“Get away! Get away from me!” He pushes the girl, tossing her into a puddle so deep it covers her hips. He crawls back on the seat of his poncho, giant galoshes kicking muck onto her cheeks.

Black hair sticks to her face as the rain blurs the look of disdain in his eyes. The old man reaches for his dog, who is cowering in a barren shrub, then scrambles up the two concrete steps to his home, the door slamming behind him.

“Vera! Vera! Come inside!” her aunt shouts over the wind.

The girl turns toward the sound, embarrassment surging within her. He fears her. Even now. Even in this. She spies her aunt’s panicked face peeking through the door, and for the first time, she notices the wind—its odd dance, its strange pattern. Severed branches, plastic bags, autumn leaves, and trash can lids swirl around her property, twisting in a spiral, curling away from her home. It’s as if her white Victorian were the center of the storm, everything whipping around it, not at it.

Even Mother Nature won’t get too close.

The girl crawls on scratched knees, heavy drops pelting her back and mulch fumes filling her nostrils. Finally, her fingers graze concrete, the steps. Her aunt yanks her inside by a single arm.

“You could have been killed!” she hollers, shaking the girl’s shoulders, water spraying onto the pine boards of the country kitchen.

The girl doesn’t respond, her head flopping limply, as her aunt continues to grip her body.

“What if something hit you? What if you were hurt? What would I do?”

The words form a dull buzz in the girl’s head as she shivers.

The chill deepens, but the source is no longer her sopping clothes. Her body stiffens. The aunt stops speaking. They both feel it.

Their eyes turn in unison toward the basement door, an unseen force tugging their chests and swelling their pupils. The dust in the room grows hefty as the silence builds.

Then the crash sounds. A cascading clink of shattered glass rings in the girl’s ears, in her soul.

Something has broken.

No, it’s broken loose.

She doesn’t blink until an audible gasp rips from her aunt. Hairs rise on the girl’s arms as the aunt begins to pray. The names of saints, God, Mary, and Jesus tumble from her aunt’s lips.

But the girl knows it is too late.

They both do.

The unthinkable has happened.

Evil has been set free.

And God can’t help them now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Vera

Telling a guy that your basement holds five or six dozen objects that at one time were possessed by inhuman, murderous spirits is not exactly the way to endear him to you. Not that Vera wanted to endear him. Or maybe she did. It was complicated.

She needed her parents.

They texted that they were in the throes of an exorcism and would call her later. How exactly could Vera tell them to ditch the possessed girl in Barcelona and come back to help the possessed woman here? Surely that girl deserved saving, but it was hard to feel sorry for her across an ocean when someone down the street was literally smoking. Vera dug her hands into her hair and groaned into her no-longer-warm tea. Maxwell Oliver was upstairs with his sister watching Brave. (A poignant title given the circumstances.)