“So don’t slink around town,” Marci whispered back, “and people won’t have anything to warn each other about. And if all you do is ask a bunch of questions and leave, it’s no wonder people get suspicious. Church is about community: if you take from it, they resent you, but if you participate they protect you. We’re part of the group now—”
“Shhhh!” We looked over and saw Beth raising a shaky finger to her lips. Several other people were glaring at us as well; they couldn’t hear what we were saying, but they didn’t want us whispering. I nodded and closed my mouth, staring at the pastor but ignoring his words while I analyzed our situation. Marci might be right—if we had to stay in Dillon for a while, being part of the community might make a lot of things easier, even if it did expose us. In the past we’d always stayed on the edges, studying things from the outside, trying to make sure that no one saw or heard us enough to think twice about us. But that strategy meant that when they did think about us it was always bad. This way we’d stay more visible, more present in people’s minds, but they’d be more likely to think well about us, as friends or neighbors instead of suspicious travelers. It made me nervous, but these days everything made me nervous. I couldn’t hunt demons and run from more demons and keep a low profile and pump people for information and find food and take care of a dog and a crazy girl all at the same time without something starting to crack. Even just sitting here, in an air-conditioned building, felt like a luxury, and that only made me more nervous. I couldn’t afford to relax; I had to stay focused. For all I knew the demon was right here in this room, and more demons were converging on the building. I had to be alert and ready.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to surrender, just for a moment, and relax. I didn’t have to do everything, all the time, completely by myself. Marci was showing herself to be just as competent as I remembered, maybe even more so, and even Brooke had surprised me with her cleverness in Yashodh’s farmhouse. I needed to treat them … or her … like a partner and not a burden. I had to let go.
I opened my eyes, checking the windows and the doors with one quick sweep of my head. Letting go sounded good in theory, right up until we were captured or killed. I could relax when our enemies were dead.
The sermon went on for about a half an hour, interspersed with hymns that sounded every bit as dirgelike as the ones we’d sung in the mortuary. When the meeting ended we split into groups, the kids going to a basement room and the adults breaking out into groups for Sunday school. I even saw Corey, but if he saw us he didn’t say anything. We stayed with Ingrid, and she introduced us to her friends, most of them as old as she was. The pastor walked over to shake our hands as well, and we lied our way through a minute or two of small talk while our dogs sniffed each other’s butts. I mostly stayed quiet, speaking only to answer direct questions, letting Marci charm the crowd with her easy wit and Brooke’s clear smile. Most of the questions were simple—where were we from, why were we in town—and we answered them with the same vague story about taking a year off from college. Then the pastor asked the question I’d been dreading:
“Do you have a place to stay?”
It meant he’d seen how dirty we were and guessed we’d slept outside last night. It meant he knew we were homeless, and despite our stories, he was worried for our well-being. He might even be wondering if someone missed us, if our parents knew where we were, if we’d run away from something terrible and needed help, or even from something good because we were too young and foolish to see it for the blessing it was. Adults who were scared of me made my job harder, but adults who tried to help could make my job impossible.
Before we’d gone to Baker, we’d spent two months in a town called Bunnell, close enough to a state park that it had a campground right outside of town. We’d gotten a tent from one of Potash’s depots, so we’d set it up in the campground and explained our long-term presence that way, which had been enough for most people to ignore us. Dillon didn’t have anything like that, and it was much smaller than most of the town’s we’d visited, so I didn’t think I could fall back on my “staying with a cousin” excuse. Everyone in this town was likely to know everyone else.
“We’re just passing through,” I said. “We’re doing fine.”
“You don’t have a place to stay?” asked a woman on the edge of the circle. “Does that mean you don’t have anything to eat?”
“We’re fine,” I said, feeling like a noose was tightening around our necks. “Thank you, but we’re actually totally set up, and you don’t need to worry about us at all—”
“Ridiculous,” said the woman. She was younger than the others, with black hair that had only just started to gray, strands of wispy silver floating above the rest like a halo. “You’re eating at my house today. I made a bacon-pecan pie last night, and it’d be a downright shame if I had to eat it all myself.”
“I’m vegetarian,” I said quickly.