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Len rolls his eyes. “Just do it, Syd.”

I offer my hand. “Friends?”

“Friends.” James looks equally nonplussed.

“Good,” Len says. “Let’s go have whiskey.”

Back around the cooking fire, the whiskey files the hard edges off everyone. James sits at the far end of the table, but he seems to have returned to civility.

Paul tells us stories from before, the art pieces he installed at museums in small towns and airports in big towns. How metal is something he understands. How he wishes he’d been the one to sculpt the giant horses into New Charity’s gate.

“That’s what we need,” I say. “A surprise horse. A Trojan horse.”

“Yeah,” Len slurs. “Like a gift. From us to the Bishop.
Surprise, asshole.
”

I imagine a shining animatronic statue. Cannonballs of manure falling onto the Bishop’s giant head. “Too bad you guys don’t have anything that goes
kablam
,” I say.

Linsey laughs. “Oh, little Syd of littler faith. Who says we don’t?”

Len raises his eyebrows and almost falls off the log he’s occupying. I welcome the laughter, because I’m coming uncomfortably close to the hiccups.

Linsey continues. “We’ve still got what we collected to blow the gate when we were going to do the raid with Nelle. We’ve got about naught for ammo—specially after last night—but kablam, we’ve got in plenty.”

I have a feeling that in the morning, Paul is going to be upset that Linsey shared their ammo situation with New Charitans, but for now, he simply looks like he’s deep in his own imagination.

“How would we get the metal?” James asks.

“I’ve got a little bit saved from here and there,” Paul says. “And I’ve got torches. We’d need more, though. And a rolling base to put it on. And we’d need everybody working on it.”

“I think I have a solution to both problems,” I say. I am proving I can drink with the men. Now I’ll prove I can be useful, too. If helping the camp gets me closer to stopping the Bishop, then so be it. “Gentlemen, have I ever told you about Cressida?”

It’s light out and Len is in my tent. He’s snoring and his breath smells not unlike what I imagine of a water buffalo. I elbow him. “Move over.”

I run through the events of the night before. Len’s arrival. Warning Mangold about the Bishop. Drinking. Drinking a lot. Our brilliant plan to build an actual Trojan horse out of my Cressida. James’ proposition. James angry about Len in my tent. Len offering to sleep with James instead.

We stumble to the cooking fire, where Linsey is up and whistling away. “Morning, sleeping beauties,” he says, handing us mugs of chicory.

“No hangover for you, then?” I ask.

Linsey laughs. “Everyone was up early to go retrieve your car.”

“Ha ha,” I say. “We drunks always have the best improbable ideas.”

“Not that improbable, apparently,” Linsey says. “They’re gonna try it anyway. It’s not a horse, exactly. But it will explode.”

I lose my grip on my cup, scrambling to grab it before it hits the ground. “They’re going to blow up Cressida?”

“It’s really genius if you think about it.”

“How so?” Len asks. “Sorry, that part is a little blurry.”

I’m equal parts delighted, surprised, and perplexed that they’ve finally decided to take some—any—of my advice. “We can take a group of us in inside the car, unseen. We take out the Bishop with a small explosive while Nelle’s turning on the lights. After he’s gone, the Ward should disappear.”

“How big of an explosive?” Len asks. He’s turned an unhealthy shade of pale. “Logistically, we’d have to make sure it wasn’t near the celebration, right?”

“Well, I’m not the boss of this shit show, sonny,” Linsey says. “If you want to talk to Mangold about it, they’re working up in the clearing.”

Len downs the rest of his chicory and we head to where the group is gathered. Paul is talking animatedly to Mangold and James from a ways off. They’ve built a wooden frame on the top of the car, and Mangold is working to take off the driver’s side door. I feel a pang of sorrow. Cress was one of the biggest reminders of my mother. And yet, it’s a hunk of metal. An albatross. I can have my pick of old heaps from around the countryside. The people who bother to drive these days drive things that are reliable. The only person really losing out here is Doc, and I’m sure he’s already gleefully repurposing Agnes’s old station wagon.

Mangold looks our way and waves us over. “So far, so good,” he says.

“How did you get it here?” I ask.

“It started up fine for us. Must’ve just been a bit overheated the day you ditched it. Lucky it was still there, really.”

Tiny pieces of our drunken plan were filtering back to me. “And you found the keys?”

Mangold smiles. He looks like a new man. And it’s good to see him out of his tent. Implementing a plan. “Like you said. Right in the gas cap door.”

Paul walks over to us. “Doesn’t look like much now, but by this time tomorrow, it will be incredible. There’s so much extra metal on this car—did someone reinforce it for you?”

I nod, wishing I could shake a sense of something wrong. I chalk up the feeling to my hangover. This is my idea. And it will get me closer to the Bishop.

“Len should get going, unless you need him for anything,” I say.

I walk Len down to the makeshift paddock, where his horse grazes with the others. We agree that he will tell Cas about the car and find a way to warn Nelle.

“Guess that’s it?” he asks, mounting up.

I fish the note out of my pocket that I’d forgotten to give him the night before. “I’m sorry to ask this, but can you, um, give this to him?”

Len takes a deep breath. “Syd, if he doesn’t . . . I’m sorry is all.”

“I just want him to know that I understand if he was confused.”

Len rolls his eyes. “You’re a better woman than I, Syd Turner. If he doesn’t change his mind, he doesn’t deserve you.”

I turn away, before he can see my hot, fat tears. “Ride safe,” I say. “Tell Cas to keep strong. We’re coming for her.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cas

I waited a full day before delivering Cal’s note to Sheriff Jayne, giving Len a chance to get to the Survivor camp and back to help with the fallout we expected during the Bishop’s arrest. It was a hazy sort of morning, where the heat was thick and held low to the ground—a kind of heavy atmosphere that felt significant, like wildfire in the distance.

The courthouse was eerily deserted. People wandered the lobby as usual, but in fewer numbers than normal, their conversations muted. I continued through the twisting hallways to the Sheriff’s office. The ornate door was closed and the lights off. Inside, Jayne’s desk was not only devoid of her, but of her things. The walls were empty except for ugly penny nails.

“She can’t have just quit,” I said to myself.

“She’s not here.” I wheeled around. In the temporary holding cell, Deacon Pious was sitting with his heavily bandaged head in his hands.

“Please tell me you haven’t been here the whole time?” I rattled the bars ineptly, then returned to rifle through Jayne’s old desk, an activity I was becoming intimately familiar with. “Your injuries. Shouldn’t you be at the clinic?”

“Calm yourself, Casandra. It looks worse than it is,” he said, his voice more placid than it should have been in his condition. He was talking at me, not with me. It was my voice again. Ruined and useless. “Jayne will come as soon as it’s safe. She won’t leave me here any longer than she has to.”

I pointed to the bars and held up my arms in query. “What happened?”

“Your father happened.”

The back of my throat began to ache. I hated grieving for him, the narcissist he’d become, and yet I did. “The Governor and I don’t claim one another anymore.”

“He told Jayne to clear out or risk sitting in here with me. I’m sure she’s lying low.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

He frowned, shook his head. “There seems to be something wrong with my hearing, the head injury. Be careful looking for Jayne. She’s hiding in plain sight, but try not to lead them to her.”

I nod. I won’t make any moves until I see Len, anyway.

The Deacon dropped his head again. “I don’t suppose you have any information on Cressyda?”

“I rode out to check on her the night before last,” I said. “She seems to be safe and sound for the moment. But right now, there’s something you need to see.”

I reached through the bars to hand him Cal’s note. He read, folded, and passed it back to me before closing his eyes. “What have I done? Choosing the Bishop over my own family, again and again. This damned Blessing over all of our heads.”

“None of us knew,” I said gently. I held my hand out, but he didn’t take it, wincing as he shifted his weight.

“And Cal, keeping his gift. I should have known.”

“He didn’t want to put you in danger. He was brave.” I thought about my mother. Whether she had wanted to give her gift away. Who she might have been. What New Charity might have looked like had we been whole.

“Those who he took from, their hearts hardened,” the Deacon said. “They weren’t the same people.”

“Syd never talked about him having a gift when we were small.”

“Cal was quiet about his powers, used them to make his horses faster, but that was the end of it.” I was grateful we still seemed to be moving in the same conversational direction, as if perhaps the Spirit had settled over us, allowing my emotions to get through, if not my voice.

Pi grabbed my hand, his palm clammy in mine. “Cal was a careful man. I think he saw all of this coming, didn’t he?”

I nodded. He’d put the pieces together without the benefit of the cinematic horror in my head. “We’ve lost it forever, haven’t we?”

“Your generation possesses the echoes. I think the vaccine—the one that protected us from the plague—muted the effects of the elemental powers in the children, though it was too late for you and your brother. You both manifested your powers so early, it would have looked bad to take them from you or kill you. Instead, he made you ornaments of the Sanctuary. I assume Becky Purcell still has some water magic in her, the way she’s wrangled her father’s fishing business. Syd, too, probably born to dance, with all that wind in her veins. But they’ll never have powers in the way they would have. The gifts were the true bounty of New Charity. We thought we were protecting something with the Blessing. We were easy marks.”

“At least we have our lives.”

He looked at me. Really looked. As if holding my hand had restored my voice in his head. “I misinterpreted his surety as faith in the Spirit. The Bishop knew we would survive the plague, didn’t he?”

He’d said as much at the Acolyte apartment. “He said the Spirit decreed a rebirth, but it doesn’t make sense. The Spirit is supposed to be life. Isn’t it?”

Pi nodded slowly, closing his eyes again. “None of this is an accident, Cas. Who else could be responsible for the virus running down the Basalt and beyond, while we sat here unscathed?”

“He told me he wanted to remake the world. But Pi, he’s already halfway there.” I leaned into the bars, still clutching Pi’s hand. The whole of New Charity had been his accomplices. “We’re too late.”

“Oh, Casandra,” the Deacon sobbed. “We’ve been too late for a long time.”