The Stars Never Rise

Maddock swallowed a bite of bacon, then cleared his throat. “Finn got it from a dry cleaner this afternoon. He says that’s the only one that would fit.”


“That’s either truly brilliant or profoundly idiotic.” Reese would be more visible than ever as a cop—but people wouldn’t be looking at his face. They’d notice the authority his navy robes granted, then dismiss him without further thought.

Hopefully.

“Okay, this might work.” It had to. “But Reese and Devi probably shouldn’t be obviously together.”

“Agreed,” Maddock’s focus found them both. “Go separately, but stay in sight of each other and of the courthouse side entrance. Got it?”

“Sounds complicated, but I think I can manage.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Let’s get moving.” Devi grabbed the school uniform hanging from the bedroom doorknob and slammed the door behind her, leaving her dirty plate on the table.

“I don’t think she likes me.”

Grayson started stacking the used plates. “Devi doesn’t like anyone but Maddy. I don’t think she even likes herself most days.”

Well, at least that gave us something in common.





“You okay?” Maddock’s sneakers crunched on loose gravel as we crossed the apartment parking lot, headed for the center of town. I kept walking forward, even though every instinct I had was telling me to put as much distance as possible between me and whatever spectacle was about to unfold at the courthouse.

Reese and Devi had left separately ten minutes earlier so they could arrive alone from different directions.

Finn had gone even earlier than that, promising to meet us there with whatever information he managed to dig up.

“I’m…” I stared at the gray sky and hunched deeper into my borrowed coat. “Well, I’m alive, and right now that feels like a pretty big accomplishment.”

Twenty minutes earlier, the national news had showed footage of Church investigators crawling all over my house. I’d fought tears, watching them paw through my medicine cabinet, examine the sheets on my bed, and assess the modesty of the underwear in my top drawer, in search of proof that I was possessed or lecherous or just generally evil. They’d found the clothes I’d “stolen” from the Turners and the makeup Mellie and I purportedly wore. They’d also aired images of a closet full of “immodest” clothing I’d never seen in my life, which we were supposed to have worn in order to lure the devout youth of New Temperance into our demonic embrace.

They were even linking us to the death of April Walden, the dead girl from Solace, though they probably had no idea how close to the truth that particular lie was.

However, the rest of it was beyond ridiculous. But with the misleading facts, half-truths, and outright lies rearranged, compiled, edited, and commented on by newscasters—familiar faces lent authority by embroidered Church cassocks and their very presence on the air—even I had to concentrate to remember that none of it was real.

But the worst bit of all was the fifteen-second clip of my sister, tears staining her cheeks and standing in her eyes. “She was a demon,” Mellie had sobbed in front of the camera. “I didn’t want to believe it, but she was so fast and so strong, and she admitted it. She said she was going to sell me as a host—” The footage cut off so abruptly that anyone with half a brain could tell she’d had more to say, but only Anathema and I knew that Mellie wasn’t really talking about me—she was talking about our mother.

The news anchor was careful to remind the world that Melanie’s tears could merely be manipulation on the part of the demon possessing her—the Church hadn’t yet finished its examination of the younger Kane sister—but anyone who watched the overplayed clip with a slightly more critical eye would notice that the close camera focus seemed designed to hide her whereabouts as well as the circumstances of her incarceration.

I couldn’t even imagine what kind of incendiary revelation the Church had saved for the national press conference, or which of my friends and neighbors they would declare possessed and in league with me and the rest of Anathema.

“So, how did you meet Finn?” I asked as we turned the first corner, desperate to think about anything other than the disaster my life had become and the incredibly slim chance that we’d actually be able to snatch Melanie from Church custody.

“We grew up together.” Maddock stuffed his hands into the pockets of the navy slacks he’d borrowed from Angela Reddy’s daughter; hopefully no one would notice they were too short. “He’s just always been there.”

“How is that possible?” I couldn’t quite picture a toddler with an invisible playmate.