The Stars Never Rise

by Rachel Vincent

  “No.” Maddock scowled at her. “We stick together. All of us. Including Nina. We need her, and she needs us.” Maddock turned to me then. “You know how you get stronger and faster when degenerates are near? We call that ‘proximity strength,’ and it’s amplified in the presence of your fellow exorcists, which means we need every exorcist we can find.”

  I stared at him, trying to take it all in. If they’d be gaining speed and strength from the presence of one extra exorcist, I could only imagine how much I’d be gaining from the addition of three. Four, if and when Grayson transitioned.

  “If we help you get Melanie, we need to be sure you and your sister aren’t just going to disappear into the badlands,” Maddy continued. “We need to know you’re willing to risk as much for us as we are for you.”

  I hadn’t actually thought out my next move, beyond stealing my sister back from the Church, but disappearing into the badlands by ourselves was not on the list of possibilities.

  “Yes. We’re with you.” We had no one else in the world, and even with the bickering, they were already more of a family to me than my mother had ever been. “So…now what? I’ve never organized a prison break.”

  We gathered around the small breakfast table—Devi stood as far from me as possible—and ate Reese’s bacon and eggs while we developed a plan.

  “The uniforms will work as well for a rescue as for an escape,” Maddock said around a mouthful of bacon. “They won’t be looking for us in school clothes or at the press conference.”

  “That’s because we’d have to be stupid to show up at the courthouse, where every cop in New Temperance is waiting to arrest us.”

  I ignored Devi, and that was so much fun I decided to try it more often.

  “They’re holding the press conference in the square outside the courthouse,” Reese said. “What can you tell us about the layout?”

  The town square was almost identical to the courtyard at my school, but on a larger scale. “Um…There’re buildings on three sides—one is the courthouse—and at the center there’s a stone dais with leg irons for three, and room for hundreds to congregate in front.” And, of course, there was a giant television screen that could be set to show a news feed or a local feed, such as when they announced new Church positions or broadcast school ceremonies, like my third-grade Church creed recital.

  “Any idea where they’ll be keeping your sister?” Devi asked as yolk dripped from her forkful of egg onto her plate.

  “The police are headquartered in the courthouse, but I’ve only been in there once. Maybe Finn could do some recon and find out where the jail section is?”

  Maddock stabbed his fried egg with his fork, and bright yellow yolk bled all over his plate like a sunshine hemorrhage. “He says he’s up for that.”

  “There’s probably an entrance on the other side of the building, out of sight from the square. Fewer people would see us if we go in that way.”

  Devi snorted in contempt and Reese dipped a strip of bacon in his yolk. “We’d draw more suspicion if we avoid the crowd than if we hide within it.”

  “Oh.” I took a big drink of juice to cover my embarrassed flush.

  Grayson gave me a sympathetic smile. “If the turnout is big enough”—and it would be; nothing this sensational had happened in New Temperance since the war itself—“we should be able to slip into the courthouse through an entrance in the square without being noticed. But it’ll be harder to blend once we’re inside.”

  “We can’t all go,” Devi said, and I had to remind myself that she wanted to survive this just as badly as I did, and that she had more experience avoiding arrest than I probably—hopefully—ever would. “The more of us there are, the more attention we’ll draw.”

  “The fewer of us there are, the harder it’ll be to fight our way out if necessary,” I pointed out.

  Devi snorted again. “They have guns. If we have to fight, we’re already screwed.”

  “Don’t we have guns?” Not that I wanted to shoot anyone, but guns make for a very effective threat. “Finn had—”

  “That’s our only one,” Maddock said. “It stays here with Grayson. The rest of us will go in pairs. That way, if one pair is caught and forced to run, the other can keep going. Finn’s on his own.”

  Something told me Finn was usually on his own.

  Devi pushed her empty, grease-smeared plate back. “Maddy and I will approach the square from one direction, and Reese and Nina can go in from the other.”

  Grayson shook her head. “You’re either going to have to pair Maddock with Nina or take me, so Finn can communicate with her.”

  “We’ve been over this.” Reese plucked an uneaten strip of bacon from her plate. “You’re not strong or fast enough to get away if this goes badly.”

  “I know. I’m a liability.” She looked distinctly unhappy about that. “I’ll stay here and finish packing.”

  “That’s it, then,” Maddock said. “I’ll go with Nina. Devi, you and Reese find a spot within view of the side entrance of the square. Stay near the back of the crowd and try to blend, but if someone recognizes you, run. Don’t hesitate.”

  That was when I truly realized how hard it would be for either of them to disappear into the hometown crowd. Even if their pictures hadn’t been flashed on the news, along with my own, Devi’s distinctive beauty would stand out in a sea of mostly pale faces, and Reese was several inches taller than the tallest student at my school.

  Together, they would certainly stand out.

  “What’s Reese going to wear?” I studied his build critically. “I don’t think we have any school clothes to fit him.”

  Grayson jumped up from her chair, her brown eyes flashing with excitement. “Finn picked this up for him.” She threw open the coat closet and pulled out a long navy garment. At first I thought it was some kind of a coat. Then…

  I turned to Reese. “You’re going as a cop?” As a pledge, since there was no embroidery on the fitted cassock.

  He only grinned and chewed, while Grayson hooked the hanger over the closet door.

  Maddock swallowed a bite of bacon, then cleared his throat. “Finn got it from a dry cleaner this afternoon. He says that’s the only one that would fit.”

  “That’s either truly brilliant or profoundly idiotic.” Reese would be more visible than ever as a cop—but people wouldn’t be looking at his face. They’d notice the authority his navy robes granted, then dismiss him without further thought.

  Hopefully.

  “Okay, this might work.” It had to. “But Reese and Devi probably shouldn’t be obviously together.”

  “Agreed,” Maddock’s focus found them both. “Go separately, but stay in sight of each other and of the courthouse side entrance. Got it?”

  “Sounds complicated, but I think I can manage.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Let’s get moving.” Devi grabbed the school uniform hanging from the bedroom doorknob and slammed the door behind her, leaving her dirty plate on the table.

  “I don’t think she likes me.”

  Grayson started stacking the used plates. “Devi doesn’t like anyone but Maddy. I don’t think she even likes herself most days.”

  Well, at least that gave us something in common.

  “You okay?” Maddock’s sneakers crunched on loose gravel as we crossed the apartment parking lot, headed for the center of town. I kept walking forward, even though every instinct I had was telling me to put as much distance as possible between me and whatever spectacle was about to unfold at the courthouse.

  Reese and Devi had left separately ten minutes earlier so they could arrive alone from different directions.

  Finn had gone even earlier than that, promising to meet us there with whatever information he managed to dig up.

  “I’m…” I stared at the gray sky and hunched deeper into my borrowed coat. “Well, I’m alive, and right now that feels like a pretty big accomplishment.”

  Twenty minutes earlier, the national news
had showed footage of Church investigators crawling all over my house. I’d fought tears, watching them paw through my medicine cabinet, examine the sheets on my bed, and assess the modesty of the underwear in my top drawer, in search of proof that I was possessed or lecherous or just generally evil. They’d found the clothes I’d “stolen” from the Turners and the makeup Mellie and I purportedly wore. They’d also aired images of a closet full of “immodest” clothing I’d never seen in my life, which we were supposed to have worn in order to lure the devout youth of New Temperance into our demonic embrace.

  They were even linking us to the death of April Walden, the dead girl from Solace, though they probably had no idea how close to the truth that particular lie was.

  However, the rest of it was beyond ridiculous. But with the misleading facts, half-truths, and outright lies rearranged, compiled, edited, and commented on by newscasters—familiar faces lent authority by embroidered Church cassocks and their very presence on the air—even I had to concentrate to remember that none of it was real.

  But the worst bit of all was the fifteen-second clip of my sister, tears staining her cheeks and standing in her eyes. “She was a demon,” Mellie had sobbed in front of the camera. “I didn’t want to believe it, but she was so fast and so strong, and she admitted it. She said she was going to sell me as a host—” The footage cut off so abruptly that anyone with half a brain could tell she’d had more to say, but only Anathema and I knew that Mellie wasn’t really talking about me—she was talking about our mother.

  The news anchor was careful to remind the world that Melanie’s tears could merely be manipulation on the part of the demon possessing her—the Church hadn’t yet finished its examination of the younger Kane sister—but anyone who watched the overplayed clip with a slightly more critical eye would notice that the close camera focus seemed designed to hide her whereabouts as well as the circumstances of her incarceration.

  I couldn’t even imagine what kind of incendiary revelation the Church had saved for the national press conference, or which of my friends and neighbors they would declare possessed and in league with me and the rest of Anathema.

  “So, how did you meet Finn?” I asked as we turned the first corner, desperate to think about anything other than the disaster my life had become and the incredibly slim chance that we’d actually be able to snatch Melanie from Church custody.

  “We grew up together.” Maddock stuffed his hands into the pockets of the navy slacks he’d borrowed from Angela Reddy’s daughter; hopefully no one would notice they were too short. “He’s just always been there.”

  “How is that possible?” I couldn’t quite picture a toddler with an invisible playmate.

  Maddock shrugged. “Finn’s in my earliest memories.” He kicked a bit of gravel down the cracked sidewalk as we passed the peeling paint and chipped brick facades of some of the oldest houses in town. They were old even before the war, back when New Temperance had another name and no wall, and looked just like thousands of other towns in hundreds of other counties around the nation.

  “Everyone thought he was my imaginary friend,” Maddock continued. “But the only part I could say at the time was ‘friend.’ It came out as ‘Finn.’ ”

  “You named him!” I couldn’t resist a smile at the thought. “So…how did you play with someone you couldn’t see?”

  He shrugged again, and his pocketed hands pulled his pants up briefly to expose more of his socks. “We were about five when he figured out he could step into my body.” Maddock chuckled at the memory, and I glanced around to make sure we were the only ones on the street. A boy and girl walking alone together would be noticed unless they looked and acted like brother and sister.

  Fortunately, the neighborhood looked deserted. We were still at least a mile from the center of town.

  “Finn used to get me in so much trouble! For a while, every time he got a turn in my body, he’d take a bite out of everything he could reach in the fridge, to see what it tasted like. A couple of times I got sick.”

  We turned another corner, and storefronts came into view on either side of the street, forming a redbrick canyon. I wrapped my coat tighter; the temperature seemed to be dropping by the minute. “I wish I could hear him like you and Grayson can.”

  “He wishes that too.” Maddock’s blue-eyed gaze caught mine and held it. “He really likes you, Nina.”

  “He’s been very candid about that.” And his candor had caught me by surprise. I shrugged. “It’s not like kids in New Temperance don’t sin. We just don’t flaunt it.”

  Maddock nodded. “I think it’s the same way everywhere. And maybe that’s how it should be. Maybe we are sinning, and maybe we do deserve to be tortured in hell by demons. But then again, if the Church knew what we know—that demons are already delivering hell right here on earth—maybe they’d be a little less eager to judge us for enjoying whatever life we have left. Real exorcists rarely live long enough to donate their souls, you know.”

  I hadn’t thought about that, but I wasn’t surprised.

  Ahead, the school came into view, its tall, postwar fence punctuated with sharp wrought-iron points, and my heart began to pound. We were four blocks from the courthouse, and the crowd had grown denser. People were everywhere.

  I glanced at Maddock, but if he was anxious, I couldn’t tell. I’d put my hood up and tucked my hair into it, fighting not to stare at the ground, certain I’d be recognized any second, but he walked next to me like he belonged in New Temperance. As if he’d been born here. And that was when I realized what he was doing.

  If he didn’t look out of place, people would have no reason to notice him. Maddock was hiding in plain sight. But that was easier for him than it could possibly be for me, because his picture hadn’t been broadcast to millions of people who were eager to hunt him down and turn him in. His face wasn’t…

  …on a giant Wanted poster plastered in the front window of the Grab-n-Go.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and Maddock followed my gaze to the poster, where my face stared out at us both, literally larger than life. My name was right under it in huge block letters, along with details about the reward for information leading to my capture.

  Below that were smaller school pictures of Reese and Devi, side by side, looking younger and more innocent than the exorcists I knew them to be.

  “Don’t stop,” Maddock hissed when my steps lagged.

  I matched his pace but couldn’t slow my racing pulse or the wave of dizziness that rolled over me. My plan wasn’t going to work. Someone would recognize me. I was going to get us all arrested, or worse.

  “Calm down,” Maddy whispered. “It’s too late to back out now. We’d draw more attention by turning around.”

  I had no intention of backing out, but…“You should find Reese and Devi and get out of here. There’s no reason for us all to get caught.” I’d never forgive myself if I got them hurt or captured.

  “No way,” he breathed, and I could hardly hear him over the footsteps and whispered conversations all around us. “We don’t abandon our own.”

  I wanted to argue, but by then we were part of the flow of traffic, carried by its current toward the town square, and so tightly surrounded by other spectators that if I reached out, I could touch at least three other people.

  We were trapped within the mob gathering to hang us. Figuratively speaking.

  At least, I hoped that part was figurative.

  The crowd buzzed around us, and my name was on every tongue. People who’d never even said hi to me were suddenly experts on my early life, my school records, and my state of mind. They argued about how long I’d been possessed and whether or not my “deviant proclivities” had brought me to the attention of my demonic parasite or somehow made me more susceptible to possession. They mourned the loss of my mother, who should have been able to see what was going on in her own home but surely didn’t deserve the death she’d been dealt.

  I bit my tongue and shuffled for
ward with Maddock while indignation raged inside me.

  Through the crowd, I saw Wanted posters bearing my picture in the front windows of two more stores, and when we got close enough to see the courthouse, with its white pillars and modest rotunda, I found my face on the big screen towering over the town square.

  The giant television monitor—the only technological upgrade New Temperance had approved in my lifetime—was used to air public assemblies and school ceremonies, and to broadcast the national news feed during any large-scale emergency.

  Earthquakes. Tsunamis. And me.

  Hurricane Nina. I was an unnatural disaster.

  I barely recognized the town square. I could hardly even see it through the throng trampling the grass as people flocked toward the dais.

  In the past twenty-four hours, while I’d hidden from the world and from the degenerates tuned in to my heartbeat, national public interest had turned New Temperance into a circus of stage lights, news cameras, and preening public officials wearing pressed cassocks and identical grave expressions. As Maddock and I entered the crowded courtyard, carried along by the relentless flow of pedestrian traffic, I suddenly understood how, during past public crises in other cities, the news had managed to capture every aspect of the unfolding drama as it happened.

  There were cameras everywhere.

  I counted three aimed at the dais alone and two slowly panning the crowd from courthouse balconies, providing broad shots from above to showcase the sheer size of the throng. Two more cameras were carried on the shoulders of big men following familiar news correspondents through the crowd. The journalists stopped every few feet to shove a microphone at someone, and I realized they were in search of local flavor—a ten-second news clip of a New Temperance native willing to comment on the spectacle, live from the scene.

  On the huge screen overhead, broadcasting the national news feed, a small inset window showed the crowd as the cameras panned, while in the main window, Sister Florence Bennett, deacon of New Temperance, was being interviewed in her office by a national correspondent, looking polished and composed in her steel-gray cassock with elaborate green embroidery.