“You know how magic works? I mean the hard kind of magic, not sorcery. Card and coin tricks. Close-up magic. You want to know what the key is?”

Colchester sees that Eric is doing something here, but he doesn’t know what. Not yet. Carl and Buzz and the Followers are watching, waiting, taking their cues from the Good Man. Eric knows how to keep a crowd on the hook.

“Misdirection,” he says. “If I take a card from you and wave my hand, it’s because I don’t want you looking at the deck. It’s also why magicians have a line of patter. We’re always talking. We never shut up long enough for you to realize you’re being fooled.”

Colchester doesn’t like where this is headed. “Son, what do you think you’re — ”

Eric smiles. “I’m not your son. And I’m telling you: you were looking at the wrong hand.”

He looks down at Grace, who is still terrified.

Then he takes Alana’s sword and slices the bonds that are holding her to the altar. With a quick gesture, he levitates her, up and away from the fairy circle, to the side of the hill.

Eric stabs the sword into the altar, and calls down the lightning.

The sky cracks open as a pillar of pure white energy reaches from the sky and briefly turns night into day.

The bolt strikes Alana’s sword and runs down into the altar, shattering it into fragments as thunder rolls over the valley.

When the smoke clears, there’s nothing left but a crater and rubble.

And the sword, of course. Eric is impressed. He picks it up and smiles.

“So. Was this your card?” he shouts over the echo of the explosion.

The people from the reunion, the Followers, Carrie and Danny and Alana, all stare up at the top of the hill. Only the zombified kids are not impressed.

And Colchester. He’s furious, but he’s not impressed. He walks Jeremy’s body over to the edge of the smoking crater. His eyes are as narrow and mean as a snake’s.

“You had to be the hero,” he says. “You don’t even see how useless you are. You couldn’t kill me twenty years ago. How are you going to stop me now?”

Colchester gestures, and all the high school students in the crowd turn, like they’re swiveling on a mechanism, and take a step forward in unison. Colchester has a whole army of innocent pawns. He has at least a dozen ways to kill Eric without using his own hands.

Eric holds the sword in front of himself, keeping Colchester at bay. He cannot wipe the grin from his face.

“Well, for starters,” Eric says. “I’m not going to do it alone.”

Then there are gunshots, followed by another explosion, and that’s when the screaming starts.

30

Was This Your Master Plan