But the worst bit of all was the fifteen-second clip of my sister, tears staining her cheeks and standing in her eyes. “She was a demon,” Mellie had sobbed in front of the camera. “I didn’t want to believe it, but she was so fast and so strong, and she admitted it. She said she was going to sell me as a host—” The footage cut off so abruptly that anyone with half a brain could tell she’d had more to say, but only Anathema and I knew that Mellie wasn’t really talking about me—she was talking about our mother.

The news anchor was careful to remind the world that Melanie’s tears could merely be manipulation on the part of the demon possessing her—the Church hadn’t yet finished its examination of the younger Kane sister—but anyone who watched the overplayed clip with a slightly more critical eye would notice that the close camera focus seemed designed to hide her whereabouts as well as the circumstances of her incarceration.

I couldn’t even imagine what kind of incendiary revelation the Church had saved for the national press conference, or which of my friends and neighbors they would declare possessed and in league with me and the rest of Anathema.

“So, how did you meet Finn?” I asked as we turned the first corner, desperate to think about anything other than the disaster my life had become and the incredibly slim chance that we’d actually be able to snatch Melanie from Church custody.

“We grew up together.” Maddock stuffed his hands into the pockets of the navy slacks he’d borrowed from Angela Reddy’s daughter; hopefully no one would notice they were too short. “He’s just always been there.”

“How is that possible?” I couldn’t quite picture a toddler with an invisible playmate.

Maddock shrugged. “Finn’s in my earliest memories.” He kicked a bit of gravel down the cracked sidewalk as we passed the peeling paint and chipped brick facades of some of the oldest houses in town. They were old even before the war, back when New Temperance had another name and no wall, and looked just like thousands of other towns in hundreds of other counties around the nation.

“Everyone thought he was my imaginary friend,” Maddock continued. “But the only part I could say at the time was ‘friend.’ It came out as ‘Finn.’ ”

“You named him!” I couldn’t resist a smile at the thought. “So…how did you play with someone you couldn’t see?”

He shrugged again, and his pocketed hands pulled his pants up briefly to expose more of his socks. “We were about five when he figured out he could step into my body.” Maddock chuckled at the memory, and I glanced around to make sure we were the only ones on the street. A boy and girl walking alone together would be noticed unless they looked and acted like brother and sister.

Fortunately, the neighborhood looked deserted. We were still at least a mile from the center of town.