“You needed to stay,” Brian says to me, his voice pitched high, begging. “Your speech was beautiful, Lady Treadway, and I do think you understand it better than your husband does. He left us last time. T’wasn’t right. It’s not our way. If you go, Godspeed, but you stay gone. And the lord? By God, he stays. We all stay who can stay. It’s our covenant with the land, and I won’t risk it for anything. Or anyone.”

There’s a clear apology in his eyes as he says it, but firmness too.

He’s not lying to save Matthew. He did it. He is the law here, and he broke it. He doesn’t regret it.

“Not even one so—”

Brian’s head bursts.

Red. The inside of his skull is spilling outward like a poppy opening.

I hear high ringing in my ears before I realize that what’s deafened me is the antique revolver’s blast.

Brian falls, and Jenny Pike careens sideways to catch him. Ian instinctively moves between her and Hugh, staring at the smoking barrel.

Jenny dabs at Brian’s head, whimpering, “Daddy? Daddy?”

“Daddy?” Someone else’s voice.

No.

Charlie stands in the hall holding the picture book. He drops it onto his feet and looks at me.

“You said a minute. It’s been more than a minute.”

“No, no, no, Charlie, go!” I hiss.

Sally runs to him, arms outstretched, to bundle, to hide.

I crouch beside Jenny, helping her hold what minutes ago was Brian, and stare up at what minutes ago still felt like my husband of seven years. He looks the same, smoothly handsome, but I can see it now, the rot inside him.

Hugh’s peering at his gun like it’s an object of wonder. A curiosity from a museum.

“That’s what?” He frowns. “Five?”

9:27 P.M.

I turn to my neighbors, my guests, the remaining population of Lute Island. They look like the bodies cast into statues at Pompeii. Their muscles are primed for flight, but they don’t dare, whether it’s because they’re afraid of death by stumbling or bred to be stoic, I don’t know, but when I shout, “Run!” they do.

It’s not orderly. They stumble over each other, some fleeing the room, some helping friends, and I worry for them, but I cannot do any more than that now.

Ernie Withers is the first to reach the front door. He pulls it wider, into his leg, lets out a shout of pain, then escapes. He’s created a bottleneck, though—only so many people can fit through even so grand a doorway as Alder House’s.

Hugh turns casually toward the crowd in the lobby, his revolver waving this way and that like a divining rod seeking water.

I scramble to stand in front of him. He stares through me. The gun barrel crosses my chest.