“You get New Temperance,” I repeated. “And Verity. And Constance. And Solace. And Caridad. And every other town that survived the war, if I’m even close to right about this. My mom told me, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t understand.”

“She told you what?” Maddock’s brows were furrowed in confusion.

I’d said, The war is over. We won.

Yes, we did, she’d answered, and I could still see her smug expression in my mind.

I turned to Devi. “There was no first postwar possession in New Temperance, or anywhere else. No one noticed Church officials suddenly getting possessed, because they didn’t suddenly get possessed. The demons have been here all along, just like my mom, only on a larger scale. That’s why they’re hunting us. That’s why their exorcists are fake.”

“What the hell is she talking about?” Devi said to Maddock, who was still frowning, and I wondered if Finn was explaining it to him at the same time.

“I’m talking about the war.” I stood. I couldn’t sit still anymore. “It didn’t happen like they say it did. They’ve been lying all this time, and we’ve been eating it up like gravy because they look like us and they sound like us and they act like us—at least when people are watching—but they’re not us. They never were. We were just too stupid to see it.”

Devi glanced around the room in exaggerated frustration. “Can someone please translate? I don’t speak lunatic.”

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “It sounds crazy because it is crazy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Demons didn’t lose the war; they just stopped fighting where we could see them. They became the people we trusted most—the Church—and told us they could save us. And we believed them. We were scared and desperate and facing the extinction of our species, so we gave them everything we had. We gave them our money, our service, our government, our children, and our freedom, and when the war was ‘over,’ we celebrated, like fools! We praised the Church and pledged our loyalty, and we were grateful to be alive, but the joke was on us.”

They stared at me, stunned, and I was dimly aware that my voice was gradually rising with every word, but I couldn’t make it stop. The dam had broken and the words would flow. “The joke is still on us. We didn’t win the war; we gave away the victory. The Church didn’t save us. It enslaved us.” I gestured frantically to each one of them. To Anathema as a whole. “And they’re going to hunt every single one of us down and burn us alive, because we’re the only ones who know the truth.”

“I have to get to Melanie.” I stood, and Reese stood with me, reaching for a half-packed bag.

“Nina, we have to get out of here,” he said as Maddock turned on the television, then muted Brother Jonathan’s voice. “With that as the goal, walking into a building full of demons sounds a little counterproductive.”