“No, of course not, you know that.”

“Then what? What am I?”

“You’ll find out, Rose. Look on the good side. It could be a wonderful thing.”

He kissed her outside in the cold, out of Mom’s sight. Rose went to her room without seeing Jerram. His closed door was like an accusation. She slept fitfully during the night, aware of every time she turned over. Nancy had not appeared. There had been no messages.

But when she woke up on Sunday morning, her head ached, as if something had been trying to get inside it, as if she had spent the entire night forcibly keeping it out.

The service was about to start. As the Reverend Joan Fairley walked to the altar, and the congregation rose, Daniel’s words came back to her. “You’ll find out,” he’d said. Find out what she really was.

It was odd as they went through the service to hear so many voices responding, singing the hymns with such strength. Usually the organ drowned everybody out, but now the joined voices were loud, and even the draggiest hymns sounded better than they ever had before.

Rose had never really liked this new church. Everybody was very proud when it was built, but she preferred the old church, cramped and dark with creaking floors and smelling of incense, an atmosphere suited to meditation and prayer. This bright new church, with its long uncolored windows, seemed too efficient and businesslike for rituals. But now as she watched the sunlight falling in bright shafts from the tall windows, she could understand why everybody had come.

The sermon reminded them to trust God’s will, to stand against evil. And the prayer afterwards was for the grief of the Emersons and Merleys and the Klouts in Danville, and the parents of the victim that had yet to be found, a girl named Carla Fentesso, from a nearby town. The Reverend Joan asked God to give the town courage and strength to stand together. The Amen that followed sounded more like the cry of a tent revival meeting than the congregation of their sedate church.

The organ struck up the recessional, and people began to straggle out into the aisle. It was polite to let those in front go first, so Nancy’s and Cyn’s parents were the first to come up.

Mrs. Emerson stopped abruptly when she reached their pew. Behind her, her husband and the Merleys stopped short.

Mom smiled sympathetically, but Mrs. Emerson’s face twisted in anger. She lifted a black-gloved hand and pointed.

“You!” she said in a voice loud enough to carry over the organ’s muted music. Rose heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath and murmur of surprise. Someone gripped Rose’s arm from behind, either Dad or Jerram.

“Witch!” Mrs. Emerson screamed. The organ stopped. People stopped. Everything stopped. “We don’t want your kind here.”