Claire fell to her knees, groping at her husband’s neck, trying to put the blood that was pouring from his wound back into his body. Richard’s mouth opened and closed as he gasped for air, each attempt only drawing more blood down his throat. Within seconds, his gasps turned into wet gurgling. Claire’s screams grew worse—bad enough to have Jeff shooting his brothers and sisters a look. If she kept howling the way she was, someone was liable to hear her.

“Shut her up,” he told them. The girls were the first to fall upon her. Sunnie and Lily tore at her hair. Clover held her arms. Gypsy shoved a wadded-up dishrag into Claire’s mouth. They dragged her away from Richard’s body, his blood streaking across the carpet in wide, impressionistic arcs.

And then Jeffrey turned to Avis and held out the knife.

“Your turn,” he said.

Avis stared disbelieving at the blade. Richard’s blood dripped from its razored edge. She shook her head, not understanding, refusing to understand. There was no way. Jeff couldn’t be asking her to do this. But before she could convince herself that she was seeing things, that she was making the whole scenario up in her head—nothing but a side effect of skipping her meds—Jeffrey grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet, forcing the knife into her hand.

“We sacrifice ourselves for each other,” he said. “Our lives mean nothing separately. Together, we are eternal.”

She shook her head frantically, jerked her arm out of Jeff’s grasp, and threw the knife down, revolted by the blood that was now smeared across her palm. “No,” she whispered, her gaze jumping to the girls, to Claire, to the way her struggle had gone from panicked strength to resolved weakness. Claire was giving up. She had hardly fought, and already she was ready to fold, much like Avis. She had struggled to be part of the family, and now she was ready to run as fast and as far away from them as her legs would allow. But she wouldn’t manage to make it through the front door. Shooting a wild-eyed glance at her surroundings, she saw that the boys had moved to block off potential points of exit. She looked to Deacon, imploring him for help. From the first day she’d met him on the beach, she’d always considered him a friend. And yet Deacon didn’t make a move to protect her. How could he allow this to happen? What had happened to peace and love? What had happened to the euphoria he’d promised her she’d find? She wasn’t Avis, she wasn’t.

“Why are you doing this?” Her gaze jumped from one face to the other. “Why are you doing this?!” She spun around to look back at Jeffrey only to find that Maggie was next to him again. She had picked up the knife.

“Maggie . . .” She wept the name. Maggie, her one true friend. The friend that should have been enough but wasn’t. The friend Audra would have abandoned had Maggie not forced her way into the group. The friend she resented despite all she had done.

“Maggie,” she whispered again. Maggie gave her a sad sort of smile and stepped forward. She took Audra by the hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“This is what you wanted,” Maggie reminded her. “You have to have faith.”

“No.” She shook her head again. “No. I don’t want it anymore.”

Maggie looked to Jeff. Audra turned her attention to him as well.

“I don’t want it anymore!” she cried. “You can’t make me do th—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence. Maggie turned back to her in a flash, pressed the knife into Audra’s hand, and shoved Audra toward Claire. The blade sank into Claire’s shoulder, giving rise to a muffled scream. Claire thrashed against her captors, choked against her gag. Audra tried to reel away, her own scream now mingling with the home owner’s dampened one. But before she could wrench her arm out of Maggie’s grasp, the boys swept in. Kenzie and Noah grabbed her left arm while Deacon aided Maggie on the right.

Jeff stepped into Audra’s view, canted his head to the side, and gave her a thoughtful look.

“You’re weak,” he said. “But fear is to be expected, Avis. You’ve always been weak, and the weak are afraid of everything.”

She fought against the hands that held her, but it was useless. She couldn’t move.

“You see, they were all weak,” Jeff said, motioning to the people who surrounded her, who held her and the thrashing, sobbing Claire. “But the weak can be taught to be strong. You have to push through the fear, Avis, push through the darkness. We’re all born weeping and afraid. Sometimes we must be thrust into fearlessness by the hand of another. Only then will we truly learn to live.”

She could hardly breathe. Jeffrey reached out and wrapped his fingers over her own, securing the knife she so desperately wanted to toss aside a second time, forced to keep it in her grasp by Maggie’s unwavering hand. His fingers closed tight over Audra’s fist, the hilt of the knife biting into the meat of her palm.

“You are the mother of The Child,” he said.

“The child is the key,” the group called back in unison, making Audra jump at their communal response.

“You cannot fear what must be done,” Jeffrey told her.

“Life brings death brings life,” they chanted.

“Life brings death,” Jeff repeated. “Death brings life. Bring death,” he said, guiding the knife in Audra’s hand toward Claire, who was being hefted up onto her knees by the girls.

“Bring death,” he said as Claire began to scream again, Gypsy and Clover drawing the woman toward Audra while Avis was forced forward by the boys. “Bring death,” he said a third time, his own hand guiding hers as the blade cut the beginning of a blooming red line just beneath Claire’s left ear. “Death is the beginning of eternity, Avis. Life is merely temporary.”

47

LUCAS SPENT A good fifteen minutes on the phone with the emergency dispatcher. He described the vandalism inside the house and reported the Maxima as stolen.

“I’m sorry, what year did you say the car was manufactured?” The 911 operator sounded unsure of herself.

“Jesus Christ, it’s a 2011.”

“. . . 2011,” she said steadily. “Sir, is everything all right?”

“No, everything is not all right,” he snapped. “How could it possibly be all right? I told you, someone was in my house. Someone may still be in my house. And my car has been stolen. How does that sound all right?” Jeanie made eyes at him. Dad, cool it. He took a breath and tried to take it down a notch. “Sorry, I’m just . . . I’m freaking out. Are you sending someone or what?”

“An officer will be out shortly to take a statement and file a report.”

“What about the people?”

“The people, sir?” The connection was bad. Tinny. The dispatcher sounded far away, underwater. Fucking phone, he thought. Maybe if it wasn’t such a cheap piece of crap, he would have gotten Mark’s messages. Lucas was sure that his cell’s shitty quality was the reason Mark’s dozen or so voice mails had been lost to the void.

“The people who may still be in the house,” Lucas clarified, trying to keep it together. He pressed his phone so hard against his ear it was a wonder it didn’t affix itself to his skull.

“Please do not go inside the home until an officer arrives, sir,” the dispatcher told him. Lucas seethed and ended the call.

Jeanie watched him with wary eyes. “You really think they’re still in there?” she asked, shifting her weight from one bare foot to another. Something about the way she was standing rubbed him the wrong way. It was almost as though she didn’t believe him despite how amped up he was. I’m not fucking crazy, he thought. Someone had stacked the furniture up to the goddamn ceiling, and unless they’d also spiked his coffee with LSD, he hadn’t hallucinated it.