“Creek came back by herself. She said she’d been for a walk, because she was so sad. It was only a stray, but it was a nice dog. We’d never had one.”

“And why hadn’t you had one?” Fiji asked.

“Because . . .” Shawn said hoarsely, and then could not finish the sentence.

“Because of Connor,” Creek said.

She threw her brother’s name out like a stone into a pond, and the ripples spread and spread. Connor himself still stood by the mop, and he was still smiling, but it was like his face had frozen in that position and he didn’t know how to change it.

“Because he’s killed things in the past,” Fiji said with certainty. “And you knew he would in the future. That’s why you’re here, why you don’t want anyone to take pictures of you and your kids, why you try to limit their exposure to the world. But you had to let Connor go to school in Davy. You couldn’t homeschool him, not and work full-time here at the gas station.”

“He promised,” Shawn said. The man’s shoulders slumped. “He promised. We took him to therapy. We . . .” He looked at his son. “Connor?”

Creek’s mouth was partly open, and her eyes shone with unshed tears. She was so young, but Manfred didn’t think any life experience could have prepared her for this moment. She’d been facing the cluster of Midnighters, but now she turned to her right to face her brother. “You killed my dog?” she said. It sounded almost conversational.

Connor’s smile became genuine. This smile was the worst thing of all. It was broad and white and delighted, with no hint of shame or remorse or feeling.

“Well, I gotta say, you caught me fair and square,” the boy said. “Creek, sorry . . . but it had been so long.” His expression morphed into a strange mixture of rueful regret—he’d been caught misbehaving—and an honest appeal for understanding. “It was only a stray. You can get another one, right?”

“You promised,” Creek said, in an eerie echo of her father. She looked ten years older.

“Well . . . yeah, I know I did. But the urge comes on me, and I gotta do something. It was better killing the dog than a person, right?” He said that, but Fiji could tell he didn’t feel it. He was making an effort to seem like a boy with genuine human responses.

“But you killed a person, too,” Bobo said, and there was only silence.

Until Connor bolted for the back door. But that was where Lemuel had stationed himself.

There was no breaking Lemuel’s grip.

In the end, Connor enjoyed telling them about Aubrey.

The streets had been empty, as they so often were. He’d even seen Fiji drive off toward Davy, though she’d seemed preoccupied and hadn’t appeared to notice him.