It wasn’t that weird, really. He got the tattoo on his right ankle, where no one would see it. His wife got one too. They recruited other people. They went to the meetings and the orgies. They wore the robes and performed the rituals and spoke the words. Sometimes he thought it was like Amway, only with chanting and sex.

They gave him money and told him to start building. Houses, office complexes, mini-malls. They told him where and he rolled out the bulldozers and the construction crews.

It was like drilling for oil, only better. Every place he put up a building, he made ten times what he’d invested. He opened a real estate office, made his wife the manager, and soon she was selling houses as fast as she could put up signs. Middleton began to show up on a bunch of lists, like “Top 10 Places to Live that You’ve Never Heard Of,” and Forbes’ annual ranking of most livable cities. New people started moving to town. They were looking for “a nice place to raise a family.”

None of them knew the real price. They were better off.

It scared Buzz at first. He can admit that.

But they made it sound so reasonable. Every religion in the world was based on sacrifice, when you got right down to it. What was Abraham doing with Isaac? Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Why did He kill all those first-born sons on Passover?

To create something better. Buzz understood that. That was the hard truth of the field and the weight room: no pain, no gain. Winning required blood and muscle and violence; it was survival of the fittest out there.

The gods really did exist. They were happy to make your dreams and wishes come true — as long as you paid the bill. In return for their help, they wanted the good stuff, the freshest supply possible.

Because honestly, who doesn’t like kids?

He could live with it. If it meant staying rich, and keeping everything happy and prosperous in Middleton — well, there are always trade-offs, he told himself. That’s part of growing up.

The bitch of it was, they could have avoided most of this pain. If only Danny and the others had let the ritual be completed on New Year’s Eve. They’d meddled in something they didn’t understand. They’d tried to be heroes.

Now Buzz and the rest of the Followers are going to finish the job. They’re going to put it right.

Danny listens to all of it, with the slapping and the moaning and the grunting behind Buzz. Viagra is a hell of a drug, he thinks.

“You really mean it,” he says. “You think we should have let Colchester win.”