout but it had slipped out anyway. “Let them go to the other parishes. I’d rather have members who are willing to listen.”

  “And I’d rather have members who aren’t sending me letters, demanding that you be hanged.”

  John blinked. The archbishop reached into a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. He tapped the stack on the surface of the desk dramatically. Boroughs pulled a letter from the top of the stack and read it aloud.

  “To the Archbishop Borrows—you know just once I wish they would learn to spell my name right.”

  “Maybe they should just write ‘Dear Christ.’”

  Christopher shot him a warning look. He continued reading.

  “I am writing you to inform you that your new Reverend Jonathan Thomas today invoked a community prayer for the Lynn woman. He asked that we pray for her soul and that the witch will find the Light of Christ! I watched as several members walked out of the church at this and a number of others began praying their own prayers. Prayers of protection from that devil woman! The late Reverend Mitchell never would have allowed this! How many more congregations will be panicked when the witch child turns up again? Will Father Thomas be praying for her soul as well, when she summons demons into the house of God to torment his followers? If you ask me, Father Thomas should be hung by his tassels and fed his own sermons...”

  “Well you get the idea,” the archbishop said, placing it at the bottom of the stack. “Should I go on?”

  “If you had told me in advance that I had so much fan mail, I would have brought a pen to autograph some of them.”

  Christopher produced a thick pen with a wood finish. It was the sort of pen that kings might use. He held it out to John, who let out a sardonic, “Ha.”

  “Look, John,” the archbishop said. “I know it goes against your instincts, but just for once, could you please just tell the people what they want to hear for a change?”

  John sulked. “I came in here ready to scold you. How did this conversation get turned around?”

  “It’s why I get paid the archbishop salary,” Christopher said. There was a pause and then he added. “You could do pretty well for yourself too, John, if you’d just stop pissing off The Church at every turn.”

  “You and I made our careers for very different reasons, Chris.”

  “I suppose,” the archbishop said. “But it all serves God’s plan.”

  “Somehow, I’m sure it does,” John said. “I’m still trying to figure out just exactly how.”

  Christopher leaned forward. “John, you have to trust me on this. The Reverend Inspector is doing what he’s doing with the best interest of The Church in mind. It’s important.”

  “You keep saying it’s important,” John said. “I can’t see it, Chris. Just give me one convincing reason why I should help persecute and capture an eleven year-old girl.”

  Christopher looked at him with an intensity John hadn’t seen since they were boys. Chris had been an impassioned preacher when they were younger. John felt a pang of sadness, seeing his friend sitting in a bureaucrat’s chair. The archbishop shifted in his seat and thought for a painfully long moment.

  “John, if this girl is anything like her mother, it could do serious damage to The Church.” His eyes looked haunted. “She could destroy it… and I don’t just mean the Vatican, John. I mean religion everywhere. She could conceivably unravel what The Church, Islam, the Summerites… hell, even the Hindus have spent millennia creating.”

  John laughed. “Okay, now who’s being dramatic?”

  Christopher kept that same steady gaze that made John feel like he was in more trouble than he knew. A sick, sinking feeling dropped his stomach into his bowels as if he were falling from the top of a bridge.

  “Chris,” he said laughing briefly, then realizing the seriousness of the situation, “that’s insane.”

  “Go ask the Reverend Inspector himself if you don’t believe me. Apparently he’s seen similar instances, but none as damaging as this Skyla girl could be.”

  “I’ve spoken to him,” John said. “I think he might even be coercing some of the younger members to do things they don’t seem entirely comfortable with. In fact, I have good reason to believe he may have murdered the girl’s mother. You can’t tell me The Church sanctions that.”

  “Really,” Christopher said.

  John produced the cigarette butts. They fell like dead insects out of his handkerchief. Christopher gave them a cursory glance.

  “Those could have come from anywhere.”

  “I found them at the house that the Reverend Inspector told me was destroyed. He said that the mother did it, but these were right next to tire tracks. Chris, why would he lie about that?”

  “This is all completely circumstantial and a little contrived,” Christopher said. “Look John, I understand you are under a great deal of stress, so I can see how the Reverend Inspector might look like an easy scapegoat for you—“

  “But you wouldn’t care even if I had better proof,” John said.

  The archbishop only frowned. “There’s a lot happening in the big picture that you don’t seem to want anything to do with,” he said.

  “Why?” John said. “How is she such a threat? Why can’t you tell me, Chris? And what is the Reverend Inspector’s connection to all this?”

  Christophe
r sighed. “Ask him yourself.”

  John leaned back in his chair. He had the feeling he was talking to a brick wall now. Chris was slipping away from him.

  “Fine,” he said, seething. “I’ll ask him.”

  “The Church needs you, John,” the archbishop said with a hint of formality. “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense right now, but trust me on this. Don’t take the situation lightly, no matter what.”

  It was the strict tone that told John the conversation was officially over. He stood up and Christopher smiled at him. The two men hugged and Father Thomas saw himself out. The door leading to the waiting room was a narrative of The Last Supper at the bottom, with the crucifixion at the center and the resurrection at the top. If you read it the other way, it was the story of two women who discover a homeless man in a tomb, then dried him out on a cross to heal his wounds only to have the man buy all their friends dinner without inviting them. Everything was context.

  So what am I missing, John asked himself as he stepped out into the evening air. What is so big that I can’t see it right under my nose?

  Chapter 12

  James took a slow, controlled breath and let it out silently as he squeezed the trigger. The rabbit flipped once in the air and was still. He stood and let the echo of a perfect gunshot ring in his ears. It felt damn good to be able to hunt again.

  It had been a while since he had been on an extended trip. It cleared his head. The grass, mountains and sunlight filled the center stage now, the demons banished to the shadowed corners of his mind. Sleep had been difficult since the girl left, her presence and the way he had turned her away heavy on his mind.

  But it’s more than that, isn’t it James? It’s more than just the way you kicked her out. It’s why you kicked her out that bothers you, intrusive thoughts chided him.

  He pulled a small switch on the side of the rifle and felt it collapse. Internal cogs spun and fell silent as the gun folded ticking back into itself. Placing the compressed rifle neatly into his backpack, James moved up to retrieve his game.

  The rabbit had been grazing almost at the edge of the drainage channel—one of many that ran from Bollingbrook’s sewers—and for a moment, James had worried that it might tumble in. Instead it had landed just at the perimeter of the grass, the earth dropping off sharply from where it lay. He bent over, picked it up, and stopped, his eyes drawn to something bobbing gently in the water.

  The girl was face down, wearing an azure dress. Long strands of dark hair, dirtied with twigs and leaves spread out in all directions forming a wild halo. The skin on the back of her neck and arms was a waxy sallow hue.

  His stomach flipped, a tremor running down his arm. Unable to grasp the rabbit anymore, he collapsed onto the grass and took deep breaths. As if crowding through a door, the voices returned.

  She’ll be fine, you said. She’ll find her way to Bollingbrook or Lassimir or wherever. Just as long as she’s not here. Let the fates have at her. Just like with Anne—

  He shook the thought from his head. Maybe it wasn’t her.

  A high weak laugh escaped from James’s lips. This is why we stay in the cabin, he thought. This is why we only leave when necessary. Because if we don’t stay in the cabin—

  The body had snagged on a branch in stagnate water, otherwise it might have drifted all the way to the ocean. The cliff face was too steep and slippery for a cougar or pair of coyotes to have carried it off easily. That hadn’t stopped them from picking at the body here and there.

  Her rucksack was gone and she wasn’t wearing those goggles. It might have been a different girl, but what were the odds of that? Bandits could have taken her gear. Even James had thought about keeping some of those items for himself. He winced inwardly thinking about that now.

  He inhaled, opened his satchel, and pulled out a length of rope. He worked mechanically, fashioning a crude lasso, then lobbed the noose-end of the rope down into the black water. It fell wide and he reeled it in, trying to catch on an arm or a leg.

  So much water, he thought. A grown man could get carried a long ways, struggling for a handhold, pulled under little by little, until he just never came up again at all.

  The noose drifted until he managed to navigate it around a bloated pale arm. He tried not to notice when the rubbery skin dipped beneath the surface of the water, the way a bobber dips below the surface as it’s tugged by a fish. He pulled the rope taught in increments, letting the loose knot at the end do its work. Gradually, the noose tightened over the cloth of the school uniform, just below the shoulder. James tested the hold with a couple of quick tugs before pulling steadily hand over hand.

  Just one look, he thought. I just need to know.

  The arm was stiff and looked as though it would flip the entire body over for him to see the face from a distance. But after reaching a forty-five degree angle, the body began to twist in the water. It spun lazily, still face down, the rigid arm pointing at him accusingly. James sighed.

  He pulled with great care, as if he might hurt her, the tiny body made heavier from the water it carried—

  She scraped up the granite ledge, leaving a wet, dark, slug-like trail behind. James barely noticed the worms, crayfish, and other fauna scurrying for cover, their home torn away. The sound of wet cloth on rock, rhythmic in his ears, reminded him of a washboard.

  Images of the living girl flooded his mind now as the corpse drew within his reach, the guilt closing over his heart like a black cloth. He grabbed an edge of the girl’s dress and pulled her the rest of the way up the slope. The body landed with a gentle thud. She was face down still, wet hair matted around her head, no longer the brown halo he had seen in the clouded water. Now it was a death shroud.

  And this is what happens when we turn away little girls in need, said the voice in his mind. This is what you get. Now look at her. You owe her that much.

  Eyes closed, he leaned over the body and gripped the sleeve, the wet fabric squishing between fingers. For a moment, James saw himself slipping over the cliff, the dead girl’s body tumbling with him in a lover’s suicide.

  James pulled. The wet cloth stretched, but did not tear. He took a step until the body reached its tipping point then flopped onto the soft earth. The ecosystem that had developed over the course of time had rendered the face beyond recognition.

  Why hadn’t I considered that before? he chided himself silently.

  Long water-straightened hair painted oily brushstrokes across the face, obscuring its details. Behind the hair was a face that still left questions.

  Had she used that face to plead for mercy? To beg?

  The clothing was torn, black at the edges. Burned. Parts of one hand were crushed, fingernails removed, leaving a pink and white crescent. A blackened hole in one side of the torso exposed a hint of—was that rib?

  Coyotes don’t do this. Even bandits wouldn’t abuse a body this badly.

  Something deep inside the cavity moved, and the analytic part of his brain ran screaming into the forest. James recoiled and scrambled away from the body on all fours. He had killed and skinned deer, bobcats, and wolves, but none of them had a name. None of them had smiled and spoken to him. None of them was a little girl that reminded him of his sister.

  A new scenario began to settle into his mind, almost more horrible than the reality before him. It was the image of men with guns and dogs, emerging to see him sitting beside a dead girl with a folding rifle in his backpack.

  A slow creeping panic rose in his mind, voices arguing.

  You need to dump the body and run. You need to turn around and go back to the cabin. This is more than you bargained for.

  But what if it is her?

  So what if it is?

  I have to know, he thought. I have to know if it’s Skyla.

  Let’s just assume it’s not. Look at the hair. It couldn’t be her.

  Could it? And what if it’s not? It’s someone’s daughter or sister...

  That’s not our problem. Let’s go bac
k to the cabin, James, where it’s safe. Let’s assume it’s not Skyla, and this whole thing was just some silly misadventure.

  “No,” said James aloud. “Even if it isn’t Skyla, someone needs to know.”

  A lone man from the woods reporting a body wouldn’t last five minutes. People disappear in the cities. People go to prisons where they’re never seen again.

  “I could find a priest,” he said to himself, digging a hole. “I could report it anonymously. They’re bound by their vows.”

  He collected a stack of heavy stones and covered her. From inside his backpack, he removed a small canister. It contained coyote urine, which James poured around the perimeter of the grave.

  He sat back against the tree and looked at the rabbit he had killed, his appetite long gone. A cool breeze brushed against him and teased a leaf that had settled on the shallow grave nearby. He sat silently and looked at the distant, pinkish wall of Bollingbrook as it climbed into the air above the treetops and disappeared into the low clouds.

  Chapter 13

  Orrin sat on the rooftop, watching Skyla and Marley dance around the makeshift arena from a safe distance. Stumps and logs defined a loose boundary as Marley taunted her.

  “You can hit harder than that,” Marley said, grinning.

  They had only been at this for fifteen minutes and Skyla was already panting. Hitting the huge man was like punching a wall of frozen meat, making her knuckles sore and red. That was even if she did manage to connect a punch. He moved incredibly fast. She wore clothes that fit Marley’s recommendation for fighting: slim-fitting and pocketless, her hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “I’m just loosening you up,” she said. Already her brow felt sweaty.

  “I thought you said you fought bullies twice your size.”

  “Fought them, yes,” she said. Not that I actually won any of those fights.

  Skyla felt her skin prickle where Dona’s hands held her wrists, pinning her against the fence, the chill of dew running down her back. She saw the faces laughing at her, the pliers in Vicky’s hand.