It was time to get the hell out of Surette. Christine Lovejoy had thought about it more than once, but lethargy had held her back. Twenty years ago she'd been a kid—the whole thing had been a blur, especially because her mother had given her drugs beforehand—but she knew some real nasty shit had gone down. Little bits of suppressed memory found their way into her nightmares from time to time. It'd been easy to ignore it all, to go along, even when Lindell had vanished. She knew he wasn't dead, not yet anyway, though she feared the tenderness she still felt toward him might become problematic if what she thought was coming was actually coming.

And then there'd been the situation with Lindell's boy, in the bathroom of Gordon's. Holy fucking Christ that'd been disgusting! Why'd he have to go like that, insides splattered all over her? She'd known he was a marked man the moment she'd realized who he was, and that hadn't bothered her in the moment. If she'd have known he was going to die right then and there, however, she wouldn't have looked twice at him.

This whole town was fucked. She knew it; everyone else who'd been born and raised there knew it. Well, except for the ones who didn't. But maybe there was something nice in that, nice that Lindell and his brood hadn't been aware of what was coming to them. Ignorance had kept them living their boring lives, hadn't it? And it'd been easy enough to pretend none of it would ever matter. Christine had always liked Lindell, had always been not exactly jealous of but disappointed by the woman he'd married. Glory hadn't been anything special, but she'd been young, and Lindell liked young. He'd never expressed more than a physical interest in Christine, but the woman knew that was for the best; she wouldn't have married him anyway, would've never reproduced with him. Too risky, all of that. He'd been doomed at conception, as were any and every one of his brood.

How many bras should she take? How many did she even need? Not more than a few. Christine stuffed a couple practical bits of underwear into an inner pocket in her duffel bag and then threw in one or two absolutely impractical pieces of lingerie as well, reasoning that in her line of work, they counted as uniform. She intended to look for restaurant or bar work first, wherever she ended up, but it didn't hurt to have the usual to fall back on,

As for her household belongings? There wasn't anything worth salvaging. A step-cousin of hers lived in Baton Rouge, still—she'd start there, see if she could crash with her cousin until she found work. It'd be a surprise to show up like that, but Christine was desperate.

Toiletries and makeup, next, and oh, God, did she have a lot of those! The woman unrolled a separate bag with multiple tiny pockets and went into her bathroom to begin the selection process. The black cloth over the mirror startled her, though it shouldn't have; several days ago she'd covered the mirrors in her small house after she'd seen something come out of the one at Gordon's. Christine paused, didn't open any drawers or begin rifling through bottles, as a chill pushed through her. Her forehead broke out in a sweat, and for a moment, her body was at odds with itself, feeling either heat or cold though unable to process which. The woman recalled the weight of that man's body as it fell atop her, the way he struggled to move, to get up, to fight back against that terrible shifting, flaming white vision. It'd moved too fast, taking pieces of him with each blinking movement, and Christine, on the floor beneath Aaron's massive fram, his dick squished against her throat and nearly cutting off her air, had closed her eyes against the gruesome sounds of metal coming against meat and juice and bone over and over and over . . . until not much of what was left was recognizable as human.

She took a deep breath. No mirrors for her. Not for some time, anyway. Maybe once she got out of town, she'd be able to use them again, but Christine had a feeling it was going to be a while.

Oh, makeup and toothpaste be damned—she could buy more wherever she went. Christine didn't want to spend another minute here. It'd already been nearly two weeks since Aaron; she'd had to have several sit-downs with the police. They'd needed her around, kept a close eye on her. But the nearer this night drew, the more antsy she'd grown. She did't want to be there when Lindell came back. She couldn't—no, she wouldn't watch it happen to him. He couldn't be saved, wasn't even worth saving, but that didn't mean she had to sit there and watch.

Turning from the bathroom back into her bedroom, grabbing the duffel bag and her car keys, Christine tore down the hall and toward the front door, but the silhouette of a man crossing in front of the clouded window stopped her dead still. Nerves thrummed all the way into her toes and fingers as the visitor knocked.

The back door would do.

Quietly as she could manage, Christine changed course and hurried the short distance to the back door, which opened out over a gravel drive that ran behind her tiny home and the ten or twelve others left to right. Beyond that gravel road were trees thick with early summer greenery, bright with a surprising sunshine after so many weeks of rain. Her car was parked at the side of her house; she could get to it quickly enough without being seen, and once inside, she'd be good to go.

Though she trod lightly, Christine's footsteps crunched on the gravel, but even had she been silent as a ghost, it wouldn't have mattered; Alan Robichaux was leaning against her car, obviously waiting for her.

Christine slumped. She dropped her bag.

"Taking a trip?"

The woman sighed.

Alan's shit-eating grin fell. He righted himself and walked up to Christine. "You know you have to be here tonight, Chris."

The woman pondered his words, then reached out a hand to stroke the police chief's arm. She pouted. "Oh come on, now. I'm just going for a drive. After all I been through, you won't stop me, will you?"

"I damn well will."

"You sure, honey? No way I can convince you?"

Stolid, Alan shook his head.

Christine met Alan's eye, evaluated his sincerity, then dropped her hand and stamped a foot. "Goddammit, Alan! You let me outta here. I don't want to stick around for what's going to happen!"

"You won't make it long out there if you don't. You know it."

"And since when did you care about me? I don't give a shit what happens. I just don't want to be here is all, you understand?"

Alan rested a hand on the gun at his hip, not for any threatening purpose but just as a matter of habit. "I do understand. I don't want to be here, myself, but it's a job my daddy passed on to me, and I've got a responsibility to see it through."

"Yeah? Well I don't have that kind of obligation. Ain't nobody asked me whether I wanted to be involved or not, and I don't, all right? It's my choice to go where I want, and if something bad happens to me because of it, then oh well. You never cared about me before, so I don't know why you care, now."

"We grew up together. I might've always been younger, and you were way too cool to notice someone like me, but all us kids whose people go way back—we always known the truth. If you don't wash—"

"In the blood of the lamb, yeah, yeah," Christine nodded her head peevishly, rolled her eyes. "I know it. But I don't want to do it. No reason why I should have to. I don't care about what happens to me!"

"And frankly I don't, either!" Alan barked, a bit of emotion at last revealing itself. "If it were just about you, then I wouldn't be here, all right? I don't honestly give a shit about you, woman. But no one leaves this close to it. One leak and the whole fucking barrel drains, and you know it. So after? You can go wherever the hell you want, so long as you're back for the next round."

Christine hugged her arms around her body, sniffled sullenly. "And what if I'm not? Back, I mean? What if I never come back?"

"We all been washed, Chris, and once you been washed, you come back to it again, or you and everything around you gets the anger of that curse." Alan sucked in his lips, chewed them along with his thoughts, then reached his free hand toward the woman, palm-up. He curled his fingers in and out. "Give em to me."

"No, I don't want to."

"Chris . . ."

"You can't make me!" Her words had fire, but Christine herself did not. Devolving into a half-sob, she slammed her car keys into Alan's hand. "We fucking are cursed, already! It's us all that's got it, not just them! At least they never know what's coming, but we do . . . I do!"

Alan turned away. "Go back inside, Chris. Just a little bit longer. I'll see you tonight." He headed back to his own vehicle, calling over his shoulder, "And no more half-baked ideas about getting outta here! I got the roads being watched."

Christine watched the police chief until he disappeared around the corner of the house, and then she wound her fingers through her hair and roared in frustration.

But there was nothing else to do. She'd have to go.

For the next few hours, Christine drank any alcohol she could find in her house and then went next door to keep drinking with a friend of hers, who happened to be facing the same feelings of anxiety and resentment. The two of them watched crap on television and complained until they could complain no more, and at some point Christine must've passed out because she found herself being roused after night had fallen.

"We have to go, now," Carla, the friend, affirmed.

Christine pulled herself from the sofa, wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. Her head pounded; her prior drunkenness had fizzled to a low buzz. "You got anything else before we go? I can't do it like this, Carla."

But Carla was older. This was her third time, not her second, and though she hated the whole thing, she'd inured herself to it. "I got nothing, and you don't need it, anyhow. Put on your big girl panties and let's get this over with."

The two women climbed into Carla's sputtering car and took off toward St. Basilio's.

Neither Carla nor Christine were religious people. In fact, the only other times either had been to the church had been at these twenty-year intervals, Christine when she was in her late teens, and Carla once in her thirties and once in middle school. The building was intimidating even in the daylight, with its stone facade, that multi-spired steeple front and center, and its massive red wooden doors, and it was old, the oldest church in Surette (managing to keep its old-country vibes even with all its renovations over the years). Those who'd migrated from up north had brought their religion with them, and though on most Sundays the church maintained a modest following, it saw a rather different motley crew on these twenty-year occasions.

Parking was easy enough. Everything was and had always been strictly regimented, with assigned spots attendees had registered and paid for through the mayor's office (which Christine remembered with a renewed wave of irritation, seeing as she'd paid for a spot she no longer needed), an attendant checking a list of names at the front door, and security keeping watch. While in memory there'd never been any trouble at the service, non-ancestral residents were in theory barred from attending. Had any of them ever asked, they'd been told it was an invite-only sacramental event, a wedding or funeral or Baptism—whatever Father and local law enforcement had agreed on—and because it was held so rarely, the cleansing had never faced scrutiny.

That's what it was, a cleansing. No one ever spoke of it except in whispers and only when it was upon them; it was as if the townsfolk collectively chose to ignore the anomalous thing that drew them together, but if and when they did bring it up, the event was euphemistically referred to as "the celebration" (even if what exactly they were celebrating was a question best avoided).

Grudgingly, Christine followed Carla and the other people arriving and parking and walking in the dark toward the church doors. They were silent, most of them, as they entered, not for any sort of respect so much as from weariness and anxiety. Though many knew one another or at least, having lived in Surette for years, knew of one another, they played the part of strangers in anticipation of this shared trauma. In the narthex, two older women—the sort who were regular Mass attendees and purportedly devout Catholics—smiled and greeted those entering, shook a hand here and patted a shoulder there, tousled the hair of a child, as if this were some normal gathering, as if they were all about to hear and take refuge in the word of God, the Christian God. The women's pleasantries struck Christine as offensive, obscene even, considering the circumstances, but then again, how many times had they done this? At least three or four compared to her one.

After tonight, she was out of Surette, she told herself. Her mother and brother lived here, and her grandma, but it wasn't as if she spoke to any of them. And sure, her girlfriends from high school or work had stuck around, but what else did this place offer her anymore? So what if she had to come back to do this again; twenty years was a long time to get some kind of life together outside of this place!

Even as she grew fired up thinking about her life beyond Surette, though, Christine knew instinctively that once this was over, tonight, the flame of motivation that had impassioned her to venture off into the world a few hours earlier would die down, and she'd do what was easiest. She always did.

St. Basilio's flickered with the flames of hundreds of candles. All the purple and blue and clear-glass votives had been lit in their stands along the sides of the church, and at every pew, along the center aisle, had been placed stands for single pillar candles. Those, too, had been lit, as were the multitude of candles on the altar far ahead. The cavernous building with its vaulted ceiling echoed with shuffling steps and low, murmuring voices. Families with children, the elderly, teens, newlyweds (who were permitted to bring their new spouses only if they were of the old blood) and people all other ages filled the first fifteen or so pews. Walking slowly with Carla, seeking a spot, Christine eyed the children, most of whom were nodding their heads more likely from being drugged than sleepiness. She might've been nearing twenty the first time she'd done this, but her parents had still been kind enough to ease her fear with a combination of valium and benadryl. She wished she'd saved some alcohol to chug before she'd enetered St. Basilio's.

But it was too late for that, now. Christine and all the others settled into their pews, quieted themselves to an intense stillness. Fretful eyes darted about the atrium of the building, caught shadows cast by more than just inconstant candlelight. If she'd ever felt any inclination toward religion, toward greater beings and cosmic forces working beyond the scope of human understanding, Christine realized it'd be right now, in this ethereal, darkly twinkling grotto. She might've even been fooled into thinking there was something majestic, something holy about to happen, had the sluggishly struggling man tied between the two marble lambs not been there.

She tried not to look at Lindell St. James, and yet Christine couldn't help but sense a sliver of excitement beginning to twist its way up from her core.

This was their night—hers and all the others. And maybe she wasn't going to be sorry to see it happen, after all.