“We’re going to release them,” Reynard says, his voice a little dramatic, intoning almost, not unlike the ceremony he performed. Her stomach tumults around under her skin, like something emerging from a swamp. “There’s a legend about this place, an old story that when Bottle Grove was for immigrants—”

“What,” Rachel says, hearing the sob in her voice just as the tears become evident on her cheeks, “are you? You told me this, I know this.”

“You don’t know the end,” he says in the dark.

He’s going to kill her. Nothing could be clearer. Rachel begins to run but is yanked back the second she starts, his fingers cold on her wrist. “Stay here and finish it,” he snarls. “The ghost can be bought off and we’ll all be free of it. A bribe. Ten thousand dollars I hope is enough. It’s what I’ve been prowling around for, pawning watches and old wedding rings. It’s so hard to raise money in this town, if you’re not one of those creatures in tech.”

“Oh God I do not know,” Rachel says, heaving with panic, “what are you talking about, what do you mean and want from me—”

“We stand here,” Reynard says, a loud proclamation too freaky to be anything but awful, “and offer this sum—”

“Take the money, take the money,” Rachel cries, but the bag stays in her hands. Reynard shuts up in the dark like the plug was yanked. Nobody, nothing, says anything. Rachel tries to control her heavy, frantic breathing. Yoga, she should have taken more of it. A class, sessions of something, a retreat, anything, anything but drink. The flask is in her hand, she realizes, and she throws it into the night. It doesn’t make a sound either, or maybe it’s covered by her own desperate noises. She sounds like she’s whinnying, or it’s some other animal right close and then growling far away. No, it’s traffic. And clear as a bell she hears something toll one, some church nobody in this city, not yet, has struck down and shut up. One in the morning. Her feet move like toddlers on the grass. She is puffing as she makes her way with the bag, her burning breath in her throat in a way she remembers from the early parts, before the pain blinded everything away, of giving birth. Her baby girl, her screechy bossy adorable Nicola Nickels her husband, bless him, let her name. She’s learned her lesson, but like everyone who says they’ve learned their lesson she couldn’t really say what it is, only that she’s paid for it, and when she reaches, finally, the avenue and the entrance to the forest, she sees by the circle of streetlight that she’s wrong. It’s open wide in her hands. The money is still in the bag.

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