The steeple was a dark slash against the underside of the clouds, red with the reflected light of the Hollows. Stray gleams of streetlight eked through the unmoving trees, making lumps and shadows in the graveyard. There was no friendly glow from the back porch. There was no back porch at all, and I held Mr. Fish carefully as my steps through the damp, unmowed grass slowed and the extent of the damage became evident.

Trent steadied me as I stepped over the low stone wall separating the garden from the graveyard. His hand was warm on my elbow, and I leaned into him, trying to tell him with my touch that I didn’t believe what Al had said. He’s not using me, I thought, but the uglier part of me added, This might not have happened if you’d walked away six months ago. I slowed, pulling away from him as the heartache of my church fell on me.

The rank, acidic scent of things that shouldn’t be burned was choking. The kitchen and back living room were gone; only the broken remains of what wouldn’t burn were left to show there’d ever been anything there. What was probably the stove and the fridge poked through what was left of the roof, all of it well below the original floor and filling the crawl space. Gutter work, twisted from the heat, was the most recognizable thing.

The stones of the original church were black and glistening from the soot and heat. Plywood had already been fixed over the open hallway, and it looked oddly high up from the ground without a porch to ground it. It was worse than seeing it on TV—cold, dark, and sad with chunks of our lives out of place and hardly recognizable.

“I’m sorry,” Bis said, and I touched his feet, ignoring the lump in my throat as I pushed forward. My pace faltered when the ground became squishy from the water used to put out the fire. My coffeemaker: gone. The mug with the rainbows on it: gone. My spelling books: gone.

“There’s Jenks,” Trent said in relief, and somehow I smiled at the bright trail of sparkles arrowing down from the belfry.

Bis’s wings shushed against my head, and my smile became real as I continued my list of don’t-haves: no funerals, no songs of blood and daisies, no feeling guilty for surviving because I had fled. “Jenks!” I called as he circled, his wings a slow hum of indecision as he tried to read my mood. “Wow, they made a mess. You okay?”