We reach the edge of the swarm of believers, a squadron of soldiers breaking away from the mob to follow while others bellow for them to disperse. We’re in the middle of the final road to New Nazareth, the desiccated corpse of Pennsylvania Christian University, surrounded by parking lots turned to farmland and squinting against the sun glaring off Kincaid Chapel. The river, the same river I tried to cross to Acresfield County, loops around campus, trapping Acheson between water and this awful colony.

“Where to, sister?” the head soldier asks me.

“The dorms.” I can’t be out here any longer. “The dorms, please.”

But before we can flee, a monster emerges from the crowd like the sun emerging from the clouds. She is wrapped in white and gold, a cross burned into her bare neck, a wedding ring glinting on her finger as if she didn’t order a death squad to shoot her husband between the eyes. Tattoos crawl up her arms and jaw, demons and angels and Genesis and Armageddon, and every other beautiful and terrible thing.

I shrink back against Theo even as I hate myself for it, the way I always did when we were still together. He holds me close like nothing has changed at all.

The head soldier lowers his head in greeting. “Reverend Mother Woodside.”

Mom is stunning. She is disgusting.

“Welcome home, Brother Millward,” she says. “All of you.”

Her eyes find mine—and she smiles, so soft and gentle.

A mother shouldn’t be gentle when seeing her missing child for the first time in weeks. She should cry with relief and hold their cheeks tight to make sure it’s them, that they’re all right, that everything is okay now.

Isaiah 49:15—Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? If she had compassion for me once, I can’t remember it. Mom doesn’t hold me. She doesn’t touch me. She just smiles. Like she knew I’d come crawling back to her eventually. Like everything had been set in stone long before I ever arrived on this earth, and she has just been waiting for it all to come to pass.

“And welcome home,” she says, “Esther.”

No.

The Graces shriek. It’s a chorus of screams loud enough to drown out the ringing in my ears. A flock of ducks erupts from the Kincaid Chapel pond, their wings clapping in a rush of feathers. A string of saliva falls from the corner of my shredded mouth.

ESTHER.