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The Bishop entered the room as Cal was scribbling in a small notebook sitting on the table next to a revolver. He offered the Bishop some wine, and moved the book aside, tearing out a page. “Let’s get to it,” Cal said, drinking deeply.

“You’ve been keeping something from me all this time, haven’t you, Calvin?”

Cal set down his glass, resigned. “It doesn’t belong to you. None of them do. Everything I’ve built belongs to Syd.”

“I thought I’d made myself clear prior to the Blessing,” the Bishop said. “Unless you want to give me your life instead, Turner. The gifts of this community are as one, now. I cannot have rogues hiding powers and using them to assist the enemy.”

Cal began to stutter. “I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of—”

“Oh yes,” the Bishop said. “I know all about your conversations with Mangold. How you delivered them horses and medical supplies. When they finally breach the gates, whose side will you fight on?”

“I’m going to find my daughter, like I should have a long time ago.” Cal stood and raised his arms.

A blast of wind shot from his body, buffeting the room. Of course. He’d had the gift of air the whole time. It’s why his horses were stronger and faster. He must have been giving them small pieces of his own gift in order to build his empire. An empire he’d meant for Syd. The Bishop fell back, one arm in front of his eyes, his black robes billowing. I expected one of them to reach for the revolver on the table, but instead the Bishop waited. Cal finally lowered his arms to rest, and the Bishop drew one of my father’s Tasers from his pocket and aimed at Cal’s heart. When Cal had fallen back onto the couch, the Bishop emptied a packet of something into Cal’s mouth, then poured a bit of wine down his throat.

Waking, Cal clutched his chest and began to beg and cough. In his eyes, I saw the realization he’d known it was already too late.

“You’ll give it to me or I will make sure your daughter suffers the same fate.” The Bishop held out his hand, and Cal ceded his gift.

The Bishop turned his back. I could hear Cal fumbling with the revolver, and I braced for a shot that never came. The curtain around the vision closed. My tears fell into the glass below as time jerked me back to my precarious position.

“Now, do you see?” the Bishop asked.

I shook my head. Cal had kept his gift, had helped the Survivors, but the Bishop hadn’t asked why. He’d simply taken a life. “He was going to leave. You didn’t have to kill him.”

The Bishop shoved the broom handle at me. I fell backwards as he returned to the window, looking down over New Charity.

“After those monsters in the City killed my daughter with their reckless disregard for the Spirit and its gifts, I grieved. I grieved for years and years. And when I came here, it was to be the end of my grieving, the start of a new life, a new Sanctuary. Look how the land, the people have flourished under my guidance.”

I shook my head. With the exception of the last few days he was right. But how many others had been terrorized, threatened, killed for his own personal power play?

“You and Len have been willing vessels for the Spirit. Your Foresight has flourished, has it not?”

He knew. He knew I’d seen Syd coming. He knew I’d made a habit of lying. “Yes.”

“Civilization was flawed before the plague. New Charity’s Blessing was meant to protect us, even as the Survivors of the City died out. Starting here, the Spirit decrees a new start, a new world built upon the power of the Blessing. The memory of my daughter.”

This was in no way a part of Sanctuary gospel. This was a god complex, the ravings of a lunatic. How much did the Governor know about this future the Bishop envisioned?

“This is where you come in,” he continued.

“Me?”

“You are of age. I am not yet infirm. With my gift and yours combined, the children we could have would be omniscient. We would be the parents of the Spirit made flesh. We would reign as the king and queen of the world until our days stretch beyond the horizon.”

I looked back down at the glass on the floor. My head pounded. How had this morning gone from
may I have that broom
to creating omnipotent children? “Absolutely not. No. I’m not ready for that. I’ll never be.”

The Bishop crossed the tiny sea of glass, shards crunching beneath his boots. “You would dare refuse me?”

“I don’t want this,” I said.

“But I did not ask what you wanted, did I?”

“The Spirit asks us to be mindful of our gifts. Even if I were willing, the risks are too much. What if our children are violent or evil? There is a reason the Spirit split the powers of Hindsight and Foresight in two—to make them the rarest of gifts.”

“You refuse me
and
question my doctrine?” He came close enough so I could smell his bitter breath. I turned my head to the side and he grabbed my chin. I fought against the curtain of backward time, easier than it had been the first two touches. “You will look at me. You will do as I ask. You were chosen.”

“No. This has nothing to do with the Spirit, nothing to do with the land and the sky. Nothing to do with anything.”

“You will regret this, girl.”

I had no idea what his next move would be. It was only in the last few days that I’d been truly terrified, more so than in my entire life. First for New Charity, and now for myself. For my body. For my soul.

“I’m not a girl.”

“You’re no better than one.”

He reached for my waist, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed. I screamed so hard my throat felt like I’d swallowed a rasp. The vacuums downstairs ceased, and I screamed again, the Bishop’s hand coming to my mouth.

“Have it your way, then,” he said, straightening. “You’ll endure my curse all the same.”

“Curse?” My head hurt so badly that my vision turned red and splotched. I could hear footsteps at the stairs, confused voices outside the door.

“Your prophecy, your truth, your words will be meaningless to the ears they fall upon. At best, confused, at worst, the ramblings of a sick and addled mind. You wanted to be more than a voice; now is your time to find a way.”

“Stop. Don’t touch me—” His hand was around my neck and my voice was weak, even as the footsteps outside the door retreated down the stairs.

He twisted his grip to my collar and flung me to the floor. A thousand cuts to my bare arms, my head against the cabinet, and then, mercifully, nothing at all.

CHAPTER NINE

Syd

The morning after the incident at the gate, I find Pi bundled into the couch, snoring soundly. There is a note on the table saying he’d started up the generator before taking a nap. Grateful for the power, I make a pot of real coffee and set it beside him on the end table. He stirs awake, and begins to stretch before the pain comes rushing back to him and he cradles his head with one hand and his ribs with the other. I press a couple of painkillers I’d left in my dad’s medicine cabinet into his hand.

“There was a day,” he wheezes, “when your father and I were scrappers.”

“Looks like today’s not that day.”

“I will admit,” he says, “that before things went to hell, it was a mighty fine sort of party.”

“It was awesome, Pi,” I say. “Can’t wait until the next one.”

“Thank you for reminding me of what music is supposed to do.”

“Are you admitting you forgot?”

“I’m saying that perhaps we’ve gotten a bit narrow with its usage here in New Charity.”

“Glad I could be of use.”

“As a party planner or as a friend of the sprinkler system at the plant?”

“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know.”

“You and your father make a clear case for the nature over nurture argument.” But he isn’t smiling.

“Pi, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything, but how much trouble would my dad have been in if he’d been delivering more than horses outside the gate?”

“What are you asking?”

“There was a reference in his diary to someone dubbed ‘M,’ which could have been Mangold.”

“Stop right there. I don’t want to hear any more. I won’t go down this road with you, Cressyda.”

“But what if my dad was helping the Survivors? Nelle said—”

“Enough.” He starts to get up, wheezing. “I’m going home.”

“No,” I say. “Please. Wait. Sit down. I’ll drop it, okay?”

“Syd,” he says. “What I want is for you to be an ally to peace and truth.”

“I know.” He’s starting to sound like Agnes, and my heart gives a pang. It hasn’t even been a week and I miss her and Mina and Doc like I might a limb. Still, I’m not sure I can promise to sit idle.

“Those things Mangold said to you—”

“They didn’t hurt me.” I force a smile. “For a doctor, Mangold has a surprisingly juvenile vocabulary.”

“I see there’s been no damage to your fortress of sarcasm.”

“I just wish the Bishop hadn’t let things get this complicated.”

Uncle Pi shifts with a grunt. I know he’s conflicted. The Spirit is important to him, and the Sanctuary is the place he celebrates the Spirit with fellow believers. But this Sanctuary is different now. He knows it and I know it.

Pious is the sort of believer who makes it easy to believe—his charisma bespeaks pure joy. Even my dried-up husk of a heart wants to believe when he’s the one giving sermons. But the Spirit the Bishop seems to be peddling is a punitive, malicious force—one that reigns by threat and ultimatum. It’s nothing like it was, like it should be.

We’ve both settled back into our thoughts, so when there is a knock, our coffees are almost upended.

“Expecting someone?” I ask. Pi shakes his head, and I pad to the front door. Out the peephole, Troy Willis is fidgeting with a bouquet of wildflowers and a black box with a silver bow. I lean against the door for a moment, all at once glad and crestfallen.

Troy. The things I love about him feel so safe, like childhood when life seemed simpler. I appreciate that he considers my feelings. That he’s not afraid to show them in front of other people, like yesterday when trying to defend me earned him an escort home by his father’s goons. It’s a strange sort of confidence—one he’s kept all these years. He doesn’t seem to care why I am here. He just cares that I am.

While he makes my heart feel things it hasn’t felt in a long time, it’s not fair to start a relationship here when my game plan is to leave and never come back. It’s disingenuous at best. At worst, well, I was called those things last night. All I can offer is my friendship.

And I can’t very well offer him that when he has an armful of romantic tokens.

Pi looks up when I let out a sigh, and I attempt an angelic smile. “Can you answer it for me?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Pious struggles to stand.

“No, no. Just keep sitting. Tell him to come in once I have the shower running.”

“Who is it?”

“Troy Willis,” I stage-whisper from the stairs.

My uncle shifts the blankets on to the couch. “What’s in it for me?”

“The warm fuzzy feeling that you get saving your niece from mortal embarrassment?” I say.

“He’s a nice guy, Syd. You could do worse, you know.”

“I don’t have to
do
at all,” I say. “Post-pandemic doesn’t mean prefeminism. I’m not chattel.”

“Might be easier if you were.”

“Moo.”

Troy knocks again and Pious waves his thick paws at me to get out of sight. I take the rest of the stairs two at a time. I turn on the shower full force, but creep out and peek around the landing. Pi is smiling and laughing and gesturing for Troy to sit down across from him. The latter, blush-eared and earnest, hands over his fine gifts and an envelope he fishes from his back pocket. This time my stomach gives a funny little lurch but I swallow it down: it has no say in this particular matter.

When I come back downstairs, once again almost religiously grateful for the miracle of hot water and the generator that provides it, Pi has made his way into a standing position and is refilling his coffee cup.

“We’re going to a dinner,” he says.

“We are?”

Pi hands me the gifts. I set the flowers aside and open the box, revealing an expensive-looking pair of crystal drop earrings. Inside the box, a small note is folded into the lid. I tease it out with a toothpick since I have no fingernails. It reads:
Only if they make you happy.

Pi clears his throat, and gestures to the screen door. We make our way out into the sun and slowly past the paddock toward the guesthouse. “The Governor believes we should start a civil conversation about the events of last night, so he’s invited the community leaders to a goodwill dinner.”

“I’m not a community leader,” I say.

“But you are my niece and a Survivor and best friend of the Acolytes.”

“
Best friend
is pushing it a bit far, don’t you think?” I’m not sure anymore if we’re friends at all.

“Have it your way. It would look bad if they didn’t invite you.”

I raise my eyebrows at him, surprised at his candor. “Too many painkillers, Pi?”

“Who, me?”

“You’re entertainingly blunt this morning.”

He shrugs. “If Priam Willis wants a conversation, then a conversation we shall have.”