“I have to do something. Give me a minute. Find the chalices. I’m right behind you!” She shoved his shoulders as confusion clouded his eyes.

“But—!”

“Do you trust me?” Her eyes were earnest.

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll meet you down there, sixty seconds.”

“You’ve got one minute, then I’m coming after you.”

“I’m counting on it.”

He held her gaze, and for an odd moment, she felt the urge to hug him, even kiss him, reassure him. She resisted the sensation and turned on her heel. Then she marched to the closet, Max’s feet barreling down the basement steps.

An instinct, that feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something but you’re not sure what, took over. She opened the closet door, a dormant part of her brain searching for what it needed to find. Then she dropped to her knees, and her jeans scraped against a raised nail in a floorboard, as her hands dug into the cluttered mess of rain boots and umbrellas. She stretched to the far back corner, and her fingertips brushed against the hard plastic she suddenly knew she was looking for. She grabbed the rim and pulled the object free.

A hard hat.

She clutched the molded cap, staring in wonderment. It was white, or it used to be. Now it was almost gray, a coating of soot baked into it. The brim was cracked, and the edge of one side was warped, maybe melted.

It was his hat. Vera saw it on the head of Seth Durand in her vision, the day he descended the steps into the basement of the community center, the day he lifted his wrench. It must have been given to his widow by the town after the case was closed. Only, the woman didn’t memorialize it; she didn’t place it with the shrine in her son’s room. Instead, she hid it in a closet.

Why?

Though down deep, Vera felt she knew. She just needed to remember.

Vera rose to her feet, flinging open the front door and sprinting across the lawn toward Maxwell’s truck. She tossed the hat inside, and it landed with a soft plop on the passenger seat. She wasn’t sure why she needed it, or how she even found it, but somewhere inside, she knew she had to have it.

Her body slid out, and as she slammed the door shut, another chill overtook her, more severe than what she’d felt in the vision.

Something was coming. A sound revved, a motor.

Vera turned toward the end of the street as a van swung around the corner, midnight green with a business emblem adorned on one side featuring pink, delicate, cursive script: Durand Flowers.

They were here.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Max

The chalices were easy to find. The concrete floor of the dank cellar was stacked high with boxes upon boxes overflowing with yellow hats, evil statues, and cursed crystal. Cheap, assembly-style folding chairs faced a makeshift shrine to the Angel of Tears assembled on a table worthy of beer pong. This is the base of Operation Destroy the World? This is what drew my mother?