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“The tech is on the rounds in Meadow and Klein,” the Bishop says through gritted teeth. “He won’t be back for at least two weeks. We’ll have to make a plan after services.” He whirls around to leave and the doorway fills with light again.

“I’m going to ride around the perimeter once,” Jayne says in a low hush as she passes by my pallet stack. “You make yourself scarce in the meantime, you hear?”

I want desperately to ask her why she’s covering for me, why she’s not arresting me. But I can’t even eke out a
why
above my shivering adrenaline. I still have to hike another wet mile back to my fizzled plan to conquer and run, which now consists of a backpack strapped to a horse who has, in all likelihood, worked himself free and returned to the safety of home.

Whatever that means.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Syd

The river is slightly lower by the time I get back to the rope, but my ass is still doubly soaked when I reach the other side. I look toward town, where the evening streets are devoid of lights. The Willis mansion and the diner are lit—likely off generators like the station—but the rest of the buildings are woefully dark. I don’t know what else to do except to start laughing. In that moment, this was exactly what I wanted.

The dusky shadows lose their novelty when, as I feared, I find the horse isn’t where I left him. I whistle, low and soft the way my dad taught me long ago, making my way around the clearing.

I hear a rustling, and the horse appears with Cas atop her own mount on the other end of his lead. “Found him at your house. Figured you wouldn’t want to walk.” Her voice is simmering; she’s doing that thing where she’s a crystalline version of nice.

“Thanks,” I venture, though I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to walk. Alone. I want to be out of these clothes, whatever else.
Hot mess,
Danny would have said, though I would have vehemently disagreed about the temperature of said mess.

Spurred on by the chill, I mount up for the short ride back to the ranch when I realize the saddle doesn’t feel right. “Cas, did you take my pack off?”

“
I’m
not the one in the habit of messing with things I don’t know anything about.”

I start to try to explain but there’s more stirring on the other side of the clearing. Becky Purcell steps from the shadows dangling my backpack.

“My stars,” she says. “If it isn’t the saint and the sellout. Looking for this?”

Why was I so stupid to leave it? It would have been better off totally submerged than with Becky. “Can I have that back?” I try to ask as nicely as I can, but my teeth are chattering.

“Let’s see what’s inside first, shall we?”

“Let’s not. Just hand it over.” I’m back off my horse, handing the reins to Cas. I’ve had it with Becky Purcell and her inner thirteen-year-old’s inferiority complex. The day has been way too long for this kind of shit.

“Let’s see. Seven cans of tuna? You live next to a river now, you know.”

“Just give it to her, Becky,” Cas says. The horses are getting antsy, and she’s having trouble managing both as they dance around, sensing our unease.

Becky roots through the pack. “Ooh, a key with a keychain! Exciting. Clothes. Lots of clothes. Tummy pills. And, what’s this, Er . . . Erythro . . .”

“Don’t.” Mina’s medicine. I am alight with rage. “You don’t want to mess with me.”

“The good stuff, eh?”

“Antibiotics, you cretin.”

She scoffs at the bottle, but throws it back in the pack. “Look at you, Cressyda Turner. Here I thought you were all washed up, but you got the wonder twins at your behest, the Governor’s son on his knee. Don’t have time for an STD, eh?” She’s doubled over laughing.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, keep up. Mama says nobody gets anywhere in those dance companies without sleeping their way to the top.”

How was it possible she had held on to so much anger toward me when I hadn’t even remembered her name? “I was fourteen when I got into the Company. I didn’t . . . You know what, never mind. Just because you’ve been humping on your inbred cousins your whole life—”

“Syd, don’t say things you can’t unsay.”

I wave Cas off.

“Here we go.” Becky pulls out the journal and drops the rest of the pack. “This looks like a bestseller in the making.”

“That’s not yours.” I’m within five or six paces of launching myself at her when she steps sideways and holds the book over the water. I freeze. “No. Please. I’m sorry.”

The journal is the only way left to communicate with my dad. It’s not much, wouldn’t be worth anything to anyone else, but it’s more than I’ve ever had. “Pick one,” Becky says. “You can have one thing. The rest, you overrated attention whore, is mine.”

“You made the right decision,” Cas is saying, as she throws her dry fleece over my shoulders. “Everything but the journal is replaceable. We can get more drugs, right, and key chains, and the Spirit knows you have a tuna collection like no other.”

She doesn’t sound as angry now, though she’s still not happy with me. We ride in fits and starts of silence, Cas essentially towing me home with my own reins as I clutch my dad’s journal to my chest. I feel monumentally guilty for choosing it over the antibiotics. But Cas is right, it doesn’t matter right now anyway. I’m not going anywhere tonight.

“You were planning to leave, weren’t you?” Cas asks, as if reading my mind.

“I thought I might. If I could get the floodgate open, and break it so it couldn’t be closed right away. I expected it to be a door, not a Ward comprised of all the collective magic in New Charity. I made a mistake.”

“But you weren’t even going to say good-bye?”

Good old Cas: zero further concern for the fact I almost accidentally killed all of us, because I have committed the larger hurt of omitting a farewell. “I didn’t want to get you and Len in trouble. I didn’t want you complicit.”

Cas is quiet for a minute. “The Bishop says rejecting the Blessing means taking it away from ourselves and those around us. For that we get the requisite punishment: the eradication of everything. No one person would be selfish enough to disrupt the reservoir. Except you.”

“You are the ones who gave the Bishop the permission to make things this way.”

“No, Syd,” Cas says, her voice edging toward tears. “It’s more complicated than that. But you’re the only one who cared little enough about the rest of us to undo it anyway. Don’t you have any feelings at all? For me and my brothers? For your uncle?”

“I told you, I didn’t understand about the Ward until you told me. I was willing to give my own life, but not yours. I stopped, didn’t I?”

She hands me my reins.

“What more do you want me to say, Cas?”

She asks Windy to halt. “Say you’re sorry. Apologize. Even if the Ward didn’t exist, hurting yourself would have hurt us too. Are you really that cruel?”

I’m not, at least not anymore, but there seems to be little use in saying it. The horse underneath me has assumed navigation, angling his way toward the paddock that has come into sight. Cas looks up toward the mansion, garish and beacon-bright on the hillside above the dim town. She purses her lips. I’ve plunged New Charity into darkness, which was my on-the-fly plan B, though I am now lamenting the lack of a hot shower. I’m also lamenting Cas’s disappointment, which feels a lot heavier than her ire.

I don’t want to be her enemy. I don’t want her to be sad about the Sanctuary. I want her to forgive me, to understand me, to root for me. I want her to switch sides. To help me. For the first time I’m scared I won’t be able to do this alone. I have to find a way to save everyone, and I don’t know how.

“I don’t have much to offer,” I say, dismounting. “But you could stay for dinner.”

“No thanks. I don’t think I’m in the mood for tuna.” Her attempt at mean falls flat, and I snort. She snorts, too. “Besides, I have to get to services.”

I dismount at the gate and lead the gray through. Cas rides in behind.

“Meet me at the social hall after?” She doesn’t look at me when she asks.

“Maybe.”

“It’s probably going to be nothing anyway. What can we do without power?” She frowns, already disappointed again.

I think she’s frowning because she realizes these moments we’re having together—as we slip into our younger, better selves—aren’t forever. I’ll bet she knows it’s just a matter of time before I destroy them altogether.

I don’t open the fridge, not wanting to deal with the soon-to-be-rotting food inside, and having no clue how to start our own generator. I eat a can of tuna and the remainder of my breakfast turnover alone by candlelight, a taper pulled from the bag of the decorative ones I made in the City during my stint as a wax worker.

My dad’s journal lies open in front of me. Wherever I am in time—there are no dates, but I can tell it is in the last year or so—his words find him reflective.

I have squandered opportunity after opportunity and continue to do so. But what would they say after all this time? Had I known the choice would be final, I’m not sure I would have made it. J and P make much of the idea of second chances, but I’m not so sure. Would I want a man as unworthy as I am in her life? So why would I make the exception for myself?

Besides, I am needed here, as well, perhaps? P is taciturn, but I can tell he’s increasingly uneasy with the Bishop. In some ways, I wish he’d never come. I wish P had found the courage to step into the Bishop’s role himself.

P’s failures are in part my doing, basking in my father’s affection while P wilted in the withering scorch of his criticism. Had I known then
. . .

The things I’m doing now won’t atone for any of it, but perhaps I can change her stars for the better. In my heart I know M is right.

There is so much I don’t know. My dad’s pervasive sadness is starting to change over the pages, especially since “M” came on the scene—whoever that is. Maybe Pi will know.

For the first time ever, though, I’ve started to wonder if my mother acting as if my dad hadn’t existed had maybe done more harm than good. The older I get, the more I realize I didn’t know my parents very well, and yet I do. They made mistakes, and I still love them. My dad, who believed whatever he was doing here was important, and my mom, who continually sacrificed everything for a day that never came, swung blindly for the best lives they could. That’s all any of us can do.

Still, the guilt over my earlier adventure feels like lead in my limbs. I want to apologize to Pi for something he doesn’t even know I’ve done. He’s the only family I have left and I didn’t spare him much thought when I packed up to leave, either.

The ice covering my heart feels as if it has cracked open, saltwater burning its way down my throat. I’m sobbing over my half-eaten tuna, mutely aware of the pathetic, damp specimen I’ve become over the last several hours.

I set the tuna aside and step out onto the porch. The strains of hymns from services are drifting through on the breeze. And I have an idea.

First, it’s upstairs for a cold shower. Afterwards, I go through my mother’s old clothes again. I stop when I happen upon a red gingham party dress, midcalf with attached crinoline. I pull it over my head and tie a belt around to take up the excess waist. I slip my cowboy boots back on.

Glancing down I realize this is a costume, and I am ridiculous. Even so, I’m as comfortable as I’ve ever felt in New Charity. Confident in this small, but mighty plan. Before I leave with a bag of party supplies, I trot downstairs to the basement, where my dad’s old fiddle sits in a corner.

“Hello, New Charity,” I say, letting the screen door slam behind me, just to see how it feels. “My name is Syd Turner. Let’s try this again.”