voice still carried. “How, when we protected him for so long? How, when we left you alone only for a single day? Did one of our mannequins come to life, is that what you believe?”
The girl—Mattie?—shook her head. “Someone . . . someone else . . .” she said.
“Yes, child. We found footprints in the grocer’s. We know this, Mattie. Go on.”
Grocery store. That’s us, me and Bub. Michael suddenly became aware of him and his brother as two small people in the fragile shell of the coal office.
“The other person, they must’ve come in last night . . .”
Me, Michael thought again, and felt an almost dizzying gratitude for the last night’s snowstorm, which must have filled in their other prints.
“Of course,” said the priest gently. “Never thought you woulda killed it, child. I s’pose you must be right: the killer must have come in last night, when you brought it up to the altar, when it was late. . . .”
“Yes!” Mattie agreed relievedly. “They came in when I—”
“When you . . . ?”
“When I was asleep!” she finished enthusiastically.
Michael didn’t know what was going on, not exactly, but from the girl’s face he understood everything he needed to know: Mattie looked like a girl who had been caught with her hand in a cookie jar . . . and the cookie jar turned out to have jaws like a bear trap.
“From the mouth of babes.” The priest—his back still to Michael—looked to the crowd in the pews. Some smiled. Some frowned. But they all nodded in agreement.
“Oh, Mattie. No, your hand would never put harm upon any Chosen. Certainly not one so special, so precious. Certainly not one that we trusted you to protect while we were gone. I know you would not betray your God like that. Or betray me like that, Mattie.”
The girl’s forehead made a wrinkle-work of emotion, and for one moment, something terrible shone in her eyes:
Hope.
“R-really?” she said.
“Of course,” said the priest. “But . . . you know, Mattie, God judges the sinner the same as the one who fails to stop the sin. And, child?”
“Yes?”
“I do, too.”
And Michael knew what was going to happen even before it had begun.
The priest reached into his robes, and from its dirty tangles a hunter’s knife materialized. The blade sang cleanly across Mattie’s throat, a bright silver slash trailed by a spray of red.
Michael felt a sympathetic flash of heat across his own throat.
He can’t do that, Michael thought desperately.
The girl’s limp body twisted to the floor.
Patrick’s mouth moved under Michael’s hand, as if to ask what was happening.
It’s—you can’t kill people, Michael thought. That’s against the Rules. People don’t hurt people in The Game!
But these people in the church didn’t seem to care. While the priest stood over the body, a man came forward from the pews, his heavy boots clunking. He was the weeping man with the coal-black hair, but he was the smiling man now. The priest said to him: “We’ll feed her to them tonight. But this girl does not deserve resurrection. Cut off her head first, please, Samuel.” And as Samuel scooped the girl’s body from the floor—like it was his everyday job—Michael saw him mouth: hallelujah.
CHAPTER SIX
The people were filing calmly down the aisle of the church, now, out the front door to the street.
Patrick pushed Michael’s hand off his mouth, sucking air, coughing. Some distant part of Michael understood that he should shush him, but the world grayed out momentarily before his eyes.
What the hell just happened? he thought. Why did those people do that? Who the hell are they?
The Game Master had told them a lot of things. You’re quick, and so you’re safe, he’d said. You’re not really lost, just on your way. And if you will only do what I tell you, Michael, you will be saved, and you will save your brother.
But: “People will hurt people”? “On the way to the Safe Zone, you’ll encounter lunatics who have no interest in helping you”? Those were a couple that must’ve slipped the Game Master’s mind.
“What happened? Do you wanna go to those people?” Patrick said.
“Shh a sec . . .”
“Yeahbutwhathapp—”
Patrick, shut up! I’m trying to think; just shut up!
Michael whipped around to look at Patrick—and Patrick did more than just recoil at Michael’s anger. Michael saw something in Patrick’s eyes: that going-far-away look. OhGodno. He’d seen that look before when Patrick got too confused or scared . . . and he’d seen what happened to