"Yes, shoot her. Shoot her right between her childless breasts." Ethel thumped a fist against the scrawny, leathery chest she wore. "Do it, you naughty boy."

The phrase stung him: it was the same phrase Tish spoke the moment before Barclay leaped from the closet and strangled the life out of her.

She must have been reading his mind, using it against him. He struggled not to pull the trigger. To paint the walls with her brains. The poker pushed deeper against Sheila's throat. The shotgun rattled in his quivering hands.

Become the killer you know you are, he thought.

With a wild snarl, Rooster leaped up from his bed, raising a cloud of dust, chomping down hard on his master's leg.

Clarabelle dropped the poker, kicking at the dog as he held on tight to her ankle, drawing blood.

"Bloody thing! Vile thing!"

Sheila made a double fist like a volleyball player and brought them down on the woman's head.

Clarabelle flinched, and the milkiness instantly faded from her eyes. They opened wide in pain and fear. She looked down at her leg, where the hound dog still held her in his teeth. Then to Martin, training the shotgun on her.

"What the hot shit is happenin here? Rooster! Bad dog!"

Rooster's sad eyes rolled upward at the sound of her voice and he promptly let go, backing away fearfully until he plopped back down in his bed.

Martin lowered the shotgun.

"Give me that," she snapped, grabbing it by the barrel and tearing it from his hand. "You even know how to use this?" She looked at Sheila's leg. "Dang. Rooster bit you too?"

"It wasn't the dog. You hit me with the poker."

"I hit you? I don't remember that at all." She scowled thoughtfully. "Felt kinda like I fell asleep there for a second or two..."

"Do you know a woman named Ethel Kelly?"

Clarabelle nodded. Squeezed her ankle where the dog bit her to stem the flow of blood. "One of the Midwifes."

"She was using you, speaking and moving through you. She wanted us to shoot you."

The woman looked to Martin for confirmation. He nodded. He'd been so close to doing just that. If the dog hadn't bit her just then, he might have.

Woe betide me.

"You people need to get the hell out of here."

"We need a boat," Martin said. "Please."

"I ain't about to get caught givin you a boat. If Ethel knows you're here, Mother does too. And you're her son. I knew I recognized you."

"She's not my mother."

"If they find us, they'll kill us," Sheila pleaded.

"I don't know that. And I don't know you. Alls I know is ya scared my poor boy somethin terrible and I gotta tend to this bite." The woman slumped into a chair at the table, fumbling to make a cigarette on a rolling machine. "Go on an' leave me be. I'm an old lady. Never hurt no one." She fired up the unfiltered smoke and took a drag, her hands shaking.