“Well, I hope she’s all right.” She stood up. “Excuse me, I’ll just switch the laundry.”

She left the kitchen. After a few more bites of sandwich, I followed her. The laundry was in a small room at the end of the hallway. The dryer was running, and she was folding a load of lights.

“Can I help?”

“Oh, no, that’s all right. I like folding laundry.”

I leaned in the doorway, formulating a plan of attack. I knew I couldn’t leave. There was no way I’d try it. Go ahead and call me a coward, but I wasn’t going to cross Williams again. I was viscerally afraid of him in a way that made it impossible.

“Callie, I should probably call Ben. I haven’t talked to him in more than two days. And maybe my workplace. Would you mind if I used your phone?”

She glanced up at me, unhappy. “I’m sorry, but John said you couldn’t.”

“He said I couldn’t call Ben?”

“He said you couldn’t use the phone at all.”

“Oh.”

I thought for a minute. Maybe there was a way around this.

“He’s probably afraid I’ll try to tell someone again, but now I know I can’t.”

She nodded, not looking at me.

“So, I won’t tell Ben anything, okay? I’ll just let him know I’m all right.”

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’d let you if I could, but the phone won’t work for you. You just can’t make any calls.”

“What do you mean the phone won’t work for me?”

“There’s a barrier around the house. It’s something John can do, a gift from the Lord. You can’t leave or make calls or wave at someone out the window or anything like that. I’m sorry.”

I stared at her. I went to the kitchen and tried the phone. It was dead. I went to the front door, my skepticism momentarily overcoming my fear. I opened it and tried to step out.

There was something in front of me that I couldn’t see. It was like running into a massive blob of invisible gelatin. I stepped back from it. The world swayed.

From behind me, Callie said, “You really didn’t believe any of it, did you? He said so, but I wasn’t sure.”

“No.” My own voice sounded weirdly calm and normal to me. “I really didn’t.”

Callie sat me down in the living room and tried to explain things to me, but honestly, it all sounded like a jumble of crazy. Hell as a vast world full of demons. People like her and Williams as protectors of our world from demons who come here to sow evil and reap souls.

I listened with a fraction of my attention, catching random tidbits. With the rest, I focused on my breathing.