The Winslow Incident

PART THREE


SOMETIMES THE PAST NEEDS A GOOD DIGGIN’ UP IF YOU AIM TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE NOWADAYS.

—Dinky Dowd





ONE O’CLOCK

NOW, NOW, EASY THERE

Aaron shrank back against the picture window of Matherston Miners Supply. He couldn’t feel the glass, or the frame, only the terror. Because they were everywhere.

Loud, rough men, the creases in their unshaven faces filled with grime. Crusty old boots pounded the wooden boardwalk, making the whole of Matherston shake.

Loud women, too, in tight dresses and bright makeup, laughing at the men, slapping away their hands, leading them into the Never Tell Brothel.

Shuddering, Aaron tried to close his eyes and cover his ears. Then he remembered Hazel telling him not to be scared, that they were friendly ghosts. That gave him the courage to move across the boardwalk onto the dirt road, not sensing his feet upon the ground, floating through the noise.

Searching for a friendly face, he looked up Prospectors Way toward the assay office where men whooped and kicked up their heels inside a cloud of silver dust billowing from the open doorway. Then he looked the opposite way, past the blacksmith’s shop that was on fire and the people watching just laughed and laughed, and on past Holloway Harness where horses were escaping one by one, clomping and neighing frightfully, trampling anyone in their path.

Aaron’s spirit sank: no friendly faces here.

He glanced at the second story of the Never Tell and wondered if Violet and Daisy Rhone were still up there. Suddenly he regretted leaving his friends. Daisy, especially, because she was so sick. What if the ghost ladies found them hiding in the room upstairs? Would they be in trouble?

As Aaron continued to look up, the sky shifted from bright blue to black. Music, fast and tinny, started up inside the brothel.

It struck him as funny that everyone in Winslow always called Matherston a ghost town, yet no one truly believed it.

Until now. No one could deny this was a ghost town now.

An ugly man in too-big jeans brushed against him—knocked into him on purpose maybe—and sent Aaron reeling toward the batwing doors of the Mother Lode Saloon. Once he landed, he scrambled like a crab to the hitching post and attempted to grab onto one leg of the post to keep grounded. As more men strolled past, some regarded him with amusement, others ignored him. None offered help.

The men seemed to know exactly where they were going, so why didn’t Aaron know where to go? It would be better if his mom weren’t so sick and could tell him what to do, like when she would bug him to come inside and eat his lunch or go outside and do the weeding. Aaron wanted more than anything to be back in his bedroom at The Winslow Hotel, feeling sleepy or hungry or bored. Not chilled to his core. Not afraid because the ghosts were in charge now.

A man who looked like Sheriff Winslow (but not like him at the same time) began to cross the street, heading straight for Aaron, who would’ve given anything to see the real Sheriff Winslow right then: his bike, his new videogames, his allowance for a whole year—anything. Instead, he could only try to hide better, to become even more invisible, to try and keep this ghost from stealing his soul.

The man kept coming, all swinging arms and long, sure strides, paralyzing Aaron with his purposefulness. When he reached Aaron, he leaned into the hitching post, crossed his arms, and stared hard at Aaron as if he’d been waiting a long time to give the boy a good talking to.

Aaron’s brother Sean always said that it’s only stories. That the ghosts aren’t real. So why did this feel like the most real thing that had ever happened?

Aaron noticed that one of the man’s hands was missing, his arm ending at the wrist in raggedy-looking skin and splintered bone.

“Name’s Guy Marsh,” the man didn’t say out loud. He gestured toward his mangled arm with the one hand that he still had. “Mining accident,” he offered by way of explanation.

Aaron caught a huge whiff of the man as he moved. Like the other ghosts, this one smelled bad. Rotten, oozing potatoes and soggy black leaves—the smell of a body that has spent time in the ground.

Aaron realized then that he had lost his own body again.

Panic struck. Where had he left himself this time? Was anybody taking care of his body, or was he just lying out in the open where coyotes and wolves could eat him?

“What is it, son?” Guy smiled crookedly, his jaw broken in half. “Cat got your tongue?”

Another terrifying prospect struck Aaron then: What if one of the ghosts stole his body? What if it walked around pretending to be seven years old, fooling everyone and doing stuff it shouldn’t be doing? Bad stuff that would get Aaron into bad trouble if he ever got back inside himself again.

“Where am I?” Aaron cried voicelessly.

Guy Marsh regarded him with great sympathy on his dented face. A “now, now, easy there” expression that Aaron knew meant something was really seriously wrong.

Aaron wanted to run away from that look, but he had no legs.

Had he arms, he would have crawled.

The ghost leaned closer to Aaron then, bringing along a fresh wave of old death to smother him. “If nobody’s home, son,” Guy gently asked, “how long before your body goes cold?”





MAYDAY!

This is her fault, thought Tanner Holloway. This is all Hazel Winslow’s f*cking fault.

He glanced at his new pal Kenny Clark as they clomped along the boardwalk on Fortune Way. Kenny was wolfing down a cold hotdog he’d helped himself to in Clemshaw Mercantile, that look of determination that said, Get ’em, still pasted on his ugly mug.

“Stale as shit.” Kenny spit pieces of bun when he talked. “Nothing to eat around here.”

Tanner blew out a breath. Guess you were busy scratching your ass while the rest of the class went over that it’s the bread, you moron. Tanner had no appetite, hadn’t in three days. He was too busy worrying about how much longer he could hide it. Because his limp was getting worse and whenever anyone got too close they’d ask, What’s that awful smell?

So no matter how well he continued to play the cooperative buckaroo, somebody would figure him out soon. Then they’d take him to the pest house or trap him in a ditch and light him on fire. And he felt like he was running a fever too. Impossible to tell in this heat.

Passing the Crock, he saw that the dining room sat empty except for tables littered with dirty dishes, and chairs scattered and knocked over.

“I gotta take a piss,” he told Kenny. “I’ll catch up with you.”

“All right, meet in the park,” Kenny said. “And don’t take all damn day.”

Tanner pulled open the Crock’s glass door in a cacophony of bells, then it was quiet inside except for the buzz of gorging flies. Food sat untouched on plates; the heat had baked eggs dry and petrified the bacon. Black coffee sat thick in mugs. The stench of spoiled milk and rotting food nearly floored him. He gagged his way to the back as quick as he could manage, dragging his left leg across the linoleum, shoving chairs out of his way.

This is her fault. He spat on the floor. Caged, while whatever the hell sort of rot this was grew in his leg and the whole town grew even nastier. Hazel Winslow’s fault, no doubt about it.

But the rot itself? Tanner flipped over a small plate and two slices of old toast went flying. That’s thanks to Sean Adair.

“What a dumbf*ck,” his voice rang loud in the deserted Crock. “What an arrogant, apologizing, moldy-bread-delivering dumbf*ck.

Then Tanner had an enticing realization: All I have to do is tell Kenny. A smile formed on his lips. I’ll just casually mention it, a tasty thought, and let those two jack-offs cancel each other out.

That’ll get her where she hurts. Tanner laughed and spat again. “Whatsamatter, Hazel? Is that knife in Sean’s back breaking your cold little heart, cousin?”

He pushed open the men’s room door, flipped on the light, and slid the door lock into place. Then he went around the partition that separated the urinal from the can, flung down the toilet seat lid and plunked onto it. Hot stale air enveloped him.

Pausing a moment, he shut his eyes and took deep breaths.

Don’t panic, just take a look.

He lifted his left leg and crossed it over his right knee, then carefully removed his tennis shoe and dropped it to the tile. Deep breath on three.

Holding his breath now, he peeled the sock off his foot—slowly, painfully—and as he did, stuff stuck to it . . . pieces of crunchy skin, pus-filled clumps of flesh, gooey strings of infection.

In a state of fascinated horror, he held up the sock to examine the detritus. Oh shit . . .

Tanner glanced down at his foot: his ulcerated, blackened foot. The rot had crawled up and over his ankle now, creeping its way up his calf.

And suddenly the pain he’d been suffering for days went times a trillion. His foot looked dead, but his nerves sure as hell weren’t. On active duty now, they bombarded his brain with signals that shrieked, Red alert! Mayday! Do something already!

Then a slow burn spread through him. She’s gonna pay.

He turned the soiled sock inside out and then screamed at the agony of easing it back around his swollen foot. All his toenails were gone (stuck to the sock, he saw) except for the one on his pinky toe. One little piggy spared.

She is going to f*cking pay.





PARD

“To your health,” Pard Holloway toasted Fritz Earley.

“Here’s how.” Pete Hammond brought his own bottle to his lips.

Fritz sat on a stool at the bar next to Old Pete while Pard stood across from them like a friendly bartender. In the cool dark of the Buckhorn Tavern, they were just a few friends shooting the breeze over a tall one. Pard hadn’t bothered asking Fritz where he’d gotten those cuts and bruises on his face. No mystery there. He grinned at Fritz before he took a long draw from his own bottle. The cold beer went down easy. This day had developed into the most blistering yet, the afternoon sun beating down with a matchless fury.

Pard noticed Fritz hadn’t touched his beer, only sat there looking as nervous as a pecked hen. “Drink up!” he urged.

Eyeing Pard warily, Fritz raised his bottle and took a sip.

“First of all,” Pard addressed both men, “things are fouled up to be sure. But if we keep our heads, we can contain the damage. A lot’s been lost, but a lot can be salvaged.”

They both agreed, no argument expected.

“’Course we all know that keeping it dry is desirable in these sorts of situations. And I respect a man’s right to keep his mouth from shooting off in directions that might harm his own interests. But between us, Earley,” Pard implied that the three of them constituted a convivial us, “How, precisely, did this happen?”

“Hard to say.” Fritz shook his head and looked even more anxious.

“Strikes me as odd that Zachary Rhone didn’t notice anything peculiar.” Pard tried to sound chummy. “Does it you?”

“Listen, Holloway.” Sweat broke free across Fritz’s forehead. “It was an accident. You beat up on me to find cheaper feed, remember? Didn’t you tell me either get it cheaper or you’d get yourself a new supplier? Now this happened.”

“Let’s stop beating the devil around the stump here,” Pard maintained his pleasant tone. “We’ll all be taking our fair hit, but we’ll help each other out as best as we can, won’t we? I’d hate to see anybody suffer disproportionately over what you yourself said was only an accident.”

Fritz appeared suspicious. “I’ll reimburse you for your losses, if that’s what you’re getting at, above and beyond actual. You and Rhone both.” He took a fast swig of beer. “I insist.”

“That’s generous of you. Don’t you think, Pete?”

Old Pete nodded. “Been expectin’ you’ll pay.”

“Does Rhone feel the same about keeping things between us?” Fritz asked.

“Don’t worry about him,” Old Pete said.

Pard cocked his head inquisitively. “What I’m really interested in knowing, Fritz, is the full extent of this situation.”

“It’s only here.” Fritz looked hopeful now, as if he thought Pard might be glad to hear that. “The situation’s contained in Winslow.”

Old Pete said, “Difficult to fathom this occurring at all, what with testing these days.”

“Oh it still happens,” Fritz quickly defended, “from time to time.”

“Apparently.” Pard chuckled and Fritz finally loosened up and laughed a bit with him. Then Pard asked, “So what happens next?”

Fritz shook his head again and repeated, “Hard to say.”

But Pard could tell it wasn’t because Fritz didn’t know, it was because Fritz didn’t want Pard to hear it. He stared at Fritz for a long moment before he leaned across the bar and harshly whispered, “Try.”

Fritz gasped.

“Try!” Pard snatched up his beer bottle and slammed it into the side of Fritz’s head. The bottle exploded against the man’s scalp and skull and Pard grabbed Fritz by the neck before he could slip under the bar. “Would it be hard to say just what the hell you were thinking when you brought ergot-contaminated feed up to my ranch and poisoned my herd?”

Bloody beer ran down the side of Fritz’s head and dripped loudly onto the bar.

“Would it be hard to say just what the hell you thought you were doing delivering poison flour to this town’s only bakery?” Pard continued.

Fritz was slipping out of Pard’s grasp, desiring only to pass out on the floor, it looked like, but Old Pete grabbed him by the back of the collar and wedged him against the bar.

Pard yelled in Fritz’s face, “Would it be hard for you to say that you’ll clean this mess up or die trying?”

Fritz sputtered, “People are looking for me by now.”

“What people? Nobody’s looking for you. In fact, I’d bargain you didn’t tell a soul you were coming up here.” Pard looked at Pete. “This get together is officially over. Take him back.”

“To the pest house?” Old Pete asked. “Sure you wanna do that?”

Pard studied Fritz for a moment; the man did not look good. “Just as well let things run their course. And Pete—leave out the particulars, but make certain they get the gist of our conversation here.”


Pard sat alone at the bar after they left. Not drinking, thinking.

Earlier, when he’d returned to town from the bridge and saw for himself the bakery burned to the ground, he’d thought, Just what I need. But the fire had been put out quickly, Tiny Clemshaw had informed him. So the situation hadn’t turned into a problem as far as Sparks would be concerned. Though it did worry Pard some to see Clemshaw both sick and on the shoot—that combination could easily turn into a problem. And the fact that nobody’s getting any better is a problem. If you counted Zachary Rhone, who Pard figured for ash since he hadn’t managed to cause Pard any further trouble, that made at least two dead already. Things were fouled-up, all right. And the bloody mess inside the Rhone house and spread across the yard—that was definitely a problem.

His niece Hazel also posed a problem, undermining his authority and asking questions he wasn’t keen to answer. And dammit, she really does look just like Anabel when she’s all fired up.

At five years his junior, Anabel used to follow Pard everywhere and he’d be damned if he’d let his kid sister tag along with him and his buddies. But there she’d be with her fishing pole or baseball mitt or wearing her swimsuit with the yellow daisies—the right equipment for wherever she guessed they were headed. He’d yell at her to get lost and she’d turn fightin’ mad, eyes flashing that same green he saw in Hazel’s eyes last night when she’d pounded on his chest.

Pard sighed, worn-out tired. We need to get things tidied up, is all, he thought. He was gambling that nobody would come looking for Fritz Earley. Because now we really can’t let anybody see the hash we’ve made of things up here.

What Pard needed was to get back to the ranch to check on his herd. He wanted to get back to his ranch where things were manageable. Because the longer he remained in town, the more he felt the reins slipping from his hands.

He swiveled off the barstool and left the Buckhorn, shoving through batwing doors and into the brutal sunlight. Blackjack was tied to the hitching post in front of the tavern and Pard started on the knot that would release him.

The town was quiet save for the drone of a vehicle accelerating and what sounded like the car dragging something, its bumper maybe. Peering across the park, Pard saw a brown Plymouth moving fast: Old Man Mathers driving fifty damn miles an hour down Park Street. He’s gonna kill somebody, Pard worried.

After mounting Blackjack, Pard rode across Fortune Way and into the shade of Prospect Park. When he reached the playground he stopped short of the swings to observe his cowhands working the area. Tanner was with them, bobbing along on the back of Kenny Clark’s chestnut Morgan. He and Kenny were shouting back and forth to each other and laughing. Laughing? They were acting real friendly—best buddies. When the hell did that happen? Pard wondered.

Making a noise, “Scheww,” Pard pulled off his hat and mopped his face with a bandanna. He wanted to make his nephew into a man and maybe there was hope after all. Tanner had been cooperating all day; Pard was truly surprised the kid had it in him. And he wanted to feel pleased—but dammit if those weren’t the Marshes over there by the duck pond? The very same people he’d ordered home yesterday at sunset? Pard schewwed again as he replaced his hat and steered Blackjack their direction.

To Pard’s astonishment, Kenny and Tanner suddenly gave chase after Jay Marsh, Kenny twirling a lariat above his head while Tanner crouched out of the way behind him and held on for dear life. Before Jay could scramble under the monkey bars Kenny effortlessly tossed the rope over the man’s head and jerked it tight around his bare torso, pinning his arms inside. After turning his horse to yank Jay to the ground Kenny leapt off and then pulled the kid down next.

Pard saw the shock hit Tanner’s face when he landed on his left leg. Pard had noticed at the bridge that Tanner had gotten himself roughed up at some point and was limping pretty bad. Pard had truly hoped then, as now, that the limp was the result of Blackjack dragging his nephew around the rodeo ring and nothing more.

Kenny shoved the rope into Tanner’s hands. Then he pushed Tanner toward where Jay lay squirming in the grass at the other end of the rope. The kid hauled himself over and began to hogtie Jay Marsh, who was yelling, “Stop! I’m a human being!”

They’re too rough now, Pard admitted. How many times has this line been crossed?

From where he was still working the rope around Jay’s ankles, Tanner looked up when Pard reached him. At first the kid’s face registered fear—as if he thought he was about to get it. But then Tanner smiled . . . a huge grin through that mess of pale hair, like he knew his uncle approved, like he was proud of himself. And Pard felt the reins completely slip away.





HAZEL

Heedless to the aggravation that running caused her injuries, Hazel pounded down the trail, her ends disturbingly loose.

Fighting with Patience Mathers was hardly unusual. She and Patience had often fought when they were younger: over a game of jacks (“I already did twosies”), over who got the last Louie-Bloo Raspberry Otter Pop, over Patience being so irritating mainly.

This was only the third time Hazel had ever fought with Sean Adair.

The second was Monday morning in front of the Crock.

The first was when they were eleven and Kenny Clark was beating the crap out of Sean in front of the Fish ’n Bait and Hazel intervened by smashing Kenny from behind with her skateboard. But that didn’t stop Kenny from pummeling Sean some more and later Sean told her, “I can take care of myself.”

And she’d said, “It didn’t look like it.”

And he’d spat, “Just leave me alone,” before ditching her to lick his wounds in private.

Leave me alone . . . That sounded sorely familiar. Don’t come looking for me anymore.

When she could run no more, she collapsed to the forest floor. Sprawled on a carpet of pine needles, licking her own wounds, she wished Bigfoot would come and carry her away to his Sasquatch digs, where they’d eat blackberries and communicate using hand gestures and grunts.

But he didn’t come for her.

So after she caught her breath, she rose and staggered down the trail—the sun beating down on her like a different kind of hot-breathed monster—and headed back to town. Nowhere else to go. No idea what to do next. Not even thinking about it, really, just making her way along the path, bleary-eyed, trying not to smash her hurt arm into any branches.

I’m shell-shocked, she realized.

Matherston Cemetery had been another unimaginable nightmare. Like last night when she had seen how twisted and tormented everyone had become at the hotel, or viewing the gruesome remains of Melanie Rhone while her dad stood quietly growing gangrenous, or the vampire attacking her in Second Chance Mine that morning.

Nightmares. Surely not reality. Surely those things did not happen to her.

Unthinkable.

Popping out of the woods onto Winslow Road, Hazel longed to see Sheriff Riley Washburn’s patrol car cruising up the blacktop. (Riley and her dad liked to shoot the breeze over a shot of bourbon on the back porch of The Winslow.) An ambulance speeding past with its sirens whirring would’ve been good too. Or that forest service helicopter from her dream.

Yet all was still . . . no vehicles approached, no breeze quaked the aspens, there was only the flat sound of her tennis shoes hitting the road and the incessant drone of insects going about the routine business of their unremarkable day.

She considered hiking to the fire lookout. Sparks Brady would have his radio; her dad yakked with him all the time. (“See those thunderheads forming east of the ridge?”) And Sparks was certain to be manning the tower during this heat wave.

There was only one problem. When her dad had taken her to see the tall tower and meet the rangy Sparks a few summers ago, they’d traveled for hours by fire road in the Jeep. How long would it take her to hike to the tower as the crow flies, along rough deer trails and across raging creeks? Would she get lost in the forest?

I’ll lose my bearings, I know it. It’d be just a matter of time.

So the idea was abandoned by the time she reached the church graveyard at the edge of town. She half expected to see Sean and Patience among those headstones too and flashed on that awful image: everything toneless except her hair, long and black down her back; his, soft and brown across his shoulders. Hazel stared straight into the high sun. Burn it from my eyes.

Blinking away sunspots, she entered town and started up Fortune Way, careful to avoid piles of road apples left by horses. Patience and Sean can rot happily ever after in this shithole for all I care. But no matter how much righteous indignation she managed to drum up, it quickly drowned in her deep sorrow. Everything Hazel thought she knew was turning out to be wrong. Everything.

Life moved up along Fortune Way, ranch hands mostly. She avoided eye contact with them as though they were vicious dogs, refusing to let them see her fear.

At least now that she was no longer consumed with finding Sean, she could tend to other things. Such as her broken body. She decided to hit the Mercantile for drugs—benzocaine for her tooth, some aspirin, something stronger with any luck—and hoped that Tiny Clemshaw wasn’t still wielding his shotgun with that same indiscriminate rancor.

Up ahead, a woman who looked like Tilly Thacker with gray hair gone wild gave Hazel a frightened gape before dashing between Mathers Bank and the Crock. Though Hazel had no reason to think this weirdness was directed at her personally, it left her feeling even more unsettled all the same.

Because it felt different in town now. And unnaturally quiet.

Everywhere, that is, except the Buckhorn Tavern, which was raucous with country music and shouts and boot stomps and compulsive laughter, as though all the noise in Winslow had been rounded up and sequestered in that one establishment.

Two ranch hands exited Prospect Park right in front of her. To join in the racket at the bar, she guessed. Both men stopped to eyeball her, and after one mumbled something close to the other’s ear, they both laughed—the same sort of forced laughter that was coming out of the Buckhorn. Then they continued past her, one on each side so that she was surrounded for several frightening moments.

This business bodes ill, her grandmother’s words echoed.

As Hazel continued toward the Mercantile, she grew angrier and angrier: at the cowboys and the fact that they truly were scaring her and everybody else; at her uncle’s bullheadedness and her dad’s incapacitation; and about nobody but her seeming to care that the whole stinking town had capsized.

Worst of all, Hazel’s heart wrenched, what I most wanted to find wants to stay lost to me.

Just past Cal’s Fish ’n Bait, Hazel was jolted out of her anger when she noticed a still heap in the space between the bait shop and Clemshaw Mercantile. She backed up and took two steps toward the body lying prone in the passageway before recognizing him.

“Oh, Cal . . .”

He lay crumpled up in the dirt, broken-looking legs tangled in fishing line, the pole snapped in two beneath his hips. Cal still grasped his reel in one hand, the foam cup of worms crushed inside the other.

Hazel groaned, heart-stricken. “Did you fall off the roof?” When she stepped closer, she saw that a crack high on his forehead gaped wide and oozed dark. She whimpered loudly in shock and sympathy. Then she whispered, “I hope you caught the big one, Cal.”

She left him for the store. Tiny Clemshaw no longer guarded the front of the Mercantile. In fact, he was nowhere in sight even when she entered. Despite the ceiling fans spinning so fast they looked about to launch, it was smothery inside. And while the store looked empty, it didn’t feel it. Make it quick, she told herself.

She hurried past the checkout counter with its jars of beef jerky and racks of chips while the fan blades continued their ineffectual whomp, whomp. Then she made a tight right into the last aisle, which contained the medicine and elixirs and cleaning supplies.

That was when she saw Tiny Clemshaw on the second floor of the Mercantile, leaning forward against the railing that overlooked the main floor. The man stood so stock-still—face waxen, eyes void—that at first she mistook him for a mannequin.

He gave no indication that he’d noticed her in the store below, only stared straight ahead, frozen in place by some mysterious force.

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

She snatched a package of paper tablecloths from the picnic supplies shelf and turned and hustled down the aisle. Along the way, she grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the top shelf without stopping or daring to glance up at the second floor. Then she left the Mercantile without Tiny ever acknowledging that she was there.

Returning to Cal’s body in the passageway she ripped the tablecloth out of its plastic wrapper. “You were safe locked up, Cal. Who let you out of jail?”

Since her right hand operated only as a flipper sticking out of the sling, she moved awkwardly as she unfolded the tablecloth then flicked it out like a sheet above the body and eased it down to cover him. She had never formally picnicked, yet the red-and-white checkered pattern made her think of fried chicken and ants. Blood instantly seeped through the white section of paper draping Cal’s head.

Trying to swallow the sadness stuck in her throat, she walked away. As she did, she tucked away this incident, completely incapable of processing yet another loss.

I should’ve gotten a drink too, she realized once she was back out on the sidewalk staring at the bottle of aspirin in her hand that she’d stolen from the store. But she was afraid to return and risk rousing Tiny out of his stupor.

The din coming from the Buckhorn had increased. Holloway Ranch headquarters, she figured. Okay, she tried to steel herself. It was time for everyone to face facts: Melanie Rhone—murdered, Zachary Rhone—most likely burned to death, Cal—dead in the alley. What’s next?

People are going to develop gangrene. That’s what. Maybe they already had; she did not intend to go up to The Winslow to find out. But she was going into that bar. And they were going to listen to her. And they were going to agree that it was time to open the bridge and send somebody down for help.

As she approached, the voices of men carried to her from the tavern, along with the easily recognizable, annoying, high-pitched laughter of one boy: Tanner Holloway.

Sheer panic sliced through Hazel, obliterating all thoughts except for one: He didn’t make it out.

The realization froze her in place because it meant that Tanner had been on the loose all this time, angry at her for refusing to go with him, pissed-off and mouthy and out on the town.

She placed her hand over her pounding heart. He’s the only other person alive who knows Sean’s role in all of this. With sudden terror, Hazel understood just how dangerous that made Tanner Holloway and his big fat mouth.

She pitched the bottle of aspirin into the street and marched toward the bar.

After pushing through the batwing doors into the Buckhorn, she spotted him right away. His back to the door, he drank from a longneck bottle of beer next to Kenny Clark at the bar. There were roughly fifteen ranch hands in the tavern, which meant most of her uncle’s men. All of them, maybe, except Pard himself and Old Pete and Maggie Clark. Hazel didn’t care.

They all watched—amused, it seemed to her—as she stalked up behind Tanner and then struck him with her fist on the side of his head.

He spun around on the barstool with a stunned look on his face. “What the hell?”

“Why didn’t you leave?” she demanded.

“Because you fiddle-f*cked around too long.” He smoothed his hair as if he still couldn’t believe she’d hit him.

Somebody pulled the plug on the jukebox and Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” whrooed to a stop.

“Why did you lie?”

His mouth twitched upward. “Why did I lie about what?”

“The quarantine, for starters.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.” The mouth widened into a shit-eating grin.

He winced when she grabbed a handful of his blond hair. “Why’d you bring up my mother?”

Tanner unfurled her grip on him, then squeezed her hand so tight she marveled her bones didn’t crumble. “Thought you’d want to know where she is.” He squeezed harder. “Don’t you?”

“Not anymore.” Hazel really needed Tanner to let go of her hand. “She’s been lying to me all along. Letting me believe it was my fault. She’s just like the rest of you Holloways. All liars.”

The men around the bar leaned in, not wanting to miss a word. Kenny Clark sat cross-armed on the barstool beside them, a smug look planted on his face as he lapped it up too.

“I’d never tell a lie.” Tanner finally released her to make the Scout’s honor sign with one hand and a simple, middle-fingered f-you with the other.

Kenny Clark laughed in her ear and she batted her hand that direction but didn’t take her eyes off of Tanner’s sneer. “I really wish you’d left,” Hazel said.

“It’s your fault I’m still here!”

“I wish you’d never come here in the first place.”

Tanner squinted pale eyes at Hazel before he got off his barstool to stand in front of her—his face only inches from hers but she didn’t back off. Then he said loud and clear, “Just answer me one thing, Hazel: Why’d that dumbass do it?”

Her stomach sank. She glanced around the bar—the cowboys were quiet, staring at them.

She looked back at Tanner. “Shut up.”

“Why?” He shrugged as if to say, Sorry, sucker. “It’s a damn good question, you have to admit.”

“Shut up.” Her heart was thumping so loud she worried they could all hear it. “Do not say another word.”

“But everyone wants to know.” He gestured around the Buckhorn, grinning like the devil, and suddenly the men in the bar were snickering at her. “C’mon, you remember what we talked about yesterday. Here—I’ll refresh your memory: we talked a lot about flour.”

Her stomach dissolved completely. She leaned closer to him and harshly whispered, “Like it or not—and I for one do not—we are family, Tanner, and you swore.”

“Gee . . .” Tanner scratched his head. “Now I’m the one who can’t remember. What exactly did I swear to again?” He looked past her. “Do you remember what it was, Kenny?”

Kenny stood up from his cowhide barstool and climbed onto the bar to better address the eager audience. “Sean Adair knew the flour—”

Hazel sidestepped Tanner to the bar and wrapped her good arm around Kenny’s left leg at the knee and yanked hard. Caught completely off guard, Kenny’s balance buckled, sending him crashing against the bar and then the barstool before he finally slammed down on his back on the hardwood floor. Kenny yelped when he hit the floor, then grunted as he tried to right himself like an overturned turtle.

Before he could recover Hazel kicked him twice in the head, screaming, “I warned you, Kenny Clark. I warned you that if you even said his name again I’d kick your ass!”

The ranch hands didn’t interfere—but did, in fact, cheer her on to the accompaniment of Tanner’s high laughter while Kenny tried to roll out of kicking range and she connected with his ribcage.

Then over the blood rushing through her ears she heard her uncle boom, “What the hell’s going on here?” and everyone immediately simmered down.

Hazel gave a solid kick to Kenny’s face and his nose went crooked and red. Even then she hardly felt through with him. When she swung back her leg for another go, strong arms grabbed her up and off her feet from behind, crushing her tender elbow in an explosion of fresh agony. Then Pard carried her across the tavern as easily as if she were a tantruming child. He set her back on her feet just inside the doorway where Old Pete stood looking confounded.

With the back of her hand she wiped at the sweat dripping into her eyes. Then, between gulps of air, she told her uncle, “This has gone way too far.”

“Obviously.” Pard steered her against the swinging doors before moving in front of her to try and block the spectacle of his niece from view of the rest of the bar. “What’s going on here?”

She could still see Kenny on the floor, moaning, while blood poured between the fingers he cupped to his face. “She broke my nose!” he screamed.

Tanner sauntered up and stood next to their uncle, keeping his mouth shut for once, but his self-satisfied grin said, You are dead meat.

Hazel was shaking so bad she had to grab hold of a batwing door for support. “Do something about them,” she implored Pard. “You created these monsters.”

From what felt like out of nowhere, Old Pete said, “That leg’s gonna have to come off.”

Hazel followed Pete’s watery, old man eyes to Tanner’s left leg . . . to the black and the ulcers and the swelling that were creeping up from his foot and above his sock. Gangrene, she refused to speak the word aloud. But the sound of her bare knees knocking together was loud and clear.

“Right away.” Old Pete didn’t bother to sugarcoat it. “It’s got to come off right away.”

Tanner shot a panicked look at Pard, who was staring at the leg in horror. When Pard met Tanner’s gaze, Hazel could see that for the first time their uncle wasn’t in charge. That he wasn’t going to fight Old Pete on this. And she actually felt sorry for Tanner, like when Blackjack was dragging him around the rodeo field and nobody did a thing to stop it.

“F*ck that!” Tanner darted between them, knocking Hazel aside and slipping out of Pard’s grasp as he fled the Buckhorn.

Pard made a move as if to go after Tanner but Old Pete stayed him with a hand on his shoulder, saying, “He won’t get far.”

“This is your doing,” Hazel shouted at her uncle. “This is your doing!”

He didn’t seem to hear her; he appeared to be in shock. He looked at Old Pete. “You know what this means?” Pard glanced around at the other men in the bar, clearly avoiding looking directly at their legs and feet. “All of you—do you know what this means?”

“Means any of us could come down with it,” Old Pete replied.

“That’s right. Didn’t I order all of you to keep off the bread? Back to the ranch! Every last one of you. We’ve got our own quarantine now.”

Kenny yelled, “I’m not going anywhere until I settle up with that Winslow witch.” He sounded stuffed up from the blood congealing inside his nose.

If only she were a witch, Hazel wished, she’d cast a spell to make him disappear.

“A Holloway cowboy never barks at the boss,” Pard shouted. “Got that? Now get your ass up off the floor, Clark. Boys—get him back to the ranch. Then help him pack up his gear and clear outta the bunkhouse for good.”

Kenny struggled to his feet, head bowed in humiliation, trying to avoid the stares of the other ranch hands. Once up, he pleaded with Pard, “Give me another chance, boss. I don’t have anywhere else to go. There’s nowhere else I want to go.”

Pard shook his head. “This is not the first trouble I’ve had with you, Clark. But it’s the last.”

Kenny glared hatefully at Hazel. This is not over, his eyes promised.

“Let’s move it out,” Old Pete called.

The men rose from their chairs and off of barstools, grumbling and knocking bottles to the floor like who gives a shit anymore if things get dirtied up.

“All right all right all right!” Pard hollered. “Do it orderly.”

Hazel grabbed her uncle by the arm. “You can’t leave! You and your damage control! It’s thanks to you trying to control everything that everything has spun completely out of control.”

The steadfast resolve that reliably occupied her uncle’s eyes dissolved into uncertainty. “I’ve done as much as I can for this town, Hazel. Time now to protect what’s left of my ranch. You can come with us. That’s the best I can do for you.”

“Even now?” This was unbelievable. “You saw Tanner’s leg! He can’t be the only one and you know it. And have you seen Cal lying dead in the dirt?”

But Pard’s eyes had gone impassive again. A bottle broke against the jukebox and he turned from her to yell at the cowboy responsible, “I said orderly, dammit!”

She stared at his rigid back for a moment before deciding, What’s the use? and pushed her way out of the bar and onto the sidewalk.

Unf*ckingbelievable.

Tanner was already long gone. Blinking against the harsh sunlight, she thought, It must hurt him to run. Really hurt him.

Then she stumbled away from the Buckhorn, across Fortune Way, and stopped to stare into the deserted park, feeling every bit as empty as it looked.

This was early Wednesday afternoon. Summertime. The little kids should be playing in Prospect Park, running and screaming and pestering the ducks while Ben Mathers shouts from his porch, “Keep it down to a dull roar, will you?” before he slams his screen door shut.

But there were no children, no Mathers on his porch, no sign that anything was the way it should be. She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet, trying to picture the park as it had been on Saturday, filled with people and rides and music . . . but found it impossible to imagine.

I want things back the way they were. An astonishing admission, she realized, since she’d hated the way things were before any of this happened.

Opening her eyes just enough to shuffle into the park, suddenly too tired to properly lift her feet, she reached the swings and plunked down onto a canvas seat.

The lack of food and sleep, the relentless heat and shocks, had all taken their own greedy toll on her. Out of service, she thought, down for repairs.

Holding one chain, head bent because it felt too heavy to hold up anymore, Hazel stared at her feet. Her tennis shoes were caked with dirt, the fabric coming apart at one heel, and it looked like blood had stained the rubber by her left big toe. Melanie’s, maybe. Cal’s too, she supposed.

A moan issued from deep inside her chest.

She’d need new shoes after this was over. Her dad would take her down to the valley as soon as he felt better. They’d shop, not for long because they both hated it, but he’d be feeling a lot better and they’d get lunch at Gino’s, which was always a big deal because there was no pizza place in Winslow.

She began to swing but it proved too tricky using only one arm so she skidded to a stop. Then she wondered, Who else has gangrene? Stretching away her sling just enough to steal a glance inside, she was relieved to see that while still colorful, her arm wasn’t black with gangrene.

Using one foot in the dirt, she pivoted the swing around like she and Patience always did whenever they tired of swinging, and remembered her mother pushing her on this very swing the day before she left for good. Hazel shot an angry glance westward, figuring her mother must be somewhere that direction, and cried, “How could you even look at me, knowing what you were about to do?”

All at once Hazel felt as laid bare as she had that day, when she was waiting for her mother to come home for lunch, having no appetite for SpaghettiOs in her absence. Then dinner came and went with still more uneaten SpaghettiOs because that was all her dad could think to cook for them.

Now Hazel kept turning with her foot, twisting up the chains. Finally, she pulled both feet off the ground and the swing spun her in circles until the chains broke free of each other.

Feeling dizzy, she thought, I’ve lost my bearings. Thanks to you, Anabel, I lost them a long time ago.

With some effort, she pulled herself up from the swing and went to the little red merry-go-round. Climbing onto the metal platform, Hazel imagined her mother giving her a good spin. Round and round, faster and faster. Only now her mother’s pushing seemed cruel. She was only a small girl, why did her mother push so hard? Maybe Anabel hoped that if she spun fast enough, Hazel would fall off into the dirt and crack her head open, or be flung through the air and hit a tree. Then Anabel wouldn’t have to leave Winslow just to get away from her daughter.

Hazel felt the anger that had been simmering for years bubble to the surface, as if all the terrible things that were happening now had turned up the heat. “How could you leave me?” Hazel gripped the metal handle so hard her wrist ached, as if the merry-go-round were spinning too fast and she had to find a way to hold on. “How could you let me think it was my fault?”

Her rage finally boiled over. “It’s your fault! And it’s your fault Sean left me too—you made me this way!”

In her despair, Hazel realized that she should’ve said goodbye to her dad before racing off from the Rhones’ place to look for Sean. Her heart filled with regret. What if she never saw him again? I should’ve told him goodbye. My mother should’ve told me goodbye.

Feeling ruined, she pushed off from the merry-go-round and headed for the duck pond, intending to dip her feet in the water, rinse the blood from her shoe, maybe dunk her miserable head.

Sunlight glinted off something in the grass a dozen feet ahead. Hazel approached slowly, the object sparking more golden light as she neared. She stopped just short of it and gazed down. A miniature pair of dice, a wishbone, a golden horseshoe. Oh, no. Patience’s charm bracelet.

She visualized Patience’s wrist, bare and fragile without the bracelet. And imagined that bereft of her lucky charms she would feel helpless and vulnerable. Then she remembered the brutal red welts she’d seen all over Patience’s pale skin, remembered how annoyed she’d been by the sound of her scratching.

Hazel suddenly felt ashamed. “Oh, Patience,” she whispered, “I am so sorry.” Why didn’t I see how sick you are? Why didn’t I care? I should’ve helped you bury the broken mirror in the moonlight.

She bent to retrieve the jewelry from the grass, wondering why Patience had come this way after leaving the cemetery. Staring at the bracelet in her hand, seeing all the charms she had given to Patience over the years, it suddenly dawned on Hazel: It wasn’t Sean you wanted attention from. She rolled the charms against her palm. It was me. All along, it was me.

She shoved the bracelet into her pocket, hoping she’d have the opportunity to return it.

Hazel slogged over to the duck pond, where she stepped on the heel of first one then the other tennis shoe, pulling her feet out. Then she eased the dirty shoes into the water.

There were no living ducks around. But several dead ones lined the top of the wall at the far side of the pond. And Julie and Jay Marsh sat on the low wall surrounding the pond, legs in the water up to their knees. Since neither wore clothes, it struck Hazel that the pile she’d encountered in the park last night had indeed been theirs.

Jay gave Hazel a smile that seemed to say, Well, here we are, as if things were destined to come to this. He had some nasty bruises on his face, and his right cheek was sunken and dented in a way that looked painful. He also had what appeared to be rope burns on his arms.

Hazel felt no compulsion to ask how he’d sustained these injuries. Instead, she sat down on the wall a dozen feet away, plunged her feet into the pond, then put her hands into the water and rubbed them together in a cleansing motion.

When she leaned back up, she peered across the park to where her house sat forgotten.

Then she stared at her toes in the pond, her mind empty now. There was nothing left to think about. And as she sat, a welcome numbness began to fill the empty spaces, leaving her feeling nothing at all . . . not panic, nor fear, not the throbbing of her arm or ribs, not even her tooth. She had nothing left with which to feel. All used up, she thought dully.

She swished her feet around, sending ripples across the water. It was warmish but still felt good. Shallow, the pond was no good for swimming, only wading. But the ducks liked it. Usually. Not today.

Too sunny at the pond, she decided to head over to the shady oak—the tree she had never climbed again after it had spit her to the ground. First she plucked her shoes out of the pond and set them on the wall to dry. Then she pulled her feet from the water and stood. Her limbs had filled with concrete while she’d briefly rested, so now she moved stiff-jointed like one of Aaron’s action figures.

When she reached the cover of the expansive oak she dropped to her knees and swiveled to plop onto the cool grass.

Glancing up at The Winslow, Hazel remembered the brown car she’d seen pulling up the driveway while she was up on the water tower platform, then recalled her grandmother telling her Ben Mathers had paid her a hostile visit. He was such a blustery old fool that Hazel had dispelled the notion that he might be a threat to her grandmother.

Now she wondered if that may have been a mistake.

I am so incredibly tired, she thought, realizing that her eyes were barely open. She looked across the park toward Ruby Road, then her focus softened and she must have nodded off because the next thing she knew her head jerked and she couldn’t remember what she’d just been thinking.

A large figure was tromping around on the flat roof of the hotel. It turned in a slow circle, pointing up and down, counting all the trees in the forest. Owen Peabody, she guessed. Or Bigfoot. Same squat legs, same gorilla arms.

Tired . . . She surrendered and flopped down on her side in the grass.

Head cradled in her arm, she thought, Julie and Jay naked in the duck pond. Sean would think that’s completely hilarious, and then she slept.





TANNER

Dragging his lame leg up Silver Hill, trying to outpace the smell of rot that threatened to choke him, Tanner searched for a safe place to hide.

There was no way in hell he was letting them chop off his leg. No way.

He could picture it: Old Pete holding down his arms, Kenny clamped around his ankles, grinning like an imbecile, happy to help. Pete and Uncle Pard would swap a look—the one they always exchanged right before they lit animals on fire or beat some poor bastard—then Uncle Pard would loom over him wielding that same circular saw Doc Simmons had used to slice open Indigo’s skull, with bits of the bull’s hide and hair still stuck to the sharp metal blades. And right before his uncle fired up the saw, he would give Tanner a look near remorseful and say, “Drastic situations call for drastic measures.”

No f*cking way. It was so Civil War. They’re totally insane.

The climb up Silver Hill seemed as difficult as scaling Mt. Everest. He glanced down at his useless leg. The black had crept up to his knee.

The thought crossed Tanner’s mind that things that turn black are usually dead. Oranges left on the ground. Possums trapped in trashcans.

But not his leg—it’d be all right. The doctors would do their doctoring thing and fix him.

If they ever get here . . .

His fever must be raging, he figured, because the sun pounded the mountainside yet he felt cold—his confused body producing sweats and chills at the same time. More worrisome, foamy spit kept collecting at the corners of his mouth. He’d wipe at it with his hand but more kept coming.

He looked again at his leg trailing in the weeds. The black moved a lot faster now, having gained a completely f*cked-up momentum somewhere around late morning. Maybe it was his rapid heartbeat accelerating everything out of control. And recently the burning pain had given way to numbness. While a relief, he suspected it might not be such a good sign.

Dead things turn black, he couldn’t help but think. Smashed fingernails. Charred cows.

He neared the gaping hole he knew to be Second Chance Mine. Sean had pointed it out to him Sunday when they were up on the water tower platform.

Tanner wasn’t sure why he had wanted to see Sean taken down from the start. Maybe it was the way Sean had scoped him out when they’d first met a few weeks ago. He hadn’t missed Sean’s look of dismissal, the one that says, You’re more mouth than motor, I can already tell.

Tanner never missed that look. But whatever. Who even cares what happens to Sean?

Picking his way toward the mine around loose timbers and signs that warned, DANGER and DO NOT ENTER, Tanner thought, These signs are in the wrong place. Oughta be before you enter Winslow, before the bridge even.

He caught his numb foot between a couple of boards but didn’t even notice until he nearly yanked it out of its socket. Would he ever have feeling in that foot again?

He sighed, “Shit.”

At Buckhorn Tavern, when Old Pete would not shut his pie hole about hacking off the leg, Hazel had looked at Tanner with that woe-is-you expression, as if he were pathetic. But she was the one who was pitiful—shaking and scared like she was a little girl again and mommy still hadn’t come home to tuck her beddy bye.

Okay, so maybe everything isn’t totally Hazel’s fault, Tanner conceded. Maybe if she hadn’t dismissed him too he would’ve gone easier on her. Too late now.

Who cares anyway? He’d be back to riding his skateboard down the paved sidewalks of civilization in no time. His parents would come and get him, take him to Mercy Hospital where he’d had his tonsils removed, and then he’d never have to see any of these freaks again.

When he finally reached the entrance to the mine, he crawled through a hole in the boards that someone had pried clear. Tanner shivered after stepping in. It felt tombish inside—dark and dry and cool. But a decent hiding spot, he confirmed. He continued deeper, drawing his foot through the dirt, until he rounded a bend into total darkness.

“Far enough,” he said aloud. The enclosed space distorted the sound of his voice. He crossed toward what he sensed to be the far wall, desiring a defensive position should anyone come back here.

He reached blindly for the wall but still fell short. Pulling his left leg up from where it lagged behind, he took another step forward. This time he hit something with his dangling right hand. But it wasn’t the wall. It was soft and smelled even worse than his leg. He reached out with both hands now and his fingers touched hair, rubbery flesh against stubborn bone, the collar of a shirt.

A body. A dead ass corpse.

Tanner didn’t scream, didn’t dare utter a word for fear of waking the dead. He backed away, trying to minimize the scrape of his dragging foot and the choke of his breath, until his back hit the opposite wall and the corpse groaned. Tanner bolted, running as best as he could—a hop, skip and a jump sort of run that got him out of the mine quick anyway.

Climbing back through the hole, he heard something rip but didn’t feel anything and kept going, his heart pounding angrily at his chest: let’s go let’s go let’s go!

Once outside the mine, he blinked in sun blindness and confusion. Where should he go? He was covered in sweat and now both legs felt weak. Knowing he couldn’t make it much farther, he hitched his way down Silver Hill to the remnants of the old mill where he collapsed in the shade of a rusty mine car.

They’ll come get me, he thought, eyes closed and chest panting, and lay me across the back seat of the Subaru. And Mom’ll tell me to hang in there, baby, like that cat poster in the laundry room, and Dad’ll drive like a bat outta hell down the pass to get me to Mercy . . .

Tanner opened his eyes to look at the leg stretched straight out before him. Where the skin had split open along the length of his shinbone, a watery discharge frothed pink at the edges. Muscle visible inside his leg wept dark red.

Uncle Pard will tell them I did good up here. He averted his gaze to the mountaintops. That he’ll have me back anytime I want.

With eyes that felt glazed he stared at the top of Stepstone Ridge, where pine trees stood motionless, looking dead, as though Christmas has been over for a long, long time . . . and realized his fever was climbing. He should’ve picked up that bottle of aspirin he saw discarded in the street after he ran out of the Buckhorn. Maybe I should go back for it.

But suddenly it was impossible to move.

So he lay there, alone, for what felt like a whole other lifetime, and thought he heard the Subaru pull up just before it all went black.





PATIENCE

“I’m the queen, I’m the queen!” Patience flapped her arms up and down in frustration. “The whole town’s counting on me!”

“Is that why you made her cry?” he asked.

“Go away, Hawkin Rhone. You. Are. Dead!”

The red ring around the moon had been for Hazel. Patience felt terrible about that, but there was nothing she could do to change it.

Patience had been so afraid Jinx would chase after her from the Mother Lode Saloon, all the way to the miners’ cemetery, that he’d ruin everything. Or worse, that he’d rip her apart one bite at a time, pausing to gnaw on her flesh, eating her in front of her own eyes.

Instead, Hawkin Rhone had been waiting for them in the graveyard, and he had sat beneath the purple tree, watching them with a curious bent to his smashed-in, dried apricot pit of a head. Just as she’d dreaded, Hawkin Rhone had found Sean first—and now Sean would be punished.

She picked up the pace. “Go . . . a . . . way!”

And then Hazel had been in the cemetery too, wearing the rainbow tank top her dad gave her on her birthday (they’d both laughed when Hazel first showed it to her), crying green-eyed tears, streams of them running down her freckled cheeks, and Patience was reminded of the time they were playing jacks on the front porch and Gram Lottie leaned out the screen door and called, “Hazel—run and ask your mother if you can stay for lunch,” only to trail off with, “. . . oh, I’m sorry, dear, I forgot.”

Patience always thought that was when Hazel realized her mommy was never coming back because Hazel was crying so hard when she took off running for home that Patience wondered how she could see where she was going.

But this time Hazel cried because of me. I did that to her. Through her tears, she finally saw me.

“Look at me!” Patience shivered intensely.

When she recovered, she said, “I told her you’re back but she didn’t listen.”

“Did hurting her make her hear you?”

“Be quiet—you’re dead. You’re dead and now you’re a ghost. Don’t try to confuse me just because I’m sick.”

After Patience and Sean had wandered away from each other in the cemetery, both set adrift by Hazel’s departure, Patience had skimmed past the soulless houses on Loop-Loop Road, then cut through Prospect Park, trying to ditch Hawkin Rhone along the way but he caught up with her anyhow. She felt weightless, gravity’s familiar pull relinquished. If she were any lighter, she’d float away.

“When are you planning to tell?” he asked, not gently.

“Why should I? We’re already punished.”

“I’ll make it worse.”

“No.” She shook her head, refusing to look at him. “Go away—you’re scaring me. You’re dead, not here, so go.”

“You witnessed my murder.”

For once, anger overtook her fear. It was all going wrong. He was making everything go so wrong. She hissed at him, “So what.”

“So that obligates you.”

“Nobody will believe me anyway. Nobody ever believes me.”

“They will. Because they need—no, they crave something to believe.”

“I won’t tell.” Her stomach tightened and her throat constricted. “I’ve told too much.”

Hawkin Rhone stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop and look at his mummified face. “You will or else I’ll keep after you until you do.”

“You can’t make me!” She shut her eyes tight. “I crossed my heart and hoped to die and I don’t want to drown in the deep pond and be dead like you! Now leave me alone!”

When she dared to open her eyes, he was gone. Patience stood alone on Ruby Road.

She’d expected to feel relief once that happened. Instead, she felt buried, the shame smothering her spirit and crushing her bones beneath its weight. She knew she should tell the truth. It was the only way to keep Hawkin Rhone from coming back.

But I won’t because I’m already ashamed. Patience pushed at the oppressive feeling with her fists, trying to fight it off. Ashamed I make such a spectacle of myself, ashamed I make Hazel cry, ashamed I’m so sick.

Sensing something skulking up behind her, her heart seized up. She listened for a tense moment . . . then asked, “Jinx?”

And when Patience reached across to touch the charms on her opposite arm, her wrist was bare—her lucky bracelet gone.


Ahh stop crawling on me get off. I’m thirsty I’m choking. Listen—I’m crying.

Patience crawled along the trail behind The Winslow, heading east toward the ponds. Sharp pine needles poked her palms, sweat dripped freely from her brow into the dirt. She took it slow: one hand forward, then a knee, then the other hand . . .

Somebody had stolen her lucky bracelet. Somebody who wants me weak.

She moved forward, pausing to scan the ground for the four-leaf clover, the tiny horseshoe.

Pink and blue. A small object in a pink and blue wrapper. She picked it out of the dirt with her fingernails: an ancient piece of bubble gum. Every Labor Day holiday, Sheriff Winslow would set up a scavenger hunt on the grounds of The Winslow to keep all the kids in town busy while the adults drank gin in the park. She stared at the gum for a while, willing it to become a lucky charm.

Jinx growled.

Shooting her head up, she expected to see his red muzzle in her face, yellow teeth barred.

Nothing stood on the trail. She blinked sweat from her eyes. She didn’t think the dog was capable of stealing her bracelet, yet she wouldn’t put it past him either. He was clever. He was having no trouble tracking her through the woods. Whenever she’d stop crawling, she’d hear his paws crushing pine needles.

She seesawed a few more feet down the path. Maybe Hawkin Rhone swiped her bracelet. He was tricky too.

She had to find it. Without her charms, she was defenseless. And she needed protection against what she knew waited for her farther up the path—her shame burning so intensely that she no longer had any choice but to take it there and douse it.

Patience sat up on cut knees, wiped sweat off her face with dirty hands, and surveyed the woods. She couldn’t remember at which point her bracelet went missing or when she’d gotten so lost. She had no idea which part of the Winslow woods she wandered now. Why can’t I see the hotel anymore? Her thirst was extraordinary.

The dog’s next low, deep threat shook her frame.

“Go away!” she screamed.

Then she saw it.

A few feet off the path, something glistened. She leaned forward for a better look. Several wet drops shone red in the dirt. Looking closer, she saw a slight rivulet snaking along the forest floor, bending and curving around rocks and slugs. Still bent at the waist, she pushed herself up and followed the flow but couldn’t determine its source.

The flow trickled wider. Fear snatched at her. Where’s my bracelet? Which way is out?

Again, she felt the same choking panic that had plagued her ever since Gramps Ben told her Hawkin Rhone was back in Winslow.

She spun around on the path. Which way had she come? She felt trapped and exposed at the same time. She hugged her arms across her chest. She had no means to protect herself.

Now the red flowed in a small stream down the middle of the trail and she stepped carefully back and forth to either side of the path to avoid getting her feet wet. But then she cut one side short and her left foot splashed in, immersing her leg up to mid-calf. And seeing it on herself, running down her white skin in narrow squiggles, she understood.

It’s blood.

“Help me,” she cried, splashing through the widening stream that grew deeper with every high step. Up to her thighs now, she tried to climb off the trail, only there was nowhere to go as it welled up on both sides and she realized she was going to drown in this river of blood.

Her shame forced her forward, wading thickly through, and soon the level rose to her waist. And the roar of it swirling around her—it felt like through her—deafened Patience to everything except Sadie saying, “Come into the pond.”

Choosing to join Sadie at last, Patience marveled at the sensation of liquid wrapping around her legs and running between her toes. Weak arms fluttering, she turned in a slow, heavy circle. The forest floor was gone. Everything had disappeared but the red and the wet and the trees sticking out of the rushing blood that splashed against their trunks and sent crimson spray high up into the branches. Dripping back down off the pine needles, the sun caught the drops, lighting them like thousands of brilliant rubies, and Patience thought, It’s beautiful.

When the level reached her chin, she finally accepted what Sadie had been telling her all along: This is our fate, and she succumbed to its warmth and inevitability.





NATHAN

Tracking the creature that butchered the doe and Melanie Rhone, he’d thought—for one brief hair- and gun-raising moment—that he’d finally found it. But when it had turned out to be Patience, he had dropped the revolver to his side, grateful he hadn’t shot the girl.

Nate hadn’t felt right approaching her and ordering her to leave the woods. She was already scared, that was plain. But his job was to protect and he would not allow the creature to harm her as well. So he’d trailed quietly behind as she’d sleepwalked (it seemed to Nate) and then crawled on her hands and knees toward the ponds.

When she leapt into the deep pond, he had to move fast, because he knew Patience Mathers had never learned how to swim.

There was no getting her out without going in himself so he tossed the gun and shed his shoes as he ran to the water and then plunged in feet first. Putrid and warm, the pond was thick with roots and slick twigs of every size and he had to fight just to keep moving toward her.

She hadn’t been under long so he was surprised when he reached her to see that she wasn’t even struggling. Holding his breath, he dipped down a few feet and grabbed Patience around the waist and pulled her up until both their heads surfaced out of the water. Then he gripped her beneath her arms and dragged her through the muck.

Climbing out was a challenge—the edge of the pond was soft mud—but Nate managed to carry Patience out in his arms like he used to carry Hazel upstairs to bed after she’d fallen asleep in Anabel’s overstuffed chair.

Once clear of the water, he set Patience on a thatch of ferns just as he’d done with the doe and as he did, she coughed and sputtered and groaned, much to his relief. Then he plopped down beside her and there they both sat, the girl spitting up foul water and Nate catching his breath, and he wondered if maybe the bad blood between the Winslows and the Mathers had finally been cleansed. If perhaps Ben Mathers could now find his peace.

Once his breath was caught, Nate stood, dripping wet, to search for his revolver. After finding it in the shadow of a boulder, he returned to Patience and sat back down, gun at the ready, intending to wait out the heat and their exhaustion, listening for suspect footfalls in the woods . . . until his mind drifted off to a pleasant place where creatures do not hunt and the sun does not scorch.

Upon his mental return, Patience was saying, “The unburied are cooking up terrible things for us.”

“Unburied?” Nate did not like that word, or the frightened intensity in her eyes.

“The creeks are full of rain. Old murders boiling over. Gram and Sadie—”

“You’re not feeling well, Patience. It’s all in your mind.”

“Sterling Mathers and little Missy Rhone.”

Those bad apples, Nate shivered. “It’s only in my mind.”

“Do you see the trouble coming in your mind, Sheriff Winslow? Trouble in threes.”

The delicate tendrils holding Nate’s sanity in place were losing their grip. “Trouble?” he croaked.

Leaning close to his face, black hair wet and stringy, cheeks scratched red through the mud, she breathed, “Blame burns there.”

Unwilling to ask where, he shivered again. “That’s enough, Patience.”

“Cows on fire. Bread on fire.”

“Enough.”

Abruptly she stood. “Then I’m going.”

“I can’t go with you.” Nate rose, slowly scanning the ridgeline. “It’s out here. I can’t leave these woods until I catch it.” He looked at her. “Stalk it. Find it. Kill it before it hurts anybody else.”

She nodded her understanding. “He’s been following me. Dogs are death.”

“I can protect you.”

“I have to go there. She’ll need me.”

Nate watched Patience Mathers dribble pond water onto the trail and then disappear.

Later he would regret staying in the woods. Because he was not there to help his daughter. And later he would discover no peace was found. To the grave it goes.





SARAH

After talking to Fritz Earley about the bread of madness, after seeing bloody footprints across the kitchen floor just as there’d been that night Lottie died, and after hearing what could only be that old brown car pulling up the gravel driveway again, Sarah Winslow had once more retreated to the safety of her broken furniture and dusty memories in the attic of The Winslow.

Facing the pull-down stairs attached to the hatch door, Sarah sat tensely on the vanity stool, shotgun across her lap, and listened. Listened for footsteps pounding up the servants’ staircase, listened for accusing voices in the circular room just below the attic, listened for any indication that, right or wrong, they were coming for her too.

They had come for Hawkin Rhone in the dead of night.

Sarah’s husband Randall had wanted no part of it, insisting it wasn’t their place to mete out frontier-style justice. But Jules Foster had been the only one to agree with Randall.

The rest took up arms—all too eagerly, in Sarah’s opinion—and marched through the night certain that two wrongs could make a right. Even after they roped the man’s wrists behind his back while his young son protested in horror, even as they escorted the penitent man from town, his head hung low with a remorse that could not have been made any greater no matter how they devised to punish him, even then, they remained certain that his suffering would somehow bring tragedy to an end.

Sarah thought then, as now, that placing blame and enacting punishment only made it all worse—made everyone guilty to one degree or another.

“All are guilty,” Randall used to say, including once to his granddaughter after he discovered her trying to set fire to the gazebo. Then he’d winked at his wife before scolding Hazel in a mock grave tone, “But some are guiltier than others.”

Sarah sighed, missing her husband, as always, with a painful longing made worse still by her blossoming fear. She wondered if his heart had hurt this bad right before he died.

I can’t handle this alone, Randall. Why did you have to go without me?

Faint at first, the unmistakable sound of footsteps climbing the wooden staircase quickly grew louder, more urgent, until Sarah heard the door to the room below her rattle in its frame. She raised the shotgun with trembling hands. Earlier, she’d dragged a chair in front of the door and propped it under the knob as she had seen done in movies. But the crashing noise she heard next told her the chair had only held for a moment.

Her breath was coming in quick, shallow gusts; blood coursed rapidly through her veins.

Heavy footsteps were crossing the room, approaching the attic hatch.

She had pulled up the stairs behind her and secured the hatch, but the pull-down door couldn’t be locked from inside. Her only solace was the fact that few people were aware the attic even existed, and even fewer knew about the folding stairs. Her son and granddaughter knew, perhaps Honey, and, of course—

“You up there, old woman?”

—Samuel Adair.





SEAN

Sean ran a hand across his torso. His ribs protruded, his stomach was sunken. I starved to death, he thought.

Then he remembered he wasn’t dead yet.

Normally he ate a lot of food: huge sandwiches that Owen Peabody let Hazel make for him at the Crock, stacks of his mom’s blackberry pancakes, donuts when Zachary wasn’t around.

But now he was too pissed off to be hungry. James Bolinger. Seriously?

Sean stomped down Prospectors Way into Matherston, the spectral figures of Dinky Dowd and George Bolinger on either side of him. As they passed the livery stable, Gunner Spainhower burst out the door onto the street and performed a jig, churning up dust and screeching like his feet were on fire.

“Havin’ a difficulty, kid?” Dinky asked.

“Red-hot!” The boy bobbed and jerked. “Red!” Bob. “Hot!” Jerk.

“Hot as a whorehouse on nickel night,” Dinky agreed. They continued past and Gunner moved his hoofing up to the boardwalk where he proceeded to make an even louder racket.

It had been Hazel’s fury at Matherston Cemetery that made Sean realize he and Patience weren’t dead yet—she wouldn’t have reacted that way to two forlorn ghosts. And his sense of loss had been so deep his bones ached with it. Until she confessed what happened here in Matherston.

The red dog loped across the dirt road to Sean and sniffed his pockets as if hoping that Sean might have an apple fritter or two hidden inside.

“What’s up, Jinx?” Sean kneeled then to examine the rip in the dog’s ear—and his anger exploded. “Who did this to you?”

Jinx didn’t answer and Sean rose, feeling irate now that he knew someone had hurt the dog.

“C’mon.” Sean and his ghosts and the dog continued past Holloway Harness to Hank’s Boarding House, where more ghost miners streamed in and out of busted-out windows.

George leaned across Sean to tell Dinky, “Haven’t been back here since you shot me in the Never Tell, you filthy bastard.”

“I do apologize for that, Georgie.” Dinky grinned. “But I’ll be damned if she wasn’t worth it.”

“Dreadful pretty,” George agreed. “Like a Mathers woman, only without the crazy.”

Dinky chuckled. “I shouldn’t’ve gut shot ya though, Georgie. Ya hardly deserved that.”

“Tiger on my tail!” Penelope Hotchkiss screamed. She rode fast down the road toward them, legs pumping, wind in her tangled hair, eyes huge, green bike wobbling wildly beneath her. “Tiger!”

When she got closer, they stepped to either side to let her pass but she swerved and nearly hit Sean anyway with her bike.

Jinx took off after Penelope, barking joyfully while she screeched maniacally.

Sean called after her, “Slow down before you wipe out!”

Then he noticed James Bolinger standing in the middle of Prospectors Way across from the Chop House, wielding a ragged, three-foot long board.

Sean figured he must look mad as hell marching up to James because the tall, skinny kid seemed nervous, saying, “Guess it’s a good thing it’s hot, seeing as neither one of us has a shirt anymore.”

Sean came in close to him. “I saw yours on her, you weaseling bastard!”

James backed up, raising the board. “Listen—she’s in bad shape. I did what I could to help.”

“I should pound your face right here and now but I think I’ll save it for later when I can take my time and really enjoy it.”

“Aww, let fly,” Dinky urged. “Dry gulch ’im!”

“Later,” Sean told Dinky. Then to James: “I came for Aaron.”

“No.” Sweat broke out on James’s upper lip, dotting his peach fuzz moustache.

“Where’s my brother?” Sean demanded.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m taking him out of here.”

“To where?”

“Home, a*shole.”

“The Winslow?” James asked as though Sean was out of his ever-loving mind. James shifted his weight back and forth between his feet. “Over my dead body.”

Sean noticed that the board shook a little in James’s hands. “James, I’m more than willing to step over your dead body.”

“Sean!” a boy yelled.

The voice sounded like Aaron’s so Sean swung around to look in the direction of the shout and heard craack when the board slammed hard against his head.

This is how Hawkin Rhone felt, Sean thought as he went down, down, down—the sun spinning sparks across the sky—until he fell into the dark.


One cheek pressed into the road, Sean came around with a banging head, a mouthful of dirt, and Jinx barking loudly in his ear.

James stood looking down at him, poised with the board. “You calm now, Adair?”

Sean rolled over onto his back and sat up, sending his bruised brain crashing against the front of his skull and bright lights flashing behind his eyes. “I cannot believe you nailed me with that thing.”

“I can’t let you take Aaron. And you’d better not go back there either.”

“You’re holding my brother hostage? Isn’t it enough you finally got what you wanted?”

“You have it completely backward! Hazel made me promise that if you showed up, I’d take care of you.”

“You’re doing one helluva job.” Sean closed his eyes against the pain. “Damn, James.”

“Sorry, man—you gave me no choice. They’ve all gone psycho at The Winslow. You can’t take him there.”

“It’s where we live, you dumbass.”

“Not anymore. Just be cool. Stay here, we’ll take care you.”

“I feel better.”

“No you don’t—you look like shit.” He raised the board again. “And you’re not taking Aaron.”

Out-weaponed, Sean decided to try a different tactic. “Okay, we’ll ask Aaron what he wants to do. If he wants to come with me, you’ll let him go. Deal?”


In a filthy room on the second floor of the Never Tell Brothel, Sean could see Aaron struggling.

“I wanna go with you, but not there.” The poor kid visibly shook.

“Mom and Dad are at home,” Sean said. “I bet they miss you.”

“Daddy!” Daisy chimed. “’Member Mommy hollered at us to eat our eggs?”

“We all got yelled at that morning,” Sean said.

Daisy pounded Sean’s knee with her small fists. “You go make those deliveries right now, mister, and I mean right now!”

“He shouldn’t’ve made you,” Violet said. “It got moldy.”

James turned from his watch out the window. “Hazel said that grain guy is in town.”

“Fritz Earley?” Sean stood. “Where?”

He shrugged. “The Winslow, probably. That’s where everyone ends up.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“Bullshit you do. Don’t go there, man, unless you’re spoiling for some serious nastiness.”

“I need to see how my mom’s doing.”

“Don’t go, Adair.”

“And I need to tell everybody what happened.”

“They call it the pest house now—did you know that?”

“The truth. I want the truth out for once.”

“Trust me—you don’t want that. Why do you think they call it the pest house, Sean?”

“Patience Mathers is gonna rat me out anyway.”

“Because they’re all sick and insane. That’s why.”

“It’ll be better if they hear it from me.”

James sighed in frustration. “Fine. But if you want your brother to stay safe, you won’t tell anybody we’re here.”

“Why would I? Don’t worry.”

“Sean, don’t go!” Aaron cried.

“I’ll come back for you later.” He mussed up the kid’s hair. “I’ve got things to do.”

Sean pounded down the stairs and out the empty doorway of the Never Tell, sure that there was only one way to put Hawkin Rhone back in his grave, the only way he’d finally rest in peace.

Like shadows, Dinky and George rejoined him on Prospectors Way.

Sean turned to George. “Will you give me a hand?”

George frowned. “Not sure what you’ve got brewing is such a smart idea, my friend.”

“Aww, c’mon, Georgie.” Dinky grinned. “You’ve heard the scuttlebutt rattlin’ this burg like they’s blastin’ up at Yellow Jacket Mine. Let’s get a wiggle on.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Sometimes the past needs a good diggin’ up if you aim to make peace with the nowadays.”





3:00 PM

HOUSE OF HORRORS

All the ducks are dead—their heads impaled on stakes lining the driveway to The Winslow. Black eyes stare. They drip from the neck. And Hazel twitches in fright.

“Wake up, Hazel.”

Sean lags behind her, still down on Ruby Road. He is barefoot and Hazel thinks maybe the gravel hurts his feet. Hurry, Sean, she thinks. Hurry.

“Hazel!” Somebody shakes her shoulder. “You have to wake up.”

Stop it, she tries to say. Wait for him to catch up to me.Her back to the hotel, she cannot see it. She only sees him. But she hears screams erupt behind her each time the car rounds the third bend and the skeletons jump out of their graves.

Fingers dig into her cheeks, moving her head from side to side. “Wake up, wake up!”

Just as Sean starts toward her, reaching for her, brown eyes smiling, Hazel leaves him there and wills her own eyes to open, struggling to wake up in Prospect Park.

Marlene Spainhower’s head blocks the sun. “You’d better come quick!” Marlene gasps.

Hazel bolts upright, blinking away ducks and wondering how much time has passed since she collapsed to the grass, unable to take another step.

Marlene stands then and the sun hits Hazel full in the face. “He’s acting crazy.” Marlene can’t seem to catch her breath. “He took over the hotel.”

Hazel tries to swallow but her mouth is too dry. “Who?”

“Mathers.” Rapid, shallow breaths. “Ben Mathers.”

Hazel squints past Marlene at The Winslow.

She doesn’t want to go back. She swore she’d never go back. She stands anyway.

Because she cannot leave her grandmother alone in the hotel any longer. Not now. Not after the way Ben Mathers had stared straight at Hazel in church when he preached that wrongs must be righted, wicked acts atoned for. Not after the way Patience’s eyes had taken on an especially haunted look last night when she whispered, “Gram and Gramps told me other forgotten things, Hazel, about you and your family.”

Hazel grabs Marlene’s forearm. “Is my grandmother okay?”

Marlene is still breathing hard. “Is anybody okay?”

Hazel releases Marlene’s arm and hurries to the duck pond to retrieve her tennis shoes. She’ll need them. Otherwise the gravel driveway will hurt her feet.

Jay is still sitting on the wall with his feet in the water. “Don’t go up there, Hazel,” he says.

She doesn’t answer him because she knows she’s going and he knows she’s going, so what’s the point? Instead, she stands before him dangling her shoes by the laces. “Help me with these, will you?” she asks because she’s unable to tie them with one arm in a sling.

She doesn’t complain after Jay knots them too tight. And as she leaves the pond, she wonders where the ducks are hiding. Though she doesn’t wonder why.

The sun is high, shadows short, so the world stands in stark relief: no fuzzy details, no soft edges. When she reaches Ruby Road, she checks both ways before crossing. Just to be safe. Because please, please, I can’t take any more pain.

Then she pauses at the driveway and stares up at The Winslow, trying not to think about the things she saw the last time she was here, trying her best to forget Samuel Adair raging down the hallway wielding Sean’s baseball bat or Honey Adair sobbing in the kitchen or Gus Bolinger and Rose Peabody and all the others quarantined in the ballroom—the sick growing sicker while spiteful ghosts riot in the tower.

The House of Horrors, she winces. The scariest ride in Winslow.

Although skeletons popping out of their graves would be amusing by comparison.

She shakes her head, tries to shake off the paralyzing fear.

Don’t think—go!

And that’s that. And that gets her feet moving. I’ll go in and get my grandmother and we’ll leave.

Her tennis shoes feel snug, as if they’d shrunk while drying in the sun.

There are no duck heads impaled on stakes. Likewise, Sean is nowhere to be seen and she is relieved at that. This is no place for him. He doesn’t live here anymore. Nobody does. Only the ghosts belong here now.

She plods up the long driveway concentrating on nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other, her tennis shoes going crunch crunch with each step in the gravel. She hitches up her loose shorts—she’s been running around so much, not eating, her hips barely hold them on anymore.

A chestnut brown horse tethered to a weathered post swings his big head to watch her pass.

Left, right, left right left she marches until she reaches the stone steps. Don’t think. Go.

Cautiously she climbs, her eyes glued to her feet, and then she’s moving through the soft yard where each step releases a green grass smell that reminds her of Saturday mornings and trying to sleep in late but it’s impossible with her father’s lawnmower already going outside and a football game blaring from the television downstairs.

At the porch steps, she looks up. Sunlight glints off tall windows in spikes that stab at her eyes. It’s her family’s hotel: the mansion her great-great-grandfather built with marble fireplaces carved by a hysterical Norwegian stonemason, where countless summer mornings she and Sean ate blackberry pancakes together in the kitchen nook, where her grandfather fell dead to the floor in his bedroom upstairs, where likely her grandmother now hides, afraid.

With sudden sorrow, Hazel realizes that never again will her family lay claim to The Winslow. As if corrupted by the bedlam occurring within, the structure has developed a nasty personality and now stands beneath the baking sun sweating out absorbed malevolence.

Dark red X’s adorn both walnut doors and each ground floor window.

Beware the pest house, the lunatic in the Second Chance mineshaft had warned her yesterday.

And suddenly she remembers: plague. Gus Bolinger had taught them about plague during history class. The Black Death, he called it, and she flashes on the gangrene crawling up Tanner’s leg. Gus told them the authorities would shout from the streets, “Bring out yer dead!” and mark the doors of the afflicted with X’s to warn away visitors.

Keep away, she shudders, yet forces herself to climb the steps to the porch.

Passing beneath the double-arched entry, Hazel’s legs begin to quiver like the sick cow at Holloway Ranch before she buckled to the ground, like Indigo before they dragged him thrashing and bellowing off the rodeo field and shot him dead behind the corral, and like Gus Bolinger when he’d tried to flee the horrors of the ballroom on plague-weakened, old man legs.

Keep going.

There are dead animals on the porch. Just two, but that’s enough. A pair of tawny goats lay limp across the wide boards—their throats cleanly slit. Nearby rests a pail their executioner had used to capture blood as it poured from their wounds. Some 4-H kid is gonna miss those goats, is all she can think.

She wishes it weren’t so bright out, that there were shadows to hide such things.

I’ll go in and get my grandmother. That’s all I have to do. Only she’s backing away, unaware she’s doing so until she bumps against a pedestal gaslamp—and her first startled thought is that somebody is grabbing for her, anxious to slit her throat too so they can paint the rest of the hotel red.

Trying to steady her breathing and slow the pulse that threatens to pop out her eyes, she pushes away from the lamp pole and softly chants, “Go in. Get her. Leave.”

To reach the front doors, she must first stretch a long step over one of the goats. Then she reaches for the door, vaguely aware of her own helpless, terrified mewling over the swell of voices coming from inside the hotel.

Her hand shakes wildly as she turns the cold silver doorknob. Go in, get her—

Hazel snaps her hand away from the knob.

Not this way. Foolish to fall for it, like Sean said at Three Fools Creek.

She steps carefully back over the goat and descends the steps, then cuts right and crosses the yard toward the side of the hotel. When she rounds the corner, she’s struck by the stench of blackberries rotting in the sun. Hand over nose, she rushes past the bushes to the kitchen door. Locked. She cups her hand against the glass and puts her face up to peer inside.

As she had hoped, Sean’s mom is alone in the kitchen. Hazel lightly taps the glass and the woman startles before hurrying over to open up.

Honey Adair is a portrait in misery. Covered in sweat and cooking oil and specks of food, she looks as though she’s lost twenty pounds since Sunday. What happens if she doesn’t eat something soon? Hazel panics. How long does it take a person to starve to death?

“Come in, come in,” Honey urges Hazel inside.

Hazel scoots in and then shuts and locks the door behind her. Platters and bowls overflowing with food cover the countertops, the table, the floor.

“Did you find my boys?” Honey’s eyes are wild with hope. It’s obvious to Hazel that she’s getting worse, that every time she sees her she’s much worse.

“Yes, I saw them both. They’re fine.” Hazel pictures Aaron in his cowboy pajamas on the whore’s bed in the Never Tell, and Sean—sick and furious and barefoot—standing in the weeds among the grave markers of Matherston Cemetery. But she realizes she can’t let herself get distracted. “Where’s my grandmother?” she asks.

Honey purses her lips together and closes her eyes.

“Honey, please tell me.”

She shakes her head back and forth.

“Dammit, Honey.” Hazel could strangle her. “Tell me where she is!”

She opens her eyes, looks pained. “Samuel’s holding her for the trial.”

Hazel’s breath escapes her. “What trial?”

“The pest house trial.” Honey lowers her voice, “Ben Mathers made him do it.”

“Do what?”

“Hold her for the trial. Mathers says he’s been waiting a long time to clean Sarah Winslow’s pest house.”

Hazel reels with panic. “Honey, you need to get out of here.”

“No, I need to stay in case my sons come home.”

“You’d better hope they don’t—it’s not safe here.”

“Not safe.” Honey wipes her hands on a dishtowel, eyeing the closed dining room door with a look of apprehension. “Not safe inside.”

Hazel pulls away from Honey and heads toward the dining room. As she rounds the kitchen island, she slips, one hand latching on to the freezer door handle to keep from falling. She looks down: two dark smears run parallel along the tile all the way into the dining room, as if somebody with bloody feet had been dragged, resisting, across the floor and out of the kitchen.

“Owen Peabody,” Honey explains. “He was taking inventory when they came for him but he fought hard because he has to take the inventory. Only then there were even more men and they removed him to the ballroom where all the sickos have to go.”

Hazel stares at the bloody streaks, thinking about the way Owen teases her to at least pretend to be nice to the customers in the Crock, feeling guilty that she made no attempt to deter his obsession to count every last thing in town . . . and an urgent, awful certainty sets in that she cannot let this go on.

“Okay, okay.” Hazel sucks in a long breath, huffs it back out. “Go out to the garden, Honey. Pick the blackberries. Stay out of the kitchen for a while.”

Honey cocks her head. “Why?”

“They’re ripe,” she tells the sick woman. “They need to be picked right now or else they’ll die.”

“Yes, okay.” She nods and scurries for the door. “But come get me if my boys come home.”

“Promise,” Hazel says, thinking, Not a chance. Then she rummages through the drawer next to the stove until remembering she already has what she needs in her back pocket.

Is there any other way? she wonders before heading to the dining room door.

From the exterior doorway, Honey calls, “Why don’t you leave too?”

“I will. Soon.” Hazel doesn’t look back. “Don’t worry about me.” She rests her hand flat against the swinging door, imagining the opposite side splashed in Lottie Mathers’ blood, and realizing that no matter how hard they scrubbed, it would never truly go away.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.” An aching sadness infuses Honey’s voice. “It’s unclean.”

I have to, Hazel thinks. I need to find my grandmother. I need to put a stop to this.

Heart pounding, she eases open the door and enters the dining room.

Empty. And clean. Except that most of the chairs lay overturned and away from the table, as if something unexpected and terrifying had suddenly occurred, upsetting the dinner party and sending the guests scrambling away. Perhaps the butler had lifted the lid off the platter to reveal the evening’s entrée: human head surrounded by carrots and boiled potatoes.

Hazel lets the door swing shut behind her and the movement of air brings the odor of maple syrup from the kitchen.

The pocket doors leading from this room into the lobby are shut tight. It’s the only way. As Hazel picks her way around the chairs and across the dining room she hears voices and the scuffling sounds of movement on the other side of the doors. She has a weird taste in her mouth, she realizes. Acidic like the black ant she once ate, curious how it would taste. That had been against her better judgment.

So is this. She curls her fingertips into the pull handle of the door and hesitates long enough to allow the fear to penetrate her marrow.

She slides open the door. The wheels moving along the track sound like faraway thunder.

Hazel gasps.

Somebody is hanging by the neck. A raw, chafed neck encircled by a noose at the end of a rope slung through the chandelier in the center of the lobby.

The back of the body is to her, its head bent at an unacceptable angle.

Who is it?

The sickeningly sweet smell of syrup retakes her. Her stomach pitches and rolls.

Dark curtains have been drawn against the afternoon sun and the lobby is dusky save for the light of the chandelier. Hazel stands frozen in the doorway, watching people maneuver around the body. A woman bumps it and sends the Austrian crystal chandelier swinging, illuminating secrets in dark corners.

Another woman hisses at Hazel, “Shut that door! They’ll get in. Don’t you know? They’ll get in and they’ll butcher us!”

Too late, Hazel thinks as she rolls the door closed. They’re already in.

She starts toward the middle of the octangular lobby, all sides bordered in black tile, a black star dead center beneath the chandelier. She cannot stop herself. But her ratty tennis shoes scuff against the polished floor, resisting forward, the rubber protesting progress toward the hanging thing.

Who is it?

The chandelier settles back in place above the black star. Only to be knocked again when Hap Hotchkiss cuts the body too close and the light show begins anew. “Why didn’t you stay at the miners camp?” Hazel asks Hap, but he doesn’t hear her over the din in the lobby. You were happy there.

Five steps, six, she wishes she could stop—turn back the way she came and run all the way down Yellow Jacket Pass until she reaches Stepstone, until she reaches help. Only she has to know. Who is it?

She moves with the acceptance that this has already happened. That she’s already seen the face. Time has flipped, running sideways and backwards. She’s afraid she’ll pee her pants.

The chandelier eases back into its gentle sway, the faint shadow of its passenger moving against the portraits of Evan and Ruby Winslow that hang on the opposite wall.

Hazel swipes at the sweat running down her cheeks.

When she reaches the body she grasps it by one khaki pant leg.

She spins it around.

Everything else disappears except his face stuffed above the rope at that impossible angle.

He did not go lightly, she sees, he fought it.

For he is not pale and waxy like the other dead people she has recently seen. He’s purple and angry looking, his tongue protrudes black and huge.

And it’s a wonder that she recognizes him at all.

Fritz Earley.

The distributor from down mountain. Whose feed and flour have lain waste to Holloway Ranch and Winslow.

Hazel puzzles over the people simply brushing past, not seeming to care that Fritz Earley hangs dead from the chandelier. She scans the lobby for an ally, a person of some sanity.

Marlene’s brother Caleb Spainhower lies curled around his guitar on the sofa. Ivy Hotchkiss is sprawled on the floor at his feet, propped against the couch like a rag doll, staring blankly with button eyes. Hazel imagines that if Caleb starts to play his guitar again, Ivy will reanimate—jerking back to life and dancing puppet-like around the corpse in the center of the lobby. Others shuffle in and out of the lobby on the errands of zombies.

Hazel makes her way over to Hap Hotchkiss who is now parked on the third step of the stairway. When she reaches him, she gestures at Fritz Earley. “Who did this?”

Hap’s glassy eyes peer past the body, toward the ballroom. “I guess we all did.”

“Because it’s his fault?”

Hap shrugs. “Guess it’s his fault.” His eyes widen. “I hope it’s his fault.”

Sharp shivers shave her spine. This has already happened, she senses again, backwards and sideways. She looks back at Fritz Earley. “They’re assigning blame now, aren’t they?”

“Don’t know what else to do.”

She cannot peel her eyes off the rope where it’s digging into the neck. The flesh surrounding the noose is red and raw and ragged. Quietly, she says, “And they’re doling out punishment.”

“What else is left?” Hap agrees.

Forcing her gaze away from Fritz Earley, she looks up the staircase toward the tower and thinks, Another ghost for The Winslow.

She runs her hand along the smooth, curved banister, then skips her fingertips across silver stair rods . . . and feels the hotel cracking open: things that have been simmering for years are seeping up beneath the hardwood floors, soaking through the hand-blocked wallpaper.

Why have I never seen it before? She is stunned by its obviousness. The stain of every miserable thing that has ever happened here.

Feeling dazed, as though she has taken one too many blows, Hazel hauls herself away from Hap and out of the lobby, past Fritz Earley swinging, over Ivy insensate on the floor, across the hallway, and into the ballroom.

The stench hits her first. She never knew anything could smell this bad. Sweat, urine, and all the other revolting odors that ripen on the ill and unbathed. Bring out your dead . . . She places her hand over her nose and mouth and enters, jolting to a stop again just inside the wide doorway.

The ballroom has turned to bedlam—teeming with bodies and the murmurs of the unsound. A madhouse, her very soul cringes. Vertical shafts of brilliant sunshine leak through cracks in the drapes at either end of the long room, illuminating a wretched tableau of suffering. Tangles of human beings overflow sofas and chairs, or sit slumped against the walls. The worst off lay strewn across the floor, writhing and restless. She guesses eighty people in all, a good portion of the population of Winslow.

Except for the children. No place for children, is all she can think.

She’s always pictured hell to look like this, especially during one of Ben Mathers’ long-winded Sunday sermons on how the whole lot of ’em are headed straight there in a handbasket. No longer looking the harmless old coot, Ben Mathers now appears to be meting out earthly justice from the podium at the head of the ballroom, his back to the window so that the sunlight stealing between the drapes shoots out behind him. “All out in the open now!” Mathers bellows.

I shouldn’t stay long, she thinks. Only long enough to make sure there is no other way, only long enough to get my grandmother out before Mathers hangs her too.

She presses her hand harder over her nose. Nobody else seems to notice how entirely foul it is in here. Or that nestled in his wingback chair, Gus Bolinger suffers from gangrene to both his hands, the skin black and open and oozing at the knuckles. Survived the Battle for Bloody Ridge only to be struck handless by tainted bread. “They burn,” Gus groans.

Impossible to take in all at once, Hazel’s mind breaks down the panorama into macabre snapshots. Rose Peabody curled tight as a roly-poly pillbug, bare patches revealing irritated pink scalp. Kohl Thacker bashing his head against the fireplace mantle. The whites of Laura Dudley’s eyes showing. Bald Billy heaped against fleur-de-lis print wallpaper, his white t-shirt soaked in blood.

Hazel does not see her grandmother.

“Don’t stay,” Jay told Hazel yesterday.

Don’t stay, she thinks now.

Then she whispers, “Yesterday . . . was that only yesterday?”

She spots Owen Peabody tucked into the corner across from Ben Mathers at the lectern. Owen’s thick arms and ankles are strapped tight to the legs of the chaise lounge formerly occupying her grandmother’s bathroom. Neck stretched beyond conceivable limits, he gnaws on the wide band of cowhide wrapped around his left wrist. The soles of his bare feet are encrusted with dried blood.

What are they doing to you, Owen? She remembers her dad once telling her that an animal will chew off its own leg to escape a trap. Hazel dashes into the ballroom. Rushing, she trips over someone on the floor and they squawk in pain. “Sorry!” she cries. When she reaches Owen, she crouches beside him and gently pushes his head back from the strap. “Don’t, Owen, don’t.”

Blood drips from one corner of his mouth. “Hazel,” he sputters, then gives her a gap-toothed grin.

“Hey, Owen,” she tries to sound calm. “I’ll get these straps off for you.” One, two, three, she silently counts the number of his white teeth embedded in the leather restraint.

Ben Mathers loudly demands, “You’ve heard the evidence, now who’s with me?”

She glances up. The old man is trembling with exuberance. I shouldn’t have dismissed it when my grandmother told me he’d come to see her, Hazel realizes. I should’ve known Mathers meant trouble.

Darting her eyes around, anxious as hell to leave especially now that she’s deep inside the ballroom, she tries to loosen the strap. Men spook the perimeter of the room: Tiny Clemshaw, Doc Simmons, Chance Mathers, others she can’t make out in the gloom. They rest against the walls in casual poses but with guns conspicuously drawn. Evidently they’re the bailiffs of these proceedings, present to keep order in the court. And they’re watching her.

She’s doing something wrong—the strap won’t give. What she wouldn’t give to be fully functional again. Everything’s so difficult one-armed.

Owen moans frightfully.

She really shouldn’t stay a second longer.

Two hands join her one on the leather restraint.

Muddy hands, with chipped pink polish on long fingernails packed with debris.

Hazel raises her eyes to take in the Queen of the Rodeo. Long hair plastered in leaves, skin mud-streaked, the corners of her eyes and mouth caked in dirt, the most beautiful girl in Winslow grimaces and grunts with the exertion of trying to undo the fat strap binding Owen’s wrist.

Patience seems to sense Hazel’s gaze upon her and looks up. “I knew you’d need me,” she says. “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

Hazel feels about to cry again, touched by her friend’s selflessness. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you when you needed me.” She fishes the bracelet out of her pocket. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

Patience stares at Hazel’s hand, transfixed by the charms she holds. “I’d rather be wrong. I never wanted any of this to come true.”

“If only I’d listened to you,” Hazel says. “Terrible things are happening here.”

“And Hawkin Rhone is back.” Patience totters drunkenly.

“You didn’t tell anybody what happened at Three Fools Creek, did you?”

“No.” Her expression is soft. “Never.”

Hazel hands her the bracelet. “Here you are, I’m sor—”

Ben Mathers booms, “Who can deny that the Winslow family has brought ruin to this town?” His sudden change in tone brings people in the ballroom to attention.

“What is he talking about?” Hazel asks Patience.

Patience looks scared. “I warned you.”

“Ruin!” Mathers shouts.

As though he’s ruining her nap, Rose Peabody uncurls herself on the sofa and gets up to a wobbling stand. “What on earth have the Winslows ever done to harm you, Ben?”

“What have they done?” Mathers echoes, sounding utterly incredulous. “They’re murderers!”

You’re the murderers, Hazel thinks. You murdered Fritz Earley. Her need to find her grandmother grows even more desperate.

“I don’t believe that,” Rose says, aghast.

“Believe it.” Tiny Clemshaw steps forward, looking even more pie-eyed from ergot poisoning than the last time Hazel saw him. “Sheriff Winslow locked Cal up in jail. I sprung him but the next thing you know, Cal’s lying stiff in the dirt. Punishment for escaping, I suppose.”

“And Sheriff Winslow ordered quarantine but won’t let any doctors into town,” claims Mathers.

“Turned them away at the bridge, I heard,” Doc Simmons adds.

“That is not true,” Hazel says quietly, catching the looks of surprise that flash her way.

Patience places her arm around Hazel’s waist. It’s hard to tell who’s trembling more.

Just as Hazel readies to voice her protest, she spots Kenny Clark by the fireplace—and freezes.

What has he been telling them? Dread dawns with terrible certainty. About me? She puts shaking fingers to her lips. About Sean? Her grandmother’s words shriek across her mind: “Once placed, right or wrong, blame is hard to shake.”

Kenny looks much worse for it at least, from the kicking she gave him in the Buckhorn Tavern. Blood cakes the nostrils of his swollen nose and he’s got a rag bandaging his head like a wounded Civil War soldier. But he’s practically salivating, giving her a look that says, Here comes the icing on my cake.

And Hazel realizes—He’s going to kill me. Her lungs clamp shut. Breathe, breathe, keep breathing or else you’ll pass out and then they’ll strap you down like Owen. She manages a staccato inhale. I have to get out of here.

“And where the devil is Nathan Winslow now?” Mathers demands.

That’s a good question, Hazel thinks. Where are you, Dad? I need you. I really need you. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

“Sheriff Winslow’s protecting us!” Patience cries. Leaving Hazel’s side, she approaches her grandfather at the podium. “Protecting us from the dogs!”

Tiny Clemshaw says, “Honey Adair told me Sarah Winslow plans to shut the hotel for good after this. What will happen to us then? No hotel means no tourists and no income for anybody.”

Hazel glares hatefully at him. Why must he keep stoking the fire?

Kenny shouts, “The Winslows think they own this town! Ever notice that?” Slowly he turns to look at Hazel. The way he taps his rifle against his thigh makes her think he’s enjoying himself, that he sees no cause to hurry this savory situation. Kenny’s completely off the leash now, and she recognizes the brutal irony that it’s largely her fault that her Uncle Pard cut him loose.

Ben Mathers has followed Kenny’s gaze to where Hazel is trying to shrink into the corner. “About time you showed your face, Miss Winslow.”

“Stop this, Gramps.” Patience stands before him, sobbing.

Hazel edges toward the doorway. Don’t ever let yourself get backed into a corner, her dad had taught her.

She musters bravado. “Careful, old man—if Winslows kill Mathers, then aren’t you about due?”

More people turn to look at her, then all commence to talk at the same time.

“Everybody—settle down!” Mathers says.

Places, everyone, she thinks, her back against the wall. All of you know your parts. In fact, Hazel suspects that some of them have been waiting years for this show to begin. She watches Mathers, hunched over the lectern, eyes shiny with anticipation. He has his role down pat, she sees, been preparing for some time.

As she continues to slink along the wall she notices that another hangman’s noose dangles from the chandelier in the sitting area, hovering between twin velvet sofas. This one doesn’t look like it has been used. Yet. Or maybe it’s the same one they used to hang Dinky Dowd in 1889. The courtroom is the same.

She flashes on Fritz Earley’s dead eyes bulging with the question, Who’s next?

Clearly there has been a shift in power in the tower. A bloodless coup. For different ghosts haunt the hotel now: Sadie, Sterling, and Lottie Mathers. Fritz Earley and Zachary Rhone. Looking to settle their scores, since all other scores seem to be coming due right here, right now. This business bodes seriously ill.

She keeps her eye on Kenny across the room. His posture makes clear he intends to give chase if she tries to dart away, his rifle shot sure to catch up to her no matter her lead.

“How do you plead, Miss Winslow?” Mathers asks in a perversely gentle tone.

“Gramps, please,” Patience pleads. “Let’s just go home.” She looks around for support.

But everyone is staring at Hazel.

She stops her crabwalk toward the doorway and searches the ballroom for a rational face. Patience and Rose are the only ones who don’t glance away when their eyes meet.

Except for Kenny Clark’s rat eyes daring her to make a quick move. How she wishes she’d kicked his rat ass into an irreversible coma back at the Buckhorn.

“We’re waiting.” Mathers taps his fingers on the podium with a sound that’s enormous over the sudden hush.

Despite the high ceiling, the ballroom closes in on Hazel and claustrophobia tightens around her throat, squeezes—she can’t breathe, she has to get out.

“I’ll start for you then,” Mathers says in a voice so mockingly mild and sympathetic she wants to tear his face apart at the mouth. “We all know how greatly you dislike our town. Hated it ever since your mother left you.”

Hazel’s head is spinning.

“And Doc Simmons told us you knew the bread was making people sick,” Mathers continues the inquest. “You came to him at church and told him all about it. How could you know such a thing?”

Her heart pounds so hard she’s amazed it doesn’t burst free and scamper away without her.

“And why,” he asks, “pray tell, didn’t you tell us before our friends and neighbors took sick?”

“No no no!” Tiny Clemshaw shouts. “Owen Peabody’s been saying all along it’s the water. Haven’t you, Owen?”

Hazel glances over at Owen in the corner. The Popeye muscles of his arms strain against the leather restraints; his face contorts with effort.

“And a dozen people saw her up on the water tower platform,” Tiny continues. “Opportunity, that’s what that is. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

Hazel refuses to defend herself to this kangaroo court, sees how entirely hopeless it is.

“That’s right, Tiny,” Mathers agrees. “So what do you have to say for yourself, Hazel Winslow?” Tap. Tap. TAP.

Puddles cover the maple floor, of what she doesn’t want to know. Dark smears defile the white marble fireplace. And the reflection of Fritz Earley’s body swings in the gilt-framed mirror over the mantle.

“What do you have to say?” Mathers says.

That you’re murderers, she thinks again. Then she notices that Kenny Clark has begun to skulk across the room toward her.

Does Uncle Pard know what’s going on here? She doubts it. She doubts he has any idea the climate he’s fostered. But as furious with him as she is, she’d give anything to see him right about now. He may be harsh and stubborn and dead wrong, but he’s not completely deranged.

Gus Bolinger stands and hoarsely shouts, “This has got nothing to do with the Winslows or the water, for crying out loud, and everything to do with Rhone Bakery. Remember?” He gestures with his blackened hands. “Remember, Mathers? All of you? We’ve already got things figured out—as far as we’re going to for now anyhow—so let’s give it a rest!”

“Which is why we’ve moved on to the business of the Winslows,” Mathers says in a choked voice. “The other’s been settled out there in the lobby.”

“The feed man got what was coming to him,” Tiny says. “The baker, too, in the fire.”

Mathers waves his hand impatiently. “Then let’s get back to—”

“They’re looting in town!” a man yells from the hallway.

“Who’s stealing from my store?” Tiny shoots a round into the ceiling and plaster showers down.

People rise from the floor and off the furniture, upset and excited.

“Listen to me!” Mathers pounds the lectern with his fist. “Do you see anybody else in charge here? No! So listen to me!”

“For the luva Mary,” Gus Bolinger calls, “give it a rest, Mathers!”

Everyone is moving fast and confused, as though the hive has just been hit by a rock.

Kenny’s a lot closer now.

“See what you’ve done, Mathers?” Hazel shouts to be heard above the clamor. “You set this in motion and now you can’t control it.”

Patience rushes the podium and pulls her grandfather away. “No more, Gramps!”

“Stop making such a spectacle of yourself, Patience Charlotte! You shame our family!” He pushes her and she falls—awkwardly and hard—against the base of the podium.

Hazel runs to her, shoving at zombies who won’t move out of her way, screaming at Ben Mathers, “Shame on you for not looking out for your own granddaughter!”

When she reaches Patience, she pulls her up off the floor. “Are you okay?”

Though Patience nods, Hazel worries about the way her eyes seem unfocused.

“What are the three?” Hazel asks her, thinking, Zachary, Fritz . . .

“Huh?”

Hazel’s scalp creeps and she shoots a glance behind her. Kenny Clark is watching them from where he now straddles the middle of the doorway—the only way out of the ballroom—and she realizes that now she is cornered.

She turns back to her friend. “I need to know, Patience. Who are the three?”

Her gaze remains distracted. “Apples cows bread. Creeks rain drown.”

“Please try to make sense.” Hazel gently shakes her. “Please.”

“Shame blame—” Patience’s eyes flit to a place over Hazel’s shoulder, then they widen, as though she’s trying to take in something larger than life.

“What is it?” Hazel asks.

Patience returns her eyes to Hazel’s. “Sean.”

Hazel spins around and her breath locks in her throat.

Oh, Sean, why did you come here?

He’s passing Kenny in the doorway, covered in sweat and dirt, dragging a canvas bag so heavy and full it takes both his hands to pull it along.

Why why why?

As Sean goes by him, Kenny laughs. “What’ve you got there, Adair?” Rifle slung over his shoulder, Kenny is laughing his rat ass off. “What the hell have you got in there?”

Sean shoots a look of annoyance at Kenny as he continues past, and all is chillingly quiet across the ballroom except for the sound of Sean’s bag scraping along the wood floor. He’s not heading to where Hazel and Patience stand stunned at the head of the room, but rather to the fireplace opposite the doorway.

Every eye lay curiously upon him.

Who’s next? Hazel thinks. Step right up.

Sean looks so slight to her as he weaves himself and his plunder around the human obstacles on the floor.

Drop the bag! she silently screams. Turn around! Run!

When he reaches the fireplace he releases his hold on the bag, exhaling from the effort of lugging it all the way from who knows where.

“Can we help you, son?” Ben Mathers asks, and more men laugh.

Then they begin to move in Sean’s direction. Step right up. Gather ’round.

Sean kneels and splits open the sack. Dirty yellow bones and a big skull tumble out onto the floor at his bare feet.

“What,” Kenny says, “is that?”

Sean stares at the pile of bones. They all stare at the pile of bones.

“Hawkin Rhone needs the truth told,” Sean’s voice reveals his resolve, “so we can give him the proper burial he deserves.”

Hazel and Patience swap looks of horror.

“Good Lord. Is that—” Mathers points at the skull. “Him?”

Doc Simmons comes forward for a closer look at the remains. Indicating a caved-in section of skull at the left temple, he says, “See this depressed fracture? Bet you that’s what did him in.”

Patience moans and knocks against Hazel on her way down to her knees, hands covering her face, attempting to shield herself from this worst of all possible nightmares come true.

Still kneeling before the bones, Sean glances at Patience, then at Hazel, and pushes tangled brown hair out of eyes polluted with remorse.

Hazel shakes her head at him—slowly, clearly—while mouthing no.

He pinches his face at her, I have to.

No. She lifts her gaze to the rope dangling from the chandelier, hoping his eyes will follow hers, so that he’ll see the noose and understand what’s going on here.

But when she looks back at Sean, he’s studying Hawkin Rhone’s skull, running his finger along one of the cracks. Then he staggers a bit when he stands and announces, “I killed him. So it’s up to me to set things straight.”

“Don’t,” Hazel says.

She sees Kenny push off the doorway and head for the fireplace.

“Hawkin Rhone didn’t poison anybody on purpose,” Sean says, “except for the birds.”

Doc Simmons dives his arm into the mound of Hawkin Rhone and rummages around and the bones clatter and clack against each other like an upset bag of golf clubs.

Hazel’s stomach lurches.

“He ordered Missy not to pick any apples,” Sean goes on, “to stay out of the orchard till spring. But she didn’t mind him, even when she saw the birds dying beneath the trees. Because none of you liked her, did you?”

“Missy Rhone was not popular,” Rose Peabody’s voice quivers in sad admission. “Always a little sickly and that hair in a big snarl.” Rose rubs her pink scalp where a swath of her own hair has gone missing. “None of us wanted to play with her.”

“That’s why she disobeyed her father,” Sean says. “It was her day to share and she wanted you to like her. If only he would’ve given her donuts, she wouldn’t have brought those apples.”

Rose joins Sean at the fireplace and frowns at the bones. “I haven’t felt this sick since then. Like I’m coming apart.” Rose searches the faces across the ballroom. “You were there, Marlene, and Ivy and Hap, all of us schoolmates fell ill. The Holloways too. Anabel, still here then. Where did Anabel Holloway go?” Her eyes land on Hazel. “And Nate Winslow? Where did he go?”

“So all of you got sick,” Sean said, “but only one died, right? Missy Rhone.”

With the toe of his boot, Kenny prods the skull. “What was wrong with the apples?”

Tiny Clemshaw replies, “Hawkin Rhone soaked them in poison.”

“He never intended for anyone to eat them,” Sean insists. “Only wanted to stop those robber jays.”

“Outcome is all that matters,” Mathers says. “And nobody wanted him in town after that. Not then.” He narrows his eyes at the bones. “Not now.”

Sean spreads his hands, imploring. “Why did you punish him when losing his daughter Missy was punishment enough?” Looking increasingly haggard, Sean falters on his feet when he takes a step forward. “It wasn’t right to bury him across the creek. We need to bury him in the church cemetery—it’s the only way he’ll keep to his grave. Otherwise Hawkin Rhone will haunt this town forever.”

Kenny pokes the end of his rifle through the mouth of the skull, then lifts it to eye level for closer inspection.

“Knock it off, Clark! That’s disrespectful!” Sean snatches the skull off the end of the gun and Hazel’s heart clenches when the rifle swings to point in Sean’s face.

Laughing, Kenny lowers the rifle. A bit.

As Hazel watches Sean set the skull on the mantle, it dawns on her that if this goes on much longer, she will go completely insane too.

Hand over belly, Marlene groans miserably. “Why did I eat Missy’s apples again?”

“Is that what happened to Melanie and Zachary Rhone?” Doc Simmons appears utterly confused. “Is that when they died?”

“What?” Gus Bolinger looks startled. “Are they dead?”

Simmons glances around. “Do you remember when all the children were dying?”

“Where are the children now?” asks Marlene.

Simmons looks bewildered when he replies, “Gone.”

Gone into hiding, Hazel thinks. Hiding from you.

Kohl Thacker sputters through split and bloodied lips, “The children of Winslow have been poisoned all over again!”

The room explodes with exclamations of shock.

Then Simmons asks, “Who poisoned them this time?”

Standing before Sean, rifle lowered but hardly at ease, Kenny Clark casually and loudly asks him, “What’d you do with them?”

“Do with what?” says Sean.

“All the little bodies.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean after you poisoned them.”

Sean’s jaw drops.

Kenny turns to face the increasingly agitated crowd. “Sean Adair knew the flour was bad, but he delivered poison bread all the hell over town anyway.”

When Kenny’s eyes find Hazel’s, he mocks a face at her: surprise!

Damn you, Tanner! Hazel thinks. She curses Tanner Holloway—wills both his legs and his arms to turn black and rot off. The slower and more painful the better. Kenny’s too. Or better yet, she hopes Kenny’s rat head crusts off at the neck and plops to the floor where she can squish it underfoot like a grape.

Hazel starts for the fireplace, shaking off Patience who reaches for her, trying to stop her. Only Sean seems so far away all of a sudden—half the length of the ballroom. She’ll never reach him in time.

“I didn’t think the bread would hurt anybody,” Sean says. “I was wrong.”

Hazel yells, “Sean—don’t say anything else!”

“Is that why you wrote ‘I’m sorry’ on the granite wall?” Kenny asks.

“That you?” Mathers raises an eyebrow.

Sean’s nod is made heavy by his utter contrition.

Stop! Hazel’s brain sobs. You’re digging your own grave. Not Hawkin Rhone’s—yours!

Kenny pokes Sean in the bare chest with his rifle, forcing him back against the fireplace. “And that’s why you told Tanner Holloway that it’s a lot worse than food poisoning and people will get a lot sicker?”

Again Sean nods, his expression one of total defeat. “Zachary told me to keep quiet. He was afraid you’d run him out of town like his father.”

“Sean, no!” Hazel is not getting there in time. Her feet are moving, but not nearly fast enough, and people won’t get the hell out of her way.

“I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner.” Sean looks diminished and feverish and gravely unaware. “By the time I did, it was too late to change anything. I’m really sorry.”

“You knew something was wrong with the bread?” Doc Simmons shakes Hawkin Rhone’s femur at Sean.

“The flour looked kind of grayish, but I didn’t know why. How could I know?”

“Shut up, Sean!” Hazel cries. Deeper and deeper he digs.

“You should’ve known.” Doc Simmons scolds with the bone. “You work at the bakery.”

Hazel screams at Simmons, “Should’ve known? You did know, you lunatic. And what did you do about it? You’re a coward, Simmons!”

“You knew too!” Simmons yells back. “What did you do about it? Either of you?”

“Enough of this nonsense!” Gus Bolinger shouts. “This is ridiculous—”

Tiny Clemshaw strikes Gus on the nape of the neck with the butt of his shotgun and Gus drops. Clearly Tiny and his shotgun have had enough of Gus Bolinger’s nonsense as well.

“I tried. I’m sorry. I tried,” Sean is saying.

But it’s difficult for Hazel to hear him over the gasps and accusations and the rope creaking in the breeze of the fans and the men checking the loads in their guns and the clanging in her own head: Blame. Clang. Will. Clang. Be placed! Clang-clang!

At last she reaches Sean at the fireplace and shoves him behind her, as if her slender body might physically protect him. “Don’t say another word,” she hisses at him under her breath. Then she addresses the crowd, which seems to grow larger and uglier with each passing moment. “Let’s get this straight. It’s Fritz Earley’s fault the flour was bad and Zachary Rhone’s that the bread got delivered.”

“Mighty convenient,” Mathers says, “seeing as neither one is alive to defend himself.”

“Did Rhone hold a gun to your head?” Tiny Clemshaw gestures at Sean’s head with his shotgun. “What about you?” He points the gun at Hazel. “I saw you in the delivery van too.”

Feeling helpless, Hazel looks at Sean, but he’s busy staring at Fritz Earley’s body in the lobby. She sees firearms sited on them from every direction and wonders, Where did all these guns come from?

“Let’s see this bad flour!” Kohl Thacker can’t stand still.

“Too late for that.” Kenny narrows his eyes at Sean. “Seeing as Adair here burned the bakery clear to the ground.”

“Did you set the bakery on fire, son?” Mathers asks Sean.

“Yes, but not to—”

“He burned the bakery to destroy the evidence!” Kenny says.

“And killed Zachary and Melanie Rhone to keep them quiet,” Clemshaw adds.

“He’s killed before,” Mathers says. “Told us so himself.”

“Stop stop stop!” Hazel screams. Backed against the fireplace, she shields Sean with her arm, trying to deflect their words. “He was forced to hurt Hawkin Rhone to protect me. But Sean has never hurt anybody else.”

Doc Simmons is toying with the skull. “Except for all those little children he poisoned to death.”

“There are no dead children!” Hazel shouts.

“Hazel,” Mathers’ tone takes an especially grim turn, “we saw you with the Rhone girls right before they disappeared too.”

“Tell us where their little bodies are stacked,” Kenny orders.

Hazel’s eyes drift to the empty noose . . . and she suddenly worries that the promise she made to James Bolinger in Matherston will prove unbearable to keep. “Don’t tell anybody we’re here,” he’d beseeched her in such desperation, “I can’t let them get us—it’s really scary there.”

Hazel returns her attention to the really scary mob before her. “The children are safe,” she says, willing her voice to sound more commanding and less terrified. “And they’ll keep safe only if they stay hidden from you until you’re feeling like yourselves again.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Patience cries. “I swear on my Gram Lottie’s grave!”

Kenny steps close enough to Hazel that she can smell his sour milk breath on her face when he says, “Prove it. Show us one kid and we’ll believe you.”

Hazel swings toward Sean, tightly pursing her lips at him, We cannot tell.

And yet when Sean nods his understanding, she’s tortured by how soft and exposed his throat looks—not red or raw or ragged. Uncertainty slices through her.

“Where are they?” Kenny asks almost cheerfully.

Sean gives Hazel a slight shake of his head.

So she takes his hand in hers and says to Kenny—says to them all— “I won’t tell you.”

Hazel sees Patience ducking out of the ballroom and immediately understands that she’s headed to Matherston to retrieve a brave child or two in an effort to dampen the fervor. But as Patience disappears through the doorway, Hazel feels the corners of her mouth tugging down, her eyes filling with tears. Because she knows that it’s already far too late. She strengthens her hold on Sean’s hand.

“Go on, Hazel,” Kenny says, “what are you waiting for?” Then he grins.

And in that horrible instant Hazel realizes that Kenny knows exactly where the kids are hiding and how desperate they are not to be found. And that if she won’t reveal their location, he will—but only after Sean has already been punished for killing them.

A few dismal groans and the scritch of the rope chafing against the chandelier save the ballroom from total silence. Hazel has caught Kenny glancing at that empty noose many times. His mouth set in a calculating pose, his rat eyes look at the rope, then at Sean. Rope. Sean. She can feel Sean’s exhaustion in the hand she tightly holds—he’s so weak from the sickness and the strange things he’s been up to over the past few days that he’s shaking. Protect me—

With a howl of terror like Satan is reaching for his soul, Owen Peabody snaps free of the restraints around his wrists and reaches to unbind his ankles. Rose hurries toward her husband only to be mowed down by men rushing over to quash Owen’s liberation.

Hazel sees that Kenny is torn. He looks longingly across the room, itching to join the fray, but his reluctance to let his guard down on Hazel and Sean keeps him rooted to the spot.

“You’re sick, Kenny,” Hazel states overly loud.

He startles, turns to her.

“Aren’t you?” she asks.

People swivel to look at him, surprised.

“You’re one of the sickos now,” she continues. “I can see it in your eyes.”

Those eyes flash fury. “Shut up, you scheming bitch.”

“Hazel . . .” Sean pulls her protectively against him.

She releases Sean’s hand and pushes him back from her. “Let’s see your feet, Kenny.” She steps away from the fireplace. “Are they turning black?”

He lunges for her.

She dodges him.

Then runs.

Darting out of the ballroom and through the lobby, Hazel skips over Ivy’s legs and shoves Fritz Earley’s body out of the way like a punching bag—not slowing to look over her shoulder, not letting herself think about him giving chase, not daring to consider the bullet that might split her spine at any moment. She dodges Hap Hotchkiss on the lower stair and takes the steps three at once, climbing the red-carpeted staircase of The Winslow for the last time, thinking, She’s up here, she has to be, it’s the only way.

Hazel hits the landing and starts down the hallway, her mind racing: lure Kenny away from Sean, find Sarah, get her shotgun, put an end to this madness, and most of all keep out of Kenny’s clutches. She’s well aware of him pounding up the stairway behind her.

She’s faster than he is, so she might make it—unless he shoots her in the back.

She keeps running, refusing to glance over her shoulder, afraid that if she does, he’ll be right there, reaching for her hair.

Hazel bursts through the door into her grandmother’s quarters praying that Sarah will be right there, ready to blast this maniac to kingdom come and that’ll be the end of him.

Instead, Samuel Adair is sprawled on her grandmother’s sofa, a nearly empty bottle of Scotch clutched in one hand. He gawks at her in drunken puzzlement.

The baseball bat rests on the coffee table.

Panic seizes Hazel by the throat. “Where’s my grandmother? What did you do to her?”

“In there,” Samuel swings the bottle to indicate the bedroom.

Hazel can’t see a thing—the lights are off in the bedroom, and the darkness fills her with dread.

“Grandma?” She steps forward, fearful of what she might find.

Closer, her grandmother comes into view. Her frightened, fragile-looking grandmother, shrinking into her rocking chair.

“Hazel,” Sarah fervently whispers, “you shouldn’t be here!”

Boot-steps clomp down the hallway, floor-shaking thuds.

“Grandma—where’s your gun?”

“They took it—run!”

Hazel whips around to face the doorway.

He’s here. Kenny, his rifle, his hungry wolfish grin. And he says, “I’ve got a score to settle with you, Hazel Winslow.”

“I’ve got a score to settle too!” Sean shouts from the hallway.

“Sean, no!” Hazel screams. “Go back!”

Kenny turns just as Sean comes into view.

“You’ve had this coming for a long time, Clark,” Sean growls. “Drop the gun and let’s go!”

Instead, Kenny raises the rifle. Sean dives forward and punches him in the face.

More blood flows from Kenny’s ripe tomato nose. He looks stunned.

Before Kenny can recover, Sean hits him in the gut.

Kenny doubles over, groaning.

Sidestepping Kenny, Sean heads for Hazel in the doorway. “Did he hurt you?” he asks, his eyes full of concern.

Behind him, Kenny is rising, and Hazel shrieks, “Sean!”

Sean turns and Kenny smashes the butt of his rifle against Sean’s jaw.

Looking as though he might pass out, Sean staggers down the hallway, back toward the staircase, leading Kenny away.

Hazel darts into the sitting room and grabs the baseball bat. Samuel doesn’t try to stop her, only looks confused.

By the time she returns to the hallway Sean has reached the top of the staircase.

Kenny is right behind him.

Sean falls to one knee, head bent, clearly struggling to remain conscious.

Taking aim, Kenny says, “I never did like you, Sean Adair.”

“I warned you never to say his name again!” Hazel sprints for Kenny.

He turns toward her.

“And I meant never!” She swings the bat and connects with Kenny’s rat head.

The crack of wood against bone is a sound she remembers all too well.

Her broken elbow bursts into flames; the bat suddenly weighs a thousand pounds.

Kenny stumbles. His left eye rolls back into place, but the right roams and pools with blood. “I got fired,” he slurs. “Your fault!” His finger twitches at the trigger of the rifle.

“Stop!” Hazel orders. “You’re hurt—you need to stop this right now.”

“Pard said I can never come back.” He wobbles, white as a ghost, his right pupil zooming in and out like a camera seeking focus.

“Stop now,” Hazel says forcefully.

“Your fault!” He squeezes off a shot.

The bullet whizzes past Hazel. The wall sconce behind her explodes.

Kenny fumbles with the rifle and manages to chamber another round.

Hazel charges and buries the bat in his belly.

Kenny flails backwards. His feet tangle. He trips over Sean.

Then Kenny is tumbling down the staircase, hand reaching for the banister that eludes his grasp.

People in the lobby scatter. Kenny lands flat on his back on the cold marble.

This time neither eye rolls back into place.

Hazel wants to run screaming from this pest house of horrors, wants to grab her grandmother and Sean and take them far from this place. All she manages to do is start shaking. Hard sobs escape her. The bat slips from her hand and rolls in a semi-circle around the floor, leaving a crescent moon of blood.

Sean reaches her and wraps his arms around her trembling body. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”

“He was going to shoot you.” Hazel bites her lip, tries to stop the sobbing.

“Yeah, he was,” Sean says.

“That Clark bastard had it coming,” Samuel says.

Hazel spins. He has joined them in the hallway. Her grandmother too, looking exhausted.

“You had no choice, Hazel,” Sarah says. “Never second-guess what you had to do here.”

Hazel rushes to give her grandmother a one-armed hug. “Honey told me Samuel was holding you for trial.” Hazel shoots a look of anger at Samuel.

“What the hell, Dad?” Sean is massaging his jaw.

“He came for me, all right,” Sarah says. “All it took was a bottle of Randall’s aged Scotch to buy him off.”

Samuel looks hurt. “I protected you, old woman. I would never let Mathers hurt you.”

Sarah nods. “I know that, Samuel.”

Hazel glances down at Kenny’s body. Red blossoms from his cracked head, yet more blood soaking into The Winslow.

Sarah must be looking at it too because she says, “We’ll never get it clean.”

Hazel sighs. “We can’t let this ghost live here.” She looks at her grandmother. “Remember what you told me about the Silver Hill Hotel in Matherston burning to the ground?”

A glint of understanding sparks in Sarah’s blue eyes.

“And about how that night finally put an end to the reign of lawlessness in Matherston?”

Her grandmother nods, slowly, sadly.

“There’s no other way,” Hazel says. “I am so sorry.”

Sarah shuts her eyes, and Hazel imagines the flood of memories that must be playing behind those closed lids. At last her grandmother reopens them. “All right, sweetheart. But be careful.”

“I will.” Hazel turns to Sean. “Take my grandmother and your dad out. I’ll be right behind you.”

“No way am I leaving without you,” he protests.

“Please, Sean, we have to hurry!” Hazel turns him by the shoulders and points him toward the stairway. “I need to be sure that you’ll all be out. I promise I’ll be right behind you.”

With obvious reluctance, Sean takes Sarah by the arm. And as soon as they start down the hallway, Samuel pulling up the rear, Hazel dashes back into her grandmother’s quarters.

She beelines it for the mantle and grabs the wick lamp that’s always there next to the photograph of Anabel smiling and Hazel ogling her dad. Third time’s a charm, she thinks, remembering the delight on her mother’s pretty face, both of them giggling as Anabel plucked her out of Ruby Creek after Hazel succeeded on her third attempt at a somersault on a hot day like today.

They’ll come in threes, Patience predicted. Three days, three murders . . .

She throws the lamp hard against the window ledge and the glass base bursts open, soaking the cranberry velvet drapes in kerosene.

Three fires: Holloway Ranch, Rhone Bakery, The Winslow—it has to be next.

From her pocket she retrieves the matchbook she took from Honey yesterday, the one with the pig in a bib eating ribs. She strikes several matches at once and lights the drapes at the hem.

The whoosh that follows sucks all the air out of the room with a sound like diving underwater.

All are guilty, but some are guiltier than others, she thinks, and laughs out loud. Her grandfather had easily foiled her attempt in the gazebo; this time she has to succeed. The drapes go up so easily she cannot believe that in over a hundred years it never happened by accident. The fire leaps from floor to ceiling in one fluid motion and Hazel watches, fascinated, as flames stretch greedily to the next set of curtains before fanning out across the carpet.

She beats the flames to the mantle—she has to save the photograph. Because now, it’s the only part of Anabel she wants to hold onto, the only memory worth saving. After snatching the picture, she races out of the burning room.

The fire is spreading so much faster than she imagined it would. She bolts and the fire chases her not down the hallway, but through the rooms—like ghosts walking through walls—devouring bone-dry timber, moving unimpeded toward the staircase, up to the tower, and down to the first floor, snapping like a million firecrackers.

“Fire!” Samuel is yelling at the top of his lungs as Hazel flies down the staircase toward her grandmother in the lobby. People scream and run around pell-mell. Frantic, they pour out from the ballroom—some limping, some crawling, Owen dragging the chaise lounge by one ankle—and cram into the lobby where they bottleneck at the black walnut doors. When the jam loosens everyone funnels out, including her grandmother and Samuel.

Except Hazel doesn’t see Sean with them, and she vows then and there never to lose sight of him again.

She races back into the ballroom where Ben Mathers is still pounding the podium, bellowing with upraised fist, “Where are you going? We’re not finished!”

Then she spots Sean in front of the fireplace, gathering bones. “Sean!” she screams and he looks up, startled. “Let’s go!”

“I can’t leave him here!” Sean plucks the skull from the mantle, shoves it inside the canvas bag, then rushes to bundle it all up.

“Hurry!” she shrieks.

She runs to Mathers and grabs him by one loose-skinned arm and pulls him out of the ballroom just behind Sean who is dragging the big bag. All around them, wallpaper bubbles and the ceiling warps down, as together they cross the lobby, pass over the threshold, and leave the hotel forever. In their wake, history crashes down in an explosion of red embers.

There was no other way, Hazel thinks as she leaps across the dead goat on the porch and trips down into the yard. It was the only way to get everybody out—the lunacy was feeding on itself, growing hungrier. It was the only way to alert the rest of the world that something is very wrong up in Winslow.

There’s shrieking and outrage as people spill across the yard with hot cinders and ash sticking to their sweaty bodies. Many dash for the shelter of the gazebo to escape the rain of debris.

Trailing Sean, Hazel flies down the stone staircase and lands on the gravel driveway, where they watch in silence as windows explode in protest of the heat and the weight of the past bearing down upon aged frames. The smell is caustic and sulfurish and the leaves of fall burning all at once. In the blistering heat, Hazel wonders if the whole mountainside might erupt, spewing bits and pieces of itself all over Stepstone Valley.

Ornate eave brackets detach from The Winslow’s flat roof and crash into the porch balustrade, while old-growth siding warps and buckles. When the tower collapses, Hazel thinks, The only way. The crackling grows louder, the heat intensifies. Her throat and lungs feel seared.

After the top floors cave in, the staircase hangs for a moment in open space—its steps leading to nothing but thin air—until it too relinquishes to the growing mountain of cinders in a deafening crash.

Then the fire eats the southern portion of the ground floor as though it’s tissue paper, pausing to gnaw on the parlor where her grandfather used to pop out waving his arms high over his head and shouting at her and Sean, “Bogeyman’s gonna get ya!” and they’d run out back screeching until they’d reach the safety of the giant oak where they’d split their sides laughing.

The bay window bursts into the yard, sending shards of glass into the trunk of the birch tree her father planted when he was a Boy Scout. Her dad and Samuel Adair had already worried about the prospect of fire during the dry season and had consequently cleared brush and trimmed the other trees away from the hotel. As a result, the fire is starved for fuel after devouring the tall birch and refocuses its fury on the remaining structure.

At least the kids don’t have to worry about this place anymore, Hazel thinks. The Pest House of Horrors is no more.

“Get the fire hose!” Tiny Clemshaw shouts.

“It’s too late for that,” Hap Hotchkiss says.

“Let it burn,” Hazel whispers, “just let it burn.”

She glances at her grandmother standing next to Honey and Samuel at the entrance to the gazebo. Honey’s hands are full of blackberries, the juice staining her fingers purple and dripping on her feet. Together, the three of them watch their home and livelihood burn to the ground.

Catching her grandmother’s eye, Hazel grimaces apologetically.

Sarah dismisses Hazel’s second apology with a stern shake of her head. Then she places a hand over her heart and closes her eyes, her breast swelling with a deep breath. A gesture of relief.

The cloud of smoke billows beautifully black, thick and high into the clear sky.

Hazel squints south in the direction of the fire lookout. “This time, Sparks, you’ll see. You’ll see and you’ll send help.”

At Hazel’s side, Sean is wiping his sweaty, sooty face with the back of his filthy hand. “Guess we’ll both be sent across the creek now.”

“Can’t think of anyone I’d rather share exile with,” she says. Their voices sound hoarse from all the smoke. “We’ll fix up Hawkin Rhone’s cabin. New curtains, a little paint. Adopt Bandit. And eat lots of berries and squirrels.”

“I’m in,” he says. Then he looks her over. “Nice shirt.”

She glances down at the rainbow on her tank top—the sign of hope emblazoned across her chest since Monday night. “Thanks. I think so. Where’s yours?” She laughs. But just as suddenly, she’s sobbing. “I wouldn’t blame you, Sean, if you’d let me drown in Three Fools Creek.”

“Drown? Why would I? You protected me, just like you promised you would.” He puts his arms around her and pulls her close, careful not to crush her arm. “I think I’m starting to feel better already.”

“Good.” She wishes they could stay like this forever.

But he pulls back. “Let’s go.”

“No.” She hugs him to her again.

He gently pushes her away. “Let’s go.”

Hazel raises her head to look at him. “Go where?”

Sean pulls a handful of teeth out of his pocket and hands them to her, then stoops to pick up the bag of bones. “Let’s go put Hawkin Rhone to rest for good.”