“Calm down,” Maddy whispered. “It’s too late to back out now. We’d draw more attention by turning around.”

I had no intention of backing out, but…“You should find Reese and Devi and get out of here. There’s no reason for us all to get caught.” I’d never forgive myself if I got them hurt or captured.

“No way,” he breathed, and I could hardly hear him over the footsteps and whispered conversations all around us. “We don’t abandon our own.”

I wanted to argue, but by then we were part of the flow of traffic, carried by its current toward the town square, and so tightly surrounded by other spectators that if I reached out, I could touch at least three other people.

We were trapped within the mob gathering to hang us. Figuratively speaking.

At least, I hoped that part was figurative.

The crowd buzzed around us, and my name was on every tongue. People who’d never even said hi to me were suddenly experts on my early life, my school records, and my state of mind. They argued about how long I’d been possessed and whether or not my “deviant proclivities” had brought me to the attention of my demonic parasite or somehow made me more susceptible to possession. They mourned the loss of my mother, who should have been able to see what was going on in her own home but surely didn’t deserve the death she’d been dealt.

I bit my tongue and shuffled forward with Maddock while indignation raged inside me.

Through the crowd, I saw Wanted posters bearing my picture in the front windows of two more stores, and when we got close enough to see the courthouse, with its white pillars and modest rotunda, I found my face on the big screen towering over the town square.

The giant television monitor—the only technological upgrade New Temperance had approved in my lifetime—was used to air public assemblies and school ceremonies, and to broadcast the national news feed during any large-scale emergency.

Earthquakes. Tsunamis. And me.

Hurricane Nina. I was an unnatural disaster.

I barely recognized the town square. I could hardly even see it through the throng trampling the grass as people flocked toward the dais.

In the past twenty-four hours, while I’d hidden from the world and from the degenerates tuned in to my heartbeat, national public interest had turned New Temperance into a circus of stage lights, news cameras, and preening public officials wearing pressed cassocks and identical grave expressions. As Maddock and I entered the crowded courtyard, carried along by the relentless flow of pedestrian traffic, I suddenly understood how, during past public crises in other cities, the news had managed to capture every aspect of the unfolding drama as it happened.

There were cameras everywhere.

I counted three aimed at the dais alone and two slowly panning the crowd from courthouse balconies, providing broad shots from above to showcase the sheer size of the throng. Two more cameras were carried on the shoulders of big men following familiar news correspondents through the crowd. The journalists stopped every few feet to shove a microphone at someone, and I realized they were in search of local flavor—a ten-second news clip of a New Temperance native willing to comment on the spectacle, live from the scene.