“We’ve been waiting a long time,” said one of the girls.
“Waiting for you,” said another.
No.
Being part of something bigger than herself was one thing, but dying to be loved . . . ?
No, this isn’t me. I’m not that girl. I’m Vee, not Vivi. I’m Vee. Virginia Graham!
Vee shoved herself away from the window and ran for the bedroom door. She had to get out, she had to find her dad and run. She managed to fling the door open, and it swung wide and banged against the wall, trembling in its frame. And there was her father, as if sensing her desperation.
Dad!
She wanted to run to him, but something pulled Vee back. An invisible hand lifted her off the ground and threw her across the room. She briefly saw her father being flung in the opposite direction. Like two magnets with the same polarization, they were cast apart, having gotten too close.
Her back hit the far wall of the room. She crashed onto the bed. Scrambling away, Vee ran into her closet, snatched up the silver cross she’d left there, desperate to have some form of defense. That need for self-defense was back. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to stab Jeffrey, only that she had to protect herself somehow.
“Stay away,” she whispered, holding up the cross like a naive girl in an old vampire movie.
Except, instead of hissing in pain and shielding his eyes, Jeffrey smiled, then shook his head with a tsk. “Vivi,” he said.
That’s not my name! she wanted to scream.
“Don’t you understand? God is on my side. He’s the one that put me here, to lead you to salvation.”
The group chuckled among themselves, enjoying the joke.
Vee blinked at him, her back pressed hard against the wall. She tried to put as much distance between herself and the grinning ghosts as she possibly could.
“No. My father told me you tricked everyone,” she said, still holding the cross at arm’s length. “You said you were going to make everyone live forever, but they died.” She shot a look at Chloe Sears, at Georgia Jansen and Shelly Riordan. “Don’t you get it?” she said to them. “He’s a phony! If he was real, you’d all still be alive!”
It was a long shot. Perhaps she could bring them to her side, turn Jeff’s little following against him and save herself at the same time. For a second, she swore she could see their hideous grins waver like a desert mirage.
But Jeffrey moved toward her, leaned in, and placed his hands square against the wall just above her shoulder. His lingering smile vacillated between tolerant and annoyed.
“Vivi,” he said, his words slower than before. “You’re confused. You believe the words of a man who doesn’t even know you’re alive. Your father is a liar.”
“No,” she whispered. “You aren’t even real. I want to see my dad. Right now.”
“Fine.” He shrugged as though Vee’s request was of no consequence to him, then gave his group a look. “Let’s go see Dad,” he told them. “After all, a proper introduction is long overdue.” With that, the eight figures that stood around the room murmured as if in some sort of approval. Before Vee could comprehend what was happening, they had vanished, as though never having been there at all.
55
* * *
Monday, March 14, 1983
Three Hours Before the Sacrament
AUDRA HADN’T SEEN the world beyond the house for nearly three months—not a trip to the grocery store, not even a walk on the beach with Shadow by her side. She no longer knew what day it was. Her only hint at the month was suggested by a calendar that hung on the kitchen wall just shy of the fridge. But the days didn’t matter anymore. Her confinement seemed, at times, imposed by the weather rather than by the people she had once considered her friends. The bleakness of a Washington winter left the sky the color of steel. The ground was wet with cold rain, sent sideways against the windows by an unforgiving wind. If it wasn’t the rain, it was her exhaustion. Nearly nine months pregnant, she had swollen feet, and her fatigue was out of control. But it couldn’t dull the memory of Claire’s garbled scream. Every time Audra closed her eyes and began to drift, she found herself back in the Stephenson home—the floor smeared with Richard’s blood, a butcher knife held fast in her hand.
Despite her guilt, Audra had to focus on the baby.
She had no due date. No doctor to tell her the baby was healthy or whether it was a boy or a girl. None of those things seemed to matter to anyone, and she was left to pretend that it didn’t matter to her just the same. Every time the baby shifted or rolled or kicked, it was a reminder that she would soon be a mother. The closer she inched to the birth of Jeffrey Halcomb’s offspring, the more she wondered if the child would know it had come from her womb. Would they allow her to raise the baby as her own, or would it be passed around among the girls?
Part of her wanted to believe that, had she been born again, she would have loved to have so many women doting over her. The adoration would have been a welcome change to the harsh, pointed peering of her own mother. Locked away in the house, Audra had a lot of time to think about things she wouldn’t have otherwise considered, like how, perhaps, turning her own mother into a grandma would improve their relationship. Perhaps a baby would jump-start something in her mother’s heart—that maternal instinct Audra couldn’t seem to pull away from herself. Because no matter what Jeff and the family believed, she wanted to be Mama. This was her baby, her little bundle. Samson if it was a boy, Sylvie if it was a girl. Sam or Vivi. It didn’t make a bit of difference to Audra which, just as long as she was the one raising it as her own.