The Stars Never Rise

“All of this feels dangerous and creepy.”


“I know. But if it gets any worse, you can…take a swing.” He mimed swinging a baseball bat, and when my expression didn’t change, his grin faded. “Okay, look. It’s dinnertime and I’m starving, so I’m going to make some soup. If you’re hungry, or if you want to hear what I know about all this—and about your family—I’ll be over there.”

My chest ached at the thought of my sister, and the possibility of getting answers was more than I could resist. Still, I didn’t know him, and I had no evidence that anything he’d said so far was true. Though it all made a certain kind of strange sense.

When I didn’t respond, Finn turned and picked his way through scraps of paper, assorted packing materials, and machine parts toward what was obviously his base of operations. Whatever those operations were.

After a minute of watching him, trying to plan my next move, I scouted out the other exit he’d mentioned, then threw my satchel over one shoulder and squatted to pick up the wooden board. Then I followed him. I was armed—kind of—and had the nearest exit in full view, and I was wanted for matricide. What did I have to lose?





The closer I got to his makeshift campsite, the more of it came into focus in the near dark. He had a two-burner camp stove with a dented pot on each burner, and a small stockpile of canned goods lined against the wall behind it. Three regular bed pillows were arranged in an arc around the front of the stove, like cushions, and in the middle sat a battery-powered camping lantern. As I picked my way through the junk cluttering the warehouse floor, Finn turned on the lantern, which threw a soft circle of light over the immediate area and cast the rest of the warehouse in deep shadows.

Several blankets were folded next to the double row of cans, and when I sank onto the pillow across from his, he reached over and tossed me one.

“Thanks.” I sniffed, and when I smelled neither filth nor mold, I unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. “So, what? Home is anywhere you can safely warm up a can of soup?”

“In the traditional sense, yes. In the more esoteric sense?” He hesitated, then frowned. “Yes to that one too.”

I had no idea what he meant by the “esoteric” sense of home, and I decided not to ask. He didn’t seem violent now that his gun was safely stowed, and if he was crazy, I didn’t want to know that until I’d had both dinner and answers. Starting with the most important.

“What will they do with Melanie?”

“Your sister?” he asked, and I nodded. “They’ll charge her with fornication and unlicensed pregnancy. They’ll interrogate her for information about her baby’s father, and about you.”

“Interrogate.” The ache in my chest sharpened into a painful, piercing fear. “What does that mean, exactly?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure, since she’s pregnant. Normally, they’d starve her, or keep her awake for days on end, or drug her, or even beat her, but the baby makes her a wild card, so their move depends on their endgame.”

“What do you mean?”

“You told your whole neighborhood about the baby, so everyone knows that if they hurt your sister, they’ll be hurting the baby too, and the last thing they want is public sympathy for a pregnant underage outlaw.”

“So she’s safe for now?” Hope felt like a tiny flame warming me from the inside, beating back my chills just a little. Until he doused it with the cold, hard truth.

“None of us are safe, Nina. Least of all your sister. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and she’s the only bird they’ve got their hands on at the moment. But they’ll be looking to change that. They’ll be looking for you, obviously, and for me because—”

“You shot an exorcist.”

Finn looked up from the row of cans he’d been studying, and light from the lantern fell on half of his face. “Yeah. He wasn’t my first. But if it makes you feel any better, I only shoot in self-defense. Or friend-defense. And those weren’t real exorcists. They were just soldiers in black robes. Walking propaganda.” He picked up two cans, then twisted to show them to me. “Beef stew or spaghetti and meatballs?”

“Beef,” I said, and he set the other can back in line, its label facing forward like all the others’. “How do you know those weren’t real exorcists?”

“I know because you are an exorcist, and those ‘exorcists’?”—his voice practically dripped with derision as he settled onto his cushion again—“were terrified of you.”

You are an exorcist. That was the first time anyone had said it out loud. I hadn’t even dared to think it, but hearing him say it felt like…validation. Corroboration.

Confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. That I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

He shrugged. “Also, I know they were fakes because all the Church’s exorcists are fakes.”