Kate catches my eye and something in her expression hardens. “Is Griffin with you?” she asks Lainey, in a voice slightly louder than anyone else is daring to speak.
“He’s still in Oklahoma. He feels terrible for not being here, but they’ve had these visits arranged for months. You know how hardcore his dad is about football.”
Lies.
All lies.
Griffin isn’t on a college tour.
Griffin isn’t going to return.
Sooner or later, the authorities will be notified and Kate might finally believe us.
Until then, she isn’t safe.
Nobody is.
19
DEFCON FIVE
Istand close to Jude beneath a black umbrella. There’s a crowd at the cemetery, but nothing quite so large as the one in St. Oswald’s. I hadn’t planned on coming. I didn’t know Ivy very well. The burial feels like an intimate affair, the kind of thing meant for family and close friends. Not to mention, I’ve been avoiding the cemetery since Halloween night and the weather is abysmal. But I overheard Lainey telling Kate she was going, so we came, too.
I can’t stop peeking at her as Pastor Tim prays.
What is she up to?
What did she do to Griffin?
And how do we keep her from doing it again?
Pastor Tim says Amen.
Without warning, Mrs. Winslow lurches forward and collapses onto the casket. A keening wail tears from her throat. Her husband does nothing. He just stands there, offering comfort to no one—not his wife or his whimpering child. Pastor Tim steps in while the crowd awkwardly disperses.
The rain has mostly stopped.
Jude closes the umbrella.
I watch as Lainey gives one of Ivy’s friends a hug when something farther away catches my attention. A person shrouded in fog with a woolen cape and wild hair. Just as I realize who it is, she turns and melts into the mist.
“Mistress Bramble is here,” I blurt—urgently, jarringly.
Jude follows as I hurry forward, in the direction she disappeared. I spot her in the distance, her cape billowing as she ascends the wet grounds to the oldest part of the cemetery.
Afamiliarpart of the cemetery.
Goosebumps crawl up my arms as we near the sunken mausoleum. Mistress Bramble ambles around the cracked, ivy-choked stone like she knows what it really is. She hums under her breath and scatters something pale gray upon the grass.
My goosebumps multiply.
This woman was bornen caul.
With second sight.
And here she is, laying a circle of what appears to be salt and ash around Dante’s tomb.
As she finishes, her gaze drifts to the patch of earth where Jude lay not very long ago, dead in my arms.
