“The press conference is shaping up to be a public spectacle.” Reese set a platter of bacon on the table. “They’re going to reveal the identity of whatever demon they claim to have found hiding among your friends and neighbors. The Church is ramping up the drama with the ‘monsters among you’ angle, and they’ve set the press conference for five o’clock so they’ll catch parents on their way home from work and kids lingering after school for the drama.”

“They’re expecting a turnout of a couple thousand.” Grayson snagged a slice of bacon. “It’s our best chance to blend in. Thus the school clothes.”

“How do you know all that?”

“You slept through the news,” Maddock said around a slice of bacon.

“You snored through the news,” Devi corrected.

“Five o’clock…” My thoughts raced. We had less than an hour. “I’m not going without my sister.” I said it softly, but everyone heard. All sound ceased, except for the sizzle of eggs frying in the kitchen. “How hard could it be for Finn to jump inside some Church official and unlock her cell? We’ll take a set of those for Mellie too”—I pointed at the uniform hanging on the bedroom door—“and we’ll leave as soon as we have her. She’ll fit right into your plan.”

Devi was the first to break the near silence. “I told you she’d be a pain in the ass. I knew the minute I saw her with her mouth all over my boyfriend that she’d be nothing but—”

“Devi, shut up!” Grayson snapped, and we all turned to her in surprise. “That was from Finn,” she clarified. “But I second the motion.”

“Nina.” Maddock set the second full backpack next to the first, practically begging me with his gaze to cooperate. “I’m sorry, but your sister’s beyond our reach. Even if we could get her out of Church custody—and we can’t—the whole world has seen Devi, Reese, Melanie, and you on the news. If any one of you is recognized, we’re screwed.”

Devi squeezed her arms crossed over her chest. “Which is why we’re going to skirt the edge of the crowd on our way out of town, not march through the heart of the assembly and into the courthouse, where we’re most likely to be recognized, then arrested.”

“Then executed,” Reese added.

“So you’re going to run,” I said flatly.

“No.” Devi spread her arms to take in the entire room and everyone in it. “This is regrouping, so we can come at them again. That’s not the same as running. April ran.”

“April?” And suddenly I understood. “April Walden?” The girl from Solace who’d died in the badlands. “She was an exorcist?”

“She would have been. When the degenerates started flocking north, we followed them, but they weren’t leading us to New Temperance. First they led us to Solace.” Which would have been between them and my hometown, coming from the south. “Finn and Reese found her, and she hadn’t been triggered yet, which should have been good, except that she didn’t know what she was. When they told her, she didn’t believe them. Until the degenerates found her. Finn and Reese tried to get her to fight—she had to kill a demon to trigger the rest of the transition—but she ran.”