Eric watches as Carl hops out of the police car and opens the back seat. He keeps his gun on Carrie as he unlocks her from the restraint ring and then cuffs her hands together again. He walks up the base of the hill, hauls her through the crowd and brings her up to the front.

Alana looks at Eric from below, eyes cold, her mouth set in a grim line. He looks down at Grace, tied to the altar.

He wishes he could tell Alana how sorry he is. He knows she does not want to hear it, and whatever words he could find would never be enough.

From her place in the crowd, Alana waits. She feels the brand, burning on her wrist. Other people look to her, and she can’t meet their eyes.

She watches her child on the altar. No harm has come to her yet. She realizes how much room there is for betrayal in all the unspoken parts of a devil’s bargain.

She almost decides to rush toward the top of the hill. She almost says, to hell with her deal. But she finds that her legs stick when she tenses to run and spring. Her brand ignites with new pain.

More than that, she knows that she would still be too late to save her daughter. She can’t interfere. She can’t.

So she hates herself, and hates Eric, and hates herself for trusting him, and promises a million kinds of bloody and painful vengeance, and she waits.

The last guest arrives in a moment. RANN-D — or, to be more accurate, the ghost of Sax, driving the robot — hammers up the road, bringing Danny pinned in its arms, held tightly across its torso. The crowd clears a path, letting Sax and RANN-D steer over the grass, bringing Danny all the way up to the front row.

Eric looks back at him from behind the altar. “About time you got here,” he says.

Danny shrugs. “Traffic was a bitch.”

Buzz doesn’t care for this. “We’re on the clock here, ladies. Maybe save the chitchat for your next slumber party.”

Eric scowls at him. “Shut up, Buzz.”

“Hey. You’re not in charge here. I am. And the sooner you do this thing, the sooner I get my daughter back.” He looks at Colchester’s ghost-form, hanging over Jeremy. “That was the deal, right?”

Colchester nods. “You will be reunited with the girl. That was our agreement.”

The loophole in that is so huge and obvious. It fooled Jeremy. Buzz is an adult. He should know better.

But Eric doesn’t bother to comment. He doesn’t care what happens to Buzz. He stopped caring twenty years ago.

He has a couple of things left to say to Danny, though.

“You know what’s going to happen next?”

Danny shrugs, as much as he can in the steel grip of the robot. “I have a pretty good idea.”