The Stars Never Rise

“From a house a couple of blocks away. Here.” He climbed down and leaned in for a quick kiss with unfamiliar, full lips that were cold from the night air. “Go. I’ll catch up after I put him back to bed.”


“Thanks. And hurry!” I climbed onto the bike as Finn jogged back the way he’d come, and then I took off on my new wheels.

I flew down darkened streets and through deserted shortcuts, while in the distance, wailing sirens were punctuated by gunshots and shouts. As grateful as I was for the distraction, fear for the other members of Anathema lurked at the back of my mind, eclipsed only by the more immediate fear for my sister as I sped toward her.

The courthouse lawn and town square were abandoned, the building lit only by the normal floodlights, and as far as I could tell in the dark, all signs of the afternoon’s massacre had been cleaned up. No blood, no ashes, no bodies. I stopped beneath the awning of a storefront across the street, shrouded in shadows, studying the front of the courthouse, trying to decide where they would keep a teenage prisoner.

The police department was headquartered on the first floor—Finn had been there that afternoon—but I wasn’t sure which side of the building it was on. According to Adam’s dad, there were additional cells in the basement. I’d always dismissed that claim as paranoia and the product of an active imagination, but considering that the Church was being run by demons, paranoia suddenly seemed like a reasonable state of mind.

I was about to head for the rear of the courthouse when headlights appeared at the end of the street and a car rumbled to a stop in front of the broad steps. A police officer got out of the driver’s seat and opened the rear door for a passenger in pale blue fitted robes. Surprise quickened my pulse. Even from a distance, I recognized Anabelle’s profile and her pale curls.

What was she doing there? Was she possessed?

No. She couldn’t be. I’d known her all my life. I would have noticed a change if she’d been possessed, no matter how skilled an actor the demon was.

They had to know she was my friend. Surely they’d brought her in to help deal with Melanie, or maybe to offer insight about me. Or both.

Or maybe they’d lured her in under some pretense, because Anabelle was to be my next warning—the next friend they’d burn on national television if I didn’t turn myself in.

I watched until she and the cop disappeared into the building, and then I circled to the rear of the courthouse, sticking to the shadows, and parked my borrowed bike next to a large, rusted trash bin in the small, cracked parking lot. I’d quietly tried three of the four back exits—they were all locked—when the fourth opened and a police officer leaned out, lights from the parking lot glaring on his fitted navy cassock. He looked to his right, and I froze, certain that trying to open the locked doors had gotten me caught. Then he turned to the left and his eyes widened. “Nina!”

I couldn’t see his irises, shaded as they were by the brim of his hat, but the familiarity and relief in the cop’s voice told me his eyes were currently Finn-green.

He stepped onto the small concrete porch and wedged a thin pocket flashlight into place to hold the door open about an inch. “They’re on high alert inside, thanks to the run on the gate,” he whispered. “But almost none of those left in the courthouse are possessed. They’re mostly low-level cops and a few clerks, and that’s how I figured it out!”

“Figured what out?” I jogged up three short steps and suddenly we were face to face—my normal face to his newly dark, full features, yet another in an endless parade of faces that looked nothing like those that had come before, yet somehow looked exactly like Finn. Like the characteristics I was learning to identify with him specifically, regardless of the body he occupied.

“Only the consecrated Church members are possessed. The demons all wear embroidered robes!” He held out the plain navy sleeve of the cassock he wore, so I could see that it lacked the decorative thread pattern that a consecrated—high-ranking—Church member would have.

“Are you sure?” I ran my fingers over his unadorned sleeve as if touching it would confirm the humanity of the body beneath.

“I haven’t seen anything yet to contradict the theory. All the consecrated Church members I saw in there—including several in the jail itself, unfortunately—are possessed.”

Relief surged through me. That meant Anabelle was still human—for the next couple of days, at least. Which surely meant she didn’t know about the Church elders. If Anabelle knew she was surrounded by demons, it would have taken more than one cop to get her into the courthouse.