Kim had no idea what to make of the shrunken figure sitting on the other side of the visitor's table, though she recognized her old neighbor immediately. Though she'd been told a family friend was coming to visit her, she'd had no idea who it could be and had blithely shrugged at the request, figuring it was some mistake.

The weeks had blurred for Kim, and she'd lived them with an inner peace she'd never known achievable. Sure, there were occasional fights amongst the teens, and she was on a very strict schedule, but she'd found that as long as she kept her head down and went about her days quietly, they flowed as smooth as silk. Even completing schoolwork didn't bother her—she was essentially being forced to complete her GED, and though the bookwork wasn't particularly easy for Kim and she'd needed reading help and audio aids, the material kept her busy, gave her something to do. It'd never been the work aspect of school that she'd hated—it'd been the social aspect. The other people. She'd never been quite savvy enough to know exactly what other teens said about her, only that they she didn't fit, that they mocked her. Now that the social parameters had been removed, learning came somewhat naturally. Where it would take her in life, Kim couldn't say; for as far as she knew, her life would be spent behind bars.

Her crime and conviction had taken on something of a strange angle. She knew of it only from what the adults sometimes let slip around her. Satanism—Tyler's death was being linked to some kind of devil worship and, by default, so was she. Rumors swirled about her, but Kim never discussed anything about her apparent crime, in large part because she little remembered it. She'd had no revelations or dreams to clarify what'd happened with Tyler, no intuition, no signs, and even if she had gained insight, she wasn't interested in bringing all of it back up. She wanted to forget her homelife as much as possible, so to see Ms. Mariana was not only confusing but also unwelcome.

Kim's first wonder on approaching the table was how in the world the old woman had gotten so far out of Surette. She had to be somewhere in her eighties at least, and while she was spry, Miss Mariana didn't drive, in large part due to that one pale fishy eye (she'd once told Kim she'd been blinded due to some childhood accident). The other one could see but still watered like an overripe apricot. Kim had never felt entirely comfortable looking at the old woman, and though she'd been at the house enough over the years, Mariana hadn't ever made much effort to converse or bond with Kim and instead gave all her attention to the little ones. In spite of her bewilderment, though, the sixteen-year-old settled into a chair across the table.

"Well, now. Look at you, Kimberly," Mariana croaked.

Kim's long brown hair had been cropped short and hung in something between a shag and a mullet. She wore the standard stiff red pants and tee, and though she'd never worn makeup her face seemed far paler and acne-ridden than it'd been when she'd lived at home.

"How have you been, darlin'?"

Mariana smiled, and Kim tried to return the gesture but struggled. Not even her own mother had visited her out here; why had this old lady come?

"I'm sure you've heard of some things happenin' in your family."

Kim sat back from the table, legs splayed, her clasped hands hanging between her knees. No, she wanted to say. Nobody talked to her, and that was how she liked it. But she had a feeling Miss Mariana was about to tell her things about her family, whether she wanted to know about them or not.

But the old woman didn't. Instead, she tapped a crooked finger on the tabletop (Kim took note of the split fingernail at the top of it), and said, "You don't need to worry about your conscience, if you've been cooped up in here frettin' about things. You see, hon, you didn't kill your brother; I did."

For a moment, Kim just stared at Mariana, unable to comprehend what she'd said. The preposterous confession had come so entirely out of nowhere. This old woman? This weird but congenial aged, hunched figure with her milky eye and her creaking joints and her hobbling bow-legs? Not only was the notion of her physically wielding an axe against a healthy seventeen-year-old Tyler ridiculous, but it was inconceivable, considering the woman's kindly interactions in all of their lives over the years they'd known her. Why, Miss Mariana had been a staple, a constant, always there helping Kim's momma with childcare and childbirth, always chatting over a her cigarettes or "treats," as she called her adult beverages, always scolding the little ones as if they were her own! . . . No. No, the very idea of her brutally murdering anyone was impossible.

"Don't you worry yourself about it, Miss Kim," Mariana drawled on, either ignoring or oblivious to Kim's disbelief. "You're safer here than back home, as you well seem to know. Smart of you, darlin', to get yourself out of town. That curse trackin' down your family can't touch you out here, so you just stay put, all right?"

At last Kim found the need to respond, though all she could do was snort, "Don't think I got much say in it, do I?"

"No, you don't."

Mariana fell into a pause that would've been awkward had not the whole situation been already so bizarre. As it was, Kim was struggling to process this weird intrusion from her past life into her present, and she wasn't altogether sure she appreciated it. The last person to visit had been her father—well, and Micheal. And that'd left a bad taste in her mouth. None of her family members had so much as called or written since then, and she'd been perfectly fine with the separation. Kim couldn't say she loved her new life (she wasn't sure she could say she loved anything), but she could say she didn't miss the old. All she could do in the moment was stare at her visitor,

"I understand this is a bit much to take in, but I've always liked you, Kim. You've a decent head on those square shoulders of yours, even if it ain't much to look at. I'd hate to see you come to more harm. So you do your best to stay away, you hear? Even if you by some chance get yourself out of here, do not come home. You have no home, you hear me?"

"That's what you came all the way out here to tell me?" Kim raised her thin eyebrows, moved her hands from her lap up onto the table as her discomfort eased.

"Sure did, hon. That, and of course the truth about your brother."

"Oh, right. That you killed him."

"Sure did."

Had Kim been able to see herself in a mirror, she'd have perhaps attempted to smooth the incredulity from her features. As it was, she had no sense of her overt skeptical affect, and Miss Mariana gave no notion of seeing it, herself, smiling her crooked-toothed smile as idiotically blissful as possible.

Quite unexpectedly, the old woman snapped out a bony hand as finely-webbed as a bat wing and gripped one of Kim's wrists. "The axe is already at the root of the trees, my girl," Mariana snarled, a bit of spittle forming tremulously at the corner of her cracked lips, "and every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire!"

Mesmerized by the pearlescent fluid swirling across the woman's pale eye, Kim felt no fear, only vexation. She pulled her wrist back toward herself, though Miss Mariana's iron-gripping claws shred her flesh to the point blood began to bead up in four neat lines across Kim's forearm. The woman and the teenager sat staring at one another for what felt an eternity before at last Mariana's taut features relaxed, and her kindly affect returned.

"Glad we've had this talk, Kim. You heed my words, and all will work out well for you."

"How did you get here?" Kim asked at last. "Did my mother drive you?"

"Sweet of you to ask, hon, but I've got my dog with me."

Dog? Kim didn't recall Miss Mariana having a dog, but of course, much could've changed in her time away. Course, that didn't explain how the old woman had managed to get herself all the way out to Terrebonne. But Kim was disinclined to continue conversation. The marks on her arm, while not deep, had begun to sting. So she watched Mariana rise from her chair like a loaf of bread, kept her eyes on the old woman as she turned around and waved to a guard to let her out. Dressed in her shapeless blue dress and old woman tennis shoes, her sparse hair up in a sloppy bun, Miss Mariana looked entirely haphazard and harmless, putting her words and actions at odds with her affect. Kim didn't know what to make of anything that'd just happened, so she decided not to think much of it at all.

She waited for a guard to fetch her, then went to the clinic to get her arm cleaned.

Kim went through the rest of her daily routine with literally no thoughts of the day's visitor. Schoolwork, outdoor recreation (during which she tended to walk laps on the barbed-wire-fenced track outside, meal time, showers—all of these things kept her busy, and Kim had never been good at multi-tasking or even multi-thinking.

By the time she returned to her room, night had fallen. A few weeks earlier, Kim had been moved out of her single cell into one meant for two. A bunk was in this new cell, but as of yet, no roommate had moved in. Kim hadn't been particularly happy about the change, though it'd been made on account of her good (perfect, really) behavior. She supposed singleton rooms were inconvenient unless the young people housed in them were violent, and she'd been anything but dangerous. Still, the thought of having to put up with some other person disappointed her. She'd relished her solitude. Whoever they brought in, Kim just hoped it was someone as equally introverted as she.

This area of the detention facility in general was more populated. Kim's single room had been one of several in an isolated hallway, but here, where the "safer" juveniles dwelt, the cells fanned out around a circular common room, and a stairway led up to a second level of cells above the first. While many of her peers settled in the common space to watch whatever movie would be played for them, Kim retreated to her room. A guard let her in before shutting and locking the door behind her.

Still no sign of a second occupant. Kim was glad of it. She used the toilet and climbed onto her lower bunk, spreading her blanket across her gangly frame. There was one window in the outer wall, and though it was criss-crossed with metal bars, it allowed in a bit of moonlight which, if she were in bed at the right time, shone right down onto her, right next to her knees. Kim enjoyed that pale bit of illumination whenever she chanced to see it, although the way the moonlight wavered as she moved her legs somehow reminded her of the visit from Miss Mariana that afternoon.

Turning onto her side, Kim pulled her legs back, let the moonlight shine on a flat spot in the blanket. She tucked her hands beneath her pillow and stared at nothing in particular, and as she allowed her thoughts to wander, they managed to find themselves back behind her old home, moving through the forest of black trunks and shoals of vegetation. She followed her mind's eye to the largest tree, the one where she and Cassidy and Tyler had used to play, and she saw the gashes in its bark—the ones she'd seen before Tyler's death. They were still there, she knew, though in her imagination, they bled. They wept. Their beloved ancient tupelo with all its gnarled limbs and hundreds of knobby knees rising up into the mist out of the soil . . . it was mocking her. Kim knew it as much as she knew her own name. The tree wasn't suffering; it was laughing at her. The gashes in that trunk, they'd been the hysterical warning call heralding Tyler's demise as much as her own. And as she stood before the tree in her half-awake state, watching it run red, a howl echoed throughout the forest, rumbled across the bayou and toward her, rustling all the ground and hanging plants as it approached. Howling, like a—like a wolf . . .

But there were no wolves in Louisiana. Not anymore. She knew that.

Was it even now, all these miles away, howling outside her window? Kim felt so sure of the sound that she sat up in bed. Beyond her door, the silence was heavy; the others must have all gone to their beds by now, as well. What had woken her, anyway?

A howl. Yes, that'd been it. But only silence met her ears, now. That and her own panting. Kim put a hand to her face, felt one cheek and then the other, was surprised to find how clammy they were. And as she wondered at herself, a rustling noise from above startled her. The mattress springs on the upper bunk creaked; a blanket shifted so that a corner hung down from above, and Kim's eyes and lips peeled back in surprise.

She had a new roommate!

But . . . when? And how, without her knowing it? They must've been very quiet moving the girl in, either that or she'd been so out of it she'd not awakened. And yet, Kim didn't feel as if she'd slept much at all . . .

She wanted to see. Just take a quick peek to assure herself she wasn't going crazy. Dammit, if Miss Mariana's visit hadn't screwed with her brain! No wonder she was having weird dreams about wolves and trees and the bayou.

Well, she'd put a stop to this nonsense. She didn't want anything disturbing her newfound equanimity.

Turning her body, Kim put bare feet on the cool concrete floor. She rose a bit unsteadily, keeping as quiet as possible. No need to wake the new girl—that could be awkward. Kim just wanted to assure that there was indeed someone in that bed above her. From where she stood, she could see only the covers bunched up against the railing. It wasn't enough. Kim knew she should probably climb back into her own bed, but a compulsion overcame her, a need to know, to be certain. A few light steps, and she put her hand to the blanket. She'd pull it back, gently . . . even now Kim was eye-level with the upper bunk, as tall as she was; she'd easily be able to see.

Taking in a deep, silent breath, Kim made up her mind and slowly began to peel back the felted brown covering, and what she saw first was a hand, pale as the moonlight itself, lying palm down. The fingers were tiny, thin as twigs, and something about them, about the fingernails, broken and blue . . .

Concerned, Kim swept the entire blanket off the body to which the arm was attached, and the ghost-white form of a small girl in a white dress, bare legs and feet, her curls splayed out around her head, her mouth agape, her eyes—her eyes!—bandaged and seeping black blood—

Kim stumbled backward, into the concrete half-wall separating the toilet from the rest of the small space, but a snarl drew her attention toward the door, where an enormous dark creature flashed its teeth, its eyes gleaming red as cherries.

"Kim! Kim!"

Hands were on her shoulders, shaking her, and all at once, Kim blinked. Light. Bright light. She was on the floor of her cell; her door had been opened, her light turned on, and a guard was shaking her. Past the door gaped faces of other juveniles, but they were quickly shooed away.

"You all right?"

Disoriented, Kim shook her head. "Yeah, I'm . . ."

"You were yelling. Maybe a dream?"

"Maybe . . ."

The guard helped her up. "Come on. We'll get you to the clinic."

"No, I'm fine—"

"You're bleeding."

Kim glanced at her arm, the one Miss Mariana had scratched. And beyond the bandaid already covering the nail marks, finely etched as if done with a safety pin, were words: Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?