I turned to Reese. “You’re going as a cop?” As a pledge, since there was no embroidery on the fitted cassock.

He only grinned and chewed, while Grayson hooked the hanger over the closet door.

Maddock swallowed a bite of bacon, then cleared his throat. “Finn got it from a dry cleaner this afternoon. He says that’s the only one that would fit.”

“That’s either truly brilliant or profoundly idiotic.” Reese would be more visible than ever as a cop—but people wouldn’t be looking at his face. They’d notice the authority his navy robes granted, then dismiss him without further thought.

Hopefully.

“Okay, this might work.” It had to. “But Reese and Devi probably shouldn’t be obviously together.”

“Agreed,” Maddock’s focus found them both. “Go separately, but stay in sight of each other and of the courthouse side entrance. Got it?”

“Sounds complicated, but I think I can manage.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Let’s get moving.” Devi grabbed the school uniform hanging from the bedroom doorknob and slammed the door behind her, leaving her dirty plate on the table.

“I don’t think she likes me.”

Grayson started stacking the used plates. “Devi doesn’t like anyone but Maddy. I don’t think she even likes herself most days.”

Well, at least that gave us something in common.

“You okay?” Maddock’s sneakers crunched on loose gravel as we crossed the apartment parking lot, headed for the center of town. I kept walking forward, even though every instinct I had was telling me to put as much distance as possible between me and whatever spectacle was about to unfold at the courthouse.

Reese and Devi had left separately ten minutes earlier so they could arrive alone from different directions.

Finn had gone even earlier than that, promising to meet us there with whatever information he managed to dig up.

“I’m…” I stared at the gray sky and hunched deeper into my borrowed coat. “Well, I’m alive, and right now that feels like a pretty big accomplishment.”

Twenty minutes earlier, the national news had showed footage of Church investigators crawling all over my house. I’d fought tears, watching them paw through my medicine cabinet, examine the sheets on my bed, and assess the modesty of the underwear in my top drawer, in search of proof that I was possessed or lecherous or just generally evil. They’d found the clothes I’d “stolen” from the Turners and the makeup Mellie and I purportedly wore. They’d also aired images of a closet full of “immodest” clothing I’d never seen in my life, which we were supposed to have worn in order to lure the devout youth of New Temperance into our demonic embrace.

They were even linking us to the death of April Walden, the dead girl from Solace, though they probably had no idea how close to the truth that particular lie was.

However, the rest of it was beyond ridiculous. But with the misleading facts, half-truths, and outright lies rearranged, compiled, edited, and commented on by newscasters—familiar faces lent authority by embroidered Church cassocks and their very presence on the air—even I had to concentrate to remember that none of it was real.