The Stars Never Rise

The crowd buzzed around us, and my name was on every tongue. People who’d never even said hi to me were suddenly experts on my early life, my school records, and my state of mind. They argued about how long I’d been possessed and whether or not my “deviant proclivities” had brought me to the attention of my demonic parasite or somehow made me more susceptible to possession. They mourned the loss of my mother, who should have been able to see what was going on in her own home but surely didn’t deserve the death she’d been dealt.

I bit my tongue and shuffled forward with Maddock while indignation raged inside me.

Through the crowd, I saw Wanted posters bearing my picture in the front windows of two more stores, and when we got close enough to see the courthouse, with its white pillars and modest rotunda, I found my face on the big screen towering over the town square.

The giant television monitor—the only technological upgrade New Temperance had approved in my lifetime—was used to air public assemblies and school ceremonies, and to broadcast the national news feed during any large-scale emergency.

Earthquakes. Tsunamis. And me.

Hurricane Nina. I was an unnatural disaster.

I barely recognized the town square. I could hardly even see it through the throng trampling the grass as people flocked toward the dais.

In the past twenty-four hours, while I’d hidden from the world and from the degenerates tuned in to my heartbeat, national public interest had turned New Temperance into a circus of stage lights, news cameras, and preening public officials wearing pressed cassocks and identical grave expressions. As Maddock and I entered the crowded courtyard, carried along by the relentless flow of pedestrian traffic, I suddenly understood how, during past public crises in other cities, the news had managed to capture every aspect of the unfolding drama as it happened.

There were cameras everywhere.

I counted three aimed at the dais alone and two slowly panning the crowd from courthouse balconies, providing broad shots from above to showcase the sheer size of the throng. Two more cameras were carried on the shoulders of big men following familiar news correspondents through the crowd. The journalists stopped every few feet to shove a microphone at someone, and I realized they were in search of local flavor—a ten-second news clip of a New Temperance native willing to comment on the spectacle, live from the scene.

On the huge screen overhead, broadcasting the national news feed, a small inset window showed the crowd as the cameras panned, while in the main window, Sister Florence Bennett, deacon of New Temperance, was being interviewed in her office by a national correspondent, looking polished and composed in her steel-gray cassock with elaborate green embroidery.

I couldn’t hear what the deacon was saying over the din of the crowd, but she looked poised and solemn, projecting the perfect combination of concern over the danger Anathema represented for New Temperance and steadfast confidence that we would be caught.

For a moment, as the balcony cameras panned the crowd, I panicked, sure one of them would catch me. Then I realized that no individual face would be recognizable among so many, all eager, as far as I could tell, to witness whatever spectacle Deacon Bennett had planned.

I prayed with all my heart that that spectacle wouldn’t involve my sister. We couldn’t rescue Melanie if she was on display in front of millions of at-home viewers, not to mention the live crowd.

Something touched my arm and I jumped, sure I’d been caught, until Maddock’s gaze met mine. “Over here,” he mouthed, and I followed him, elbowing my way through the crowd with my head down.

He found a spot for us near the courthouse wall, next to a giant speaker spewing the audio from the deacon’s interview. Because of the noise and the distance from the dais, the crowd was thinner there, and I felt like I could breathe for the first time since we’d passed the Grab-n-Go.

“Do you see the others?” Maddock shouted into my ear, competing with the audio from the news broadcast, and I shook my head, scanning the faces and clothes of those closest to us. But I couldn’t distinguish individual faces in the crowd. Fortunately, the same was evidently true for everyone else. No one was looking at us. No one even seemed to be looking for us. They didn’t expect us to show up where, in theory, we were mostly likely to get caught.

After the interviewer’s last question for Deacon Bennett, the giant speaker on my right played a three-beat chord and the image on the big screen changed. My breath caught in my throat when Dale’s face appeared, staring out at me from behind the counter of the Grab-n-Go. The reporter introduced him and asked him to share what he knew about the demon known as Nina Kane.

“You know, everyone acts so surprised, like she’s the last person they’d ever expect to host a demon, but that’s only ’cause they don’t know Nina like I do.”

I groaned, and Maddock glanced at me for a second, then turned back to the screen.

“I don’t know when she got possessed, but I can tell you right now she’s always been a thief. I caught her several times, here in the store, and she always tried to buy her way out of trouble, if you know what I mean. You know, with the only kind of payment a girl like that understands.”