Bucky started across the room, then stopped. For an instant, Laura’s face looked green and witchy in the glow of the television set, and, outside, his friend’s face seemed to float, ghostlike and disembodied, in the darkness. Bucky blinked, and then Laura was just Laura again. As for Vaughn, he was wearing a dark hoodie and dark jeans, and a black wool hat on his head.

Bucky swallowed hard. “Did you find Anheuser?”

“No,” said Vaughn. “It’s worse.” He turned to look at Bucky, then Laura, and said, “You know Sharon’s baby’s gone?”

Bucky nodded. He’d heard about Elise Crooks, who’d been missing for a few weeks, but Elise was old and lived alone and sometimes went off to visit her sister in Springfield without letting anyone know. There had also been the pets, poor Maura’s kitten and, of course, Vaughn’s dog, Anheuser, but that was probably just foxes. Or the coyotes. Something.

“Bucky.” Vaughn was holding something in his hand. Bucky blinked and saw it was a tiki torch, the kind the Kaplans had, around their pool. As he watched, his friend touched a lit match to its crown. The torch flared, and Laura came back from the kitchen with a cleaver and a butcher knife. She handed the butcher knife to Bucky, who stared down at it dumbly.

“What—what are we…”

“You know,” said Vaughn, in a solemn voice.

And Laura said, “That poor baby.” Her tone was sympathetic, but her eyes had a hard, pitiless glitter, and there were spots of red glowing in her cheeks. “Come on, honey. It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Bucky said, but his tongue felt thick and slow, and the butcher knife’s handle felt just right in his hand. He stepped outside, into the cool, star-pricked night, and saw the crowd of islanders making their way up the hill.

“That’s right,” said Vaughn, even though Bucky hadn’t spoken. “We’re doing the right thing.”

“She’s an outsider,” said Laura, and Bucky didn’t have to ask who she was, because, somehow, he already knew.

“This is how it’s always been,” Vaughn said. “How it’s supposed to be. We’ve got to look out for each other. For this place.”

“If we don’t, who will?” asked Laura. She sounded sincere, almost pious, but behind her eyes, he could glimpse something that wasn’t pious at all, something that capered and grinned. Something that saw a murdered infant as nothing but a permission slip to rend and slash and kill. The tendons in her wrists stood out in sharp relief as she gripped the knife.

“Come on,” she said. “For the Island.”

“For the Island,” said Vaughn.

“For the Island,” said Bucky. He found that his feet knew where to take him. He had no doubt that he’d know what to do—that all of them would—when they arrived.