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The film is grainy and rose tinged, and the speaker is droning on about the gifts of the Spirit, and the sanctity of the land and the sky. About the pride the Spirit has in New Charity. The narrator waxes poetic about the Spirit made manifest in the breath of the New Charitan horses and the velocity of the Basalt River. And then it thanks the community for their sacrifice in something called the Blessing. I search for the mute button and, failing, shut the whole thing off. Why is the TV even here and plugged in? The dying ficus tree in the corner is more entertaining.

On the coffee table in front of me, there’s a small blue book, with a gold hasp and small lock—like one of my childhood diaries, though I’ve never seen this one before. I turn it over and over in my hands. I tug on the lock, but to no avail. I have no idea where to even start the search for its key.

It still feels strange going through my dad’s things, as if those things, like him, aren’t really mine. It doesn’t help that I have the sneaking suspicion I’m being watched. Sure enough, I look up to find Uncle Pi at the door, watching me through the screen. “May I?” he asks, gesturing at the door.

He’s always lived in the guesthouse. Even when I was small. And he’s never had to ask to come in before. I’m sure it feels as much an excision to him as it does an intrusion to me, with neither of us in the right. This house isn’t exactly mine, but it isn’t anyone else’s either.

“You don’t have to ask,” I say, not sure if I really mean it.

He nods in equal insincerity, closing the screen gently behind him. My dad always used to let it slam, causing my mother and Uncle Pi—a softer, rounder version of his brother with the same dark eyes—to grimace and flinch. Pi’s always been the quietest of the quiet. Even his footfalls are soft on the stone tiles.

“I wish the circumstances were different, Syddie,” he says. “Give your uncle a hug?”

He hugs me, but not too hard. After he lets me go, and I pretend like I don’t see his tears, I start with a joke. “What will you drink?”

The corners of his mouth furrow. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Who would I tell?”

Pi walks over to an air-conditioning intake panel in the hallway and pulls it out and up. Inside, a closet of sorts holds boxes and boxes of wine.

Now it’s my turn to frown. “You have to hide the wine? What happened, did the Sanctuary ban drinking?”

“Public drunkenness isn’t allowed,” he says, removing two bottles and replacing the panel. “But you can have Sanctuary-sanctioned spirits. Spirit spirits, if you will.” He laughs at his pun. I’m still adding this all together. “These bottles are not sanctioned. Your father and I bought this for his going-away party. It’s now a well-aged Cab, probably be worth quite a bit, you know, if . . . well.”

“If things hadn’t gone to hell?”

Pi uncorks a bottle and pours two glasses, handing one to me.

“Going-away party? Going where?” The wine is red and full and deep.

“The City. But he, ah, never showed up to the party.”

“Never showed up to the City, either.” I’m perplexed by the little jump of joy my heart gives at the thought he even tried. “I didn’t know he even got serious.”

“Your father battled some demons over the last decade, Syd.”

“Haven’t we all?” If he wants to talk demons, perhaps he can tell me how he’d have felt about the medical tents and the helicopters and the fires and the mass graves. About my mom and Danny and getting used to the dark and the sounds it makes.

But Pi gives me the same why-do-I-put-up-with-this-shit look as when I painted his car with the barn primer when I was eight. My dad was the one who yelled and screamed, while my mother laughed and pointed out that it was an improvement over the car’s prior color—decidedly puce. It had remained primer-colored until we left. And just like every other memory, eventually I let it and New Charity and everyone in it just disappear.

My mom didn’t help matters. She didn’t badmouth my dad or his change of heart; she simply stopped mentioning him altogether—as if I’d spent fourteen years with a mother and father, and the years following as an immaculate conception.

Pi takes a deep breath, resetting his temper in the way that used to infuriate my dad. “I’m glad you’re here, Syd. It’s good to see you. I see so much of them both in you.”

I don’t want to get choked up already, so I dodge his niceties. “So what else is new? How’s the Sanctuary? Have you found any new music lately?”

Pi shrugs, and climbs onto one of the barstools in the kitchen. “Well.”

“That good, eh?”

“Things are different from when you left. You might not see it, but when the illness came, things changed for us, too.”

“Do tell,” I say, hopping up onto the counter next to the humming fridge, letting the track lighting overhead bore into my eyes.

“You might have been too young to remember, but the Bishop and I have never seen the Spirit in quite the same way. His future for the Sanctuary is a much more disciplined one than we had before he came. And he asked a lot of the people of New Charity.”

“Like Spirit spirits?”

“It’s more than that, Syddie,” he says, taking a moment with his wine. “Everyone was scared, and, well . . .”

“He preyed on their fears?” I offer.

He shakes his head. “That sounds worse than it is. The Blessing was his way of making sure we would survive.”

“Blessing?”

“You’ll see what I mean in the morning. Members of the community were asked to give of themselves to bless and protect New Charity, even as the world around us faltered.”

“Didn’t want to, say, bless and protect the rest of us, though?”

“With our limited resources?”

“Seems like you folks are doing okay to me.”

“Wait until morning. Look out the window and tell me what you see. Then tell me the Spirit hasn’t moved over this place.”

“All I’m saying is, I wish the Spirit had moved over some other places, too. Why is the Bishop’s blessing geographically limited? Why is the reservoir closed? Why is the town’s gate closed? Why can’t anyone have any fun? Seems pretty simple, Pi, the guy is a bully and New Charity is full of sheep.”

“Tormented, sure. But I don’t think he means any harm.”

“That’s supposed to make things better?”

“He’s still in mourning over his daughter. She left to marry someone in the City shortly before the Bishop came to us. She died in a car accident. Her fiancé lived, and the Bishop’s been trying to find a way to forgive the guy—the City, really, or its culture—ever since.”

“And so he saves New Charity and leaves the rest of us to rot?”

He lifts his chin at me, the way he used to when he would call me hyperbolic. Before I knew what that meant. “There’s a curfew now. The social hall is chicory and pleasantries. No singing except for services. No dancing.”

“That’s like a permanent state of reverence. How does that work?” We couldn’t even get people to agree on food distribution days in the City, let alone enforce a curfew.

“The people wanted to make sense of their fear and their guilt. I think they wanted to believe him when he said their faith, their sacrifice, was the only thing between them and the catastrophe outside.”

This makes sense in some ways, even though I don’t think it’s much more than a case of an insular population. “Sacrifice? What did they sacrifice?”

“The old magics, Syd. The elementals. Those who didn’t have any powers to give up gave their blood, sweat, and tears to ensure we were self-sufficient.”

It doesn’t seem possible, at least not in my hometown, where the people were cantankerous and opinionated and proud. Not in the country’s last bastion of magic. “And everyone just agreed?” No wonder the New Charitans hadn’t fought to help us. They were too scared to even fight for themselves.

“Not everyone. The Sorensons, the Beckers, your old dance teacher, Ms. Loosten. Two dozen others protested. Finally decided to leave.”

“Loosten isn’t here?” She would be nearly eighty years old, and yet, if anyone would understand my frustration, it would be her. “That sucks.”

“Some went down to Klein, some on over to Meadow. Wasn’t sure how they’d fare.” Pi looks down at his bottle. “But it seems like anyone born here really was protected by the Spirit. Hopefully it’ll protect them down the road just like it did you.”

I let this last part slide for now. Pi can believe in his beloved, magical Spirit all he wants, but not me. “So the Bishop just let them leave? No consequences?”

“The consequences were . . . veiled. After he and Priam—sorry, Governor Willis—closed the gates, they issued residency permits to those who remained. No permit, no reentry, even if you’re New Charity born. That’s why it was a big deal that the Governor allowed you in.”

“He’d look pretty bad denying entry for bereavement.”

Pi nods. “I imagine your old friendship with Cas and Len didn’t hurt, either.”

The twins were an enigma—awaiting my arrival, anticipating Cress’s breakdown, and all the rest of it. “How come they got to keep their powers if everyone else gave theirs away?”

Pi raises his eyebrow. The wine was starting to talk. “You know, if I were a more cynical man, I’d say the Bishop selected the Willis kids as Acolytes because he knew the sort of political ally their father would turn out to be.”

“Priam Willis as Governor, huh?” Cas and Len’s father was a glad-hander, to be sure—a real guy’s guy, replete with the three slaps on the back and a point of the index finger. It wasn’t surprising to think that he’d had political aspirations, and even less surprising he’d climbed on the back of the Sanctuary to reach them.

“When Cal and I were in school with him, it seemed more likely he’d inherit his father’s money and sit back and count it for the rest of his life. But the old boy had dreams, too, I guess.”

“So, for all intents and purposes, everyone behaves lest they piss off the Spirit. Priam gets to be Governor while the Bishop keeps everyone in line. And everyone just gave up? ‘Here’s my gift’? Even you?”

He shrugged, tired. “Even me. It was just air made into music. The needs of our people were greater than my own comfort.”

“And even you weren’t a little bit concerned about my comfort?”

“Of course I was. But by the time you lost your mom, it seemed you already knew how to survive, how to manage your emotions, how to cope. We assumed you wanted nothing to do with us.”

“I was alone for the first time in my life, Pi. So, yes, I learned to cope. And so have all the other Survivors. And it’s about time that changed.”

There hasn’t been enough wine to broach the subject. The air in the room is charged. I’ve forgotten how a family can read each other in ways others cannot, and it makes me feel transparent and irate and sad all at once. His voice hardens to stone. “Syd. I knew, eventually, you’d come back here. Your father and I both wanted that. But not if you’re only here with some vengeful political agenda. Whatever it is you have planned, just leave it.”

“What?” I ask, knowing I’m failing at innocence. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

“I know it has to be frustrating . . .” He’s trying to placate me, and it’s the last straw in a very long day.

“Oh, you do?” I slide down from the counter. “Do you know what it’s like to eat the same canned crap year after year? To be too cold. Too hot. To always be tripping and falling? To spend countless hours stripping down and burning your furniture to boil water? To lose your best friend because there are no lights for surgery or fully functional clinics? Do you know what it’s like to sit alone, covered in candle wax, day after day after dark goddamn day?”

Pi is looking at me like I’m wielding an ax instead of a wineglass. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he says, hands in half surrender. “I should have come for you back then, before. I should have come myself. Your father kept saying . . .”

“That’s not the point, Pi. Just because I’m not in the City right this minute doesn’t mean it isn’t still happening to the rest of the Survivors. Danny still dies whether I’m here or there. How can you—how can New Charity—just sit on your hands?”

“Even if it were up to me, would you really have us gamble with the lives of your Survivors? Think about it.”

“Don’t give me that nonsense about the virus being in the water. Most of the Survivors have antibodies—they’re as immune as those of us from New Charity, and people have been drinking from the dregs of the Basalt the whole time. Whatever you’ve got in that reservoir has been diluted over the last five years. Even if we have to keep boiling the water, we can’t rebuild without electricity, and now we’re dying in other ways. Preventable ways, Pi.”

“Syd, I hear you, but I need you to be careful. Take a few weeks and process your father’s death before you go spouting your discontent all over town.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Look, Syd, the Bishop can’t see forward, only behind. But the twins . . . All I’m saying is be careful about the positions in which you place your friends. You think this is all for the greater good, but there are people’s futures at stake.”

“There are people’s
lives
at stake, Pi,” I find myself yelling. “Don’t you get it?”

He pulls his jacket on and looks at me, the color drained from his face. “More than you know, Syd.” The soft bump of the screen door punctuates his exit.