On the huge screen overhead, broadcasting the national news feed, a small inset window showed the crowd as the cameras panned, while in the main window, Sister Florence Bennett, deacon of New Temperance, was being interviewed in her office by a national correspondent, looking polished and composed in her steel-gray cassock with elaborate green embroidery.

I couldn’t hear what the deacon was saying over the din of the crowd, but she looked poised and solemn, projecting the perfect combination of concern over the danger Anathema represented for New Temperance and steadfast confidence that we would be caught.

For a moment, as the balcony cameras panned the crowd, I panicked, sure one of them would catch me. Then I realized that no individual face would be recognizable among so many, all eager, as far as I could tell, to witness whatever spectacle Deacon Bennett had planned.

I prayed with all my heart that that spectacle wouldn’t involve my sister. We couldn’t rescue Melanie if she was on display in front of millions of at-home viewers, not to mention the live crowd.

Something touched my arm and I jumped, sure I’d been caught, until Maddock’s gaze met mine. “Over here,” he mouthed, and I followed him, elbowing my way through the crowd with my head down.

He found a spot for us near the courthouse wall, next to a giant speaker spewing the audio from the deacon’s interview. Because of the noise and the distance from the dais, the crowd was thinner there, and I felt like I could breathe for the first time since we’d passed the Grab-n-Go.

“Do you see the others?” Maddock shouted into my ear, competing with the audio from the news broadcast, and I shook my head, scanning the faces and clothes of those closest to us. But I couldn’t distinguish individual faces in the crowd. Fortunately, the same was evidently true for everyone else. No one was looking at us. No one even seemed to be looking for us. They didn’t expect us to show up where, in theory, we were mostly likely to get caught.

After the interviewer’s last question for Deacon Bennett, the giant speaker on my right played a three-beat chord and the image on the big screen changed. My breath caught in my throat when Dale’s face appeared, staring out at me from behind the counter of the Grab-n-Go. The reporter introduced him and asked him to share what he knew about the demon known as Nina Kane.

“You know, everyone acts so surprised, like she’s the last person they’d ever expect to host a demon, but that’s only ’cause they don’t know Nina like I do.”

I groaned, and Maddock glanced at me for a second, then turned back to the screen.

“I don’t know when she got possessed, but I can tell you right now she’s always been a thief. I caught her several times, here in the store, and she always tried to buy her way out of trouble, if you know what I mean. You know, with the only kind of payment a girl like that understands.”