"WELL, Mrs. Brown, how fascinating to see you here! Always in the thick of things, I see."

His Excellency smiles like a skeleton, jaw agape at some private joke. Sam shuffles next to me but holds his peace. You do not talk back to the Bishop, especially when it's clear that his humor is a mercurial thing, a butterfly floating above a blast furnace of rage at the intrusion that has spoiled his Sunday.

Fiore clears his throat. "She is not a suspect," he says stiffly.

"What?" Yourdon's head whips round like a snake's. The police zombies around us tense as if nervous, hands going to the batons at their belts.

It's been half an hour since I opened the door, and the cops have surrounded the churchyard. They're not letting people go until Yourdon says so. He's clearly in a foul mood. Cold-blooded murder isn't something our community has had to deal with so far, and if we're to stay in the spirit of the experiment, we must remember that to the ancients it was as grievous a crime as identity theft or relational corruption. It's at this point that the deficiencies of our little parish become apparent. Wehave no real chief of police, no trained investigators. And so the Bishop is forced to tend his flock in person.

"I saw her arrive with her husband, she was present throughout the service, and numerous witnesses saw her approach the door and go inside, then heard her scream. She was alone inside for all of ten seconds, and if you think she could have committed the offense in that space of time . . ."

"I'll ask for you to second-guess me when I can't be bothered to make up my own mind." Yourdon's cheek twitches, then he switches his attention to Martin so abruptly I feel my knees weaken. An invisible pressure has come off my skull. "You. What did you see?"

Martin clears his throat, and is stuttering into an account of finding me screaming before a corpse when a cop walks up to Fiore for a brief, mumbled conversation.

Yourdon glares at his subordinate. "Will you stop that?"

Fiore shuffles. "I have new information, Your Excellency."

"Yes? Well, out with it! I haven't got all day."

Fiore—the bumptious, supercilious buffoon of a priest who likes nothing more than to lord it over his congregation—wilts like a punctured aerostat. "A preliminary forensic examination appears to have revealed DNA traces left by the killer."

Yourdon snorts. "Why did we wait to commission a squad of detectives? Come on, don't waste my time."

Fiore takes a sheet of paper from the cop. "PCR amplification in accordance with—no, skip that—determines that the fingerprint on file is congruent with, uh, myself. And nobody else in YFH-Polity."

Yourdon looks furious. "Are you telling me that you strung him up to bleed out?"

To his credit, Fiore holds his ground. "No, Your Excellency, I'm telling you that the murderer is playing with us."

I lean against Sam, feeling nauseous. But that was my fantasy, wasn't it? About how to deal with Mick. And I never told anyone about it. Which means, I must be the killer! Except I didn't do it. What's going on?

"That's it." Yourdon claps his hands together. "Action this day—you, Reverend Fiore, will coordinate with Dr. Hanta to select, train, and augment a chief police constable. Who in turn will be empowered and authorized to induct four citizens into the police force at the rank of sergeant. You will also discuss with me at a later date the selection of a judge, procedures for arraigning criminals before a jury, and the appointment of an executioner." He glares at the priest. "Then you will, I trust, return your chapel to the pristine condition it was in before I entrusted it to you—and see to the pastoral care of your flock, many of whom are in dire need of direction!"

The Bishop turns on his heel and sweeps back toward his long black limousine, trailed by a trio of police zombies bearing primitive but effective automatic weapons. I sag against Sam's arm, but he keeps me upright. Fiore waits until the Bishop slams his door shut, then takes a deep breath and shakes his head lugubriously. "No good will come of this," he grumbles in our direction—us, the proximate witnesses, and the zombies who discreetly hem us in. "Police: dismissed. Citizens, you should attend to the state of your consciences. At least one of you knows exactly what happened here today, before the service, and staying silent will not be to your benefit."

The police zombies begin to disperse, followed by a gaggle of curious parishioners. I approach Fiore cautiously. I'm very disturbed, and I'm not sure this is the right time, but . . .

"Yes, what is it, my child?" He narrows his eyes and composes his face in a smile of benediction.

"Father, I, I wonder if I can have a word with you?" I ask hesitantly.

"Of course." He glances at a police zombie. "Go to the vestry, fetch a mop and bucket and cleaning materials, and begin cleaning up the floor of the bell tower."

"It's about . . ." I trail off. My conscience really is pricking me, but I'm not sure how to continue. I feel eyes on me from across the yard, curious eyes wondering what I'm saying.

"Do you know who did it?" Fiore demands.

"No, I wanted to talk to you about Janis, she's been very strange lately—"

"Do you think Janis killed him?" Bushy elevated eyebrows frame dark eyes that stare down his patrician nose at me, a nose that doesn't belong to the same face as those wattles of fatty tissue around his throat. "Do you?"

"Uh, no—"

"Some other time, then," he says, and before I realize I'm dismissed, he's calling out to another police zombie, "You! You, I say! Go to the undertaker depot and bring a coffin to the bell tower—" And a moment later he's walking away from me, cassock flapping around his boots.

"Come on," says Sam. "Let's go home right now." He takes me by the arm.

I screw up my eyes to keep from crying. "Let's."

He leads me across the car park toward the waiting queue of taxis. "What did you try to tell Fiore?" he asks quietly.

"Nothing." If he wants to know so badly, he can talk to me the rest of the time, when I'm lonely.

"I don't believe you." He's silent for a minute as we get into a taxi.

"Then don't believe me." The taxi pulls away from the curb without asking us where we want to go. The zombies know us all by sight.

"Reeve." I look at him. He stares at me, his expression serious.

"What?"

"Please don't make me hate you."

"Too late," I say bitterly. And right then, for exactly that moment, it's true.

17. Mission

IT'S raining when I wake up the day after the murder. And it rains—gently, lightly, but persistently—every day for the rest of the week, mirroring my mood to perfection.

I've got the run of the house and doctor's orders to take things easy—no need to go in to work in the library—so I should be happy. I made up my mind to be happy here, didn't I? But I seem to have messed things up with Sam, and there are dark, frightening undercurrents at work around me—people who've made the opposite choice and who'll pounce on me in an instant if I don't tread a careful line. Now that I have time to think things through, I'm profoundly glad that Fiore wasn't paying attention when I tried to tell him about Janis. Life is getting cheaper by the week, and there are no free resurrections here—no home assemblers to back up on daily.

Am I really that worried?

Yes.

I manage to make it through to Thursday morning before I crack. I wake up with the dawn light (I'm not sleeping well at present), and I hear Sam puttering around the bathroom. I look out the window at the raindrops that steadily fall like a translucent curtain before the vegetation, and I realize that I can't stand this any more. I don't want another day on my own in the house. I know Dr. Hanta said to take the whole week off to recover, but I feel fine, and at least if I go in to work, there'll be something to do, won't there? Someone to talk to. A friend, of sorts, even if she's behaving weirdly these days. And even if I feel uncomfortable about what I'll say when I see her.