“Don’t worry, Sister, we’re all sinners. We’ve all got things in our pasts, deeds and thoughts we’re ashamed of.

“You’re not the first person to seek pleasure using the stuff people have taken to calling Ghost. You’re not the only one to end up confronting the ugliness, the evil that’s slipped into your life while you weren’t watching. You’re not the first person to make a pilgrimage from the city looking for redemption, answering the call.

“Well, you’ve found Him and you’ve found us. Amen!”

“Amen!” came the refrain, thundering through Aisling like a death knell.

“So you make Ghost?” she asked again, needing to be sure but dreading hearing them admit it.

Edom’s frown told her the question was unexpected, unwelcome after the passion of his words.

Elisheba covered his hand with hers and gave Aisling a small, knowing smile. “I’ve heard some become addicted to Ghost because it leads to unparalleled physical ecstasy. But once you’ve known true spiritual rapture, Aisling, you won’t crave Ghost anymore.

“None of the Fellowship members use drugs. They’re high on God and the life he’s brought them to. We don’t make drugs here. We take a small amount of money in exchange for distributing Ghost. And we sell it only in the red zone, where those who buy it might find salvation instead of damnation.”

“Do you really see it as only a drug?” Aisling asked, her voice edged with both horror and disbelief.

Faces closed. Friendliness disappeared. Eyes darted back and forth between her and the preacher and his wife.

A toddler wobbled over and stood between him and Elisheba. “Up, Mommy!” the little girl said, and some of the smiles around the table reappeared briefly.

Edom measured his congregation. His expression grew somber and pensive, the charisma folding in on him, making him seem thoughtful, a man not afraid of searching for and confronting the truth.

“What do you mean?” he asked and Aisling wondered if some of the Fellowship members were opposed to selling Ghost, if maybe they weren’t only sheep after all.

She gathered her thoughts. Chose the words and arguments that would ultimately lead them to tell her who they distributed Ghost for.

“You spoke about The Spirit coming on a person, knocking and opening a doorway to redemption and salvation.”

Aisling paused and from somewhere behind her the space was filled by a soft “Amen.”

“Well, Ghost can serve that purpose. I’m taking it on your faith. It can bring the light.”

Brother Edom nodded. “Amen. It can bring the light.”

“But I know for certain it can bring the darkness. It can open the door and let evil in. I’ve seen it myself.”

“Tell us about it!”

Aisling held back a smile. She felt a rhythm settling in, understood the addictive power of the word.

“What Brother Edom said was right. I was in a place of sin. A place that boasted of it in the name it goes by.”

“We’ve been there, Sister.”

“Brother Edom was wrong when he said I was using Ghost. I wasn’t. But there were men who were.

“Men who bought it from one of you. Who rubbed it on themselves and ate it. Who found the pleasure Sister Elisheba spoke of and became an obscene show for others in that place.”

“Tell us more!”

“I was there when an evil presence swept into the room like an icy wind. I witnessed as it called others to join it and they moved on the men, slid into them like a hand goes into a glove.”

“What happened then?” came a chorus of voices.

“Evil recognized evil!” a strident male voice answered, and Aisling turned her head to see the Ghost seller who’d been present that night approaching the tables, his finger pointing accusingly at her.

He was dirty, his clothing torn and his eyes burning with zeal. The shoulder-length brown hair was tangled and matted, wild-and for an instant his image was overlaid onto one she’d seen in an art book-of the Christians’ savior raging as he cast moneylenders from the temple.

“Evil recognized evil,” the man repeated. “They attacked her and were thrown out of the club. The men were torn apart and eaten by wolves and dogs while the shamaness and her lover ran and the sinners inside cheered for the beasts. And now evil has come into our home, like some of us said it would when we argued against taking money for distributing Ghost.

“You were wrong, Edom, to deal with the wicked, to send us out to their places of evil. And now we’ll all pay for it unless He sees that we can abide by his word and are worthy of protecting.”

The man opened two of the boxes and, without looking, reached in and pulled out snakes. They rattled furiously, struggled and writhed in his grasp, mouths open.

“You shall not allow among you anyone who is an enchanter, or a witch, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer. You shall not allow them to live!” he screamed, hurling the snakes at Aisling and reaching for more of them.

People surged upward from their benches. They scrambled to get away from the snakes that coiled and struck and slid across the wooden table.

A child screamed repeatedly, shrill and terrified.

Zurael lunged. He deflected a snake before it could reach Aisling, then raced forward.

A man yelled as a snake swung around and bit his cheek while he tried to subdue the Ghost seller.

Zurael struck and retreated. Returned to coil at Aisling’s feet, mouth open, his upper body raised and swaying.

The Ghost seller fell, dead before he reached the ground-just as Zurael had promised would happen to anyone who threatened her.

The air vibrated with the rattle of snakes, then was pierced by the screams of a child abruptly silenced.

Men closed in on the freed snakes, recaptured the ones that held their ground, hunted the ones that slipped into the forest.

Only slowly did chaos give way to calm.

Aisling heard the sobs then, the pleading, impassioned prayers. She turned to find Elisheba and Edom kneeling on the ground next to the chubby toddler.

The child was unconscious, shivering. Puncture marks marred her throat and arms where she’d been bitten.

They’d used a knife from the table to slice open her skin. Now they feverishly tried to draw the venom out with their mouths. But the toddler’s condition was testament to how quickly it had already spread.

Aisling took off the necklace with the witch’s healing amulet on it and knelt next to Elisheba. “Will you accept my help?”

Edom looked up and spat blood. His eyes bored into hers, not with the charismatic charm that seemed to offer forgiveness and understanding, but with a diviner’s intensity, as if he was looking for the black stain of evil on her soul.

He glanced at his child. For a horrifying second Aisling thought they’d deny her help.

Elisheba reached across the tiny body and placed her hand on his arm. “Edom, please,” she said and he nodded.

Aisling hoped the amulet was as powerful as Tamara claimed. She pressed it to the wound on the girl’s neck.

The effect was immediate. The little girl stopped shivering. Her eyelashes fluttered, fast at first, then slower, as if she were being drawn back to awareness at the same rate the venom was being absorbed by the amulet.

Underneath Aisling’s fingers, the woven strands of the amulet softened and took on the texture of wet yarn before hardening again, turning from pale gray to black, and finally crumbling from the outer edges inward.

The angry streaks on the child’s arms and neck, left by the spreading venom, receded. Disappeared.

A whimper heralded the little girl’s return to consciousness. Elisheba stroked the damp, silver-blond curls and whispered prayers of thanks. She cried in joyous relief when her daughter’s eyes opened and chubby arms reached upward.

All that remained of the amulet was a large coin-sized circle. It had stopped changing against Aisling’s fingers so she lifted it away from the child’s skin.