Gut punched, I watch as Castro leads my mother to the middle of the circle.

“Adam.” She reaches out and pulls me to her, the same scent rushing to my nose that I remember from my childhood—some sort of floral soap or perfume that I’ve never smelled anywhere else.

“Mom.” I bring her in close. “What is this?” My mind starts churning before I’m over the shock. If she can get out like this, maybe taking her and Delilah away from here will be easier than I thought. Maybe I can do it tonight, right now. Maybe—

“Adam.” She rubs my back, then lets me go. “We have plans, and it’s time you knew about them.”

“Plans?” I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s here, real, and no one to stop me from whisking her away—except Castro. But I have no problem dropping him and leaving him for the Protectors to find.

He takes my mother’s elbow, but not roughly, not in his usual asshole sort of way.

“What the fuck is going on?” I glance to the tree line, amazed that Noah hasn’t broken cover and come out here to marvel right along with me, but he’s staying put just like I told him.

“We don’t have long before I’m missed.” Mom stares up at me, her eyes the same blue as Noah’s, though it’s hard to tell in the moonlight. “The Father of Fire has spoken to me, and I know that a new Prophet will rise very soon. We’ve worked hard to make this happen. It’s been in the works for years.” She smooths her hands down my arms. “And we know that you are the perfect successor to your father’s seat. You will be the new Prophet. The Father of—”

“What?” I understand her words, but I have no idea what she’s saying. “What are you talking about? The Father of Fire? That’s not real. None of this is. Mom.” I take her shoulders. “What’s wrong with you? If you can get free this easily, why haven’t you come to me before? We could have been away from here a long time ago. We need to go—”

“Go?” She shakes her head, her gray hair dull though her eyes shine. “We can’t leave. This is where we belong. All of this should be ours. And it can be. With you as the new Prophet, the compound can be something we’re proud of. Somewhere the faithful can be free.”

“Free? Here?” I grip her harder. “Mom, there’s no way to be free here. This is a prison. Every bit of it needs to be burned to the ground.”

“Let her go, pendejo.” Castro edges closer.

“It’s fine.” She pats him on the stomach. “Don’t worry. My son would never harm me.”

“And what’s he got to do with this?” I snarl. “He lets Dad hurt you. He—”

“And you don’t?” She may as well have slapped me.

I recoil and try to understand the person standing in front of me, but nothing is making sense.

“Just listen to her.” Grace moves closer to her side, the three of them staring me down. “We have a plan. Everything is already in motion. We’ve already given the Father of Fire a great sacrifice. He was so pleased with it that he’s shown us the way. It’s taken time, but we’re almost there, at the cusp. And we did it for you, Adam. So you can be the Prophet.”

My head spins, but I hang on to a single piece of what Grace said. “What sacrifice?”

Grace drops her gaze.

My mother reaches out again and takes my hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. What have you done?”

Mom shrugs, as if she’s confessing to nothing more than an inadvertent mistake. “Just one of your father’s harlots. A girl. She was Noah’s Maiden. The one with the blonde hair—”

“Georgia.”

She nods. “Her.”

“You mutilated her, then killed her.” I can’t tell if I’m asking a question or making a statement.

“We did.” Mom says it so calmly, as if we’re speaking about dinner plans or current events, not the ruthless murder of an innocent. “It was so easy to lure her away. She kept talking about seeing her sister—until Castro tied her up.” She looks at her hands, the skin thinner now and spotted with age. “I didn’t know I could do it. Cut her throat. But it was so easy. Easier than I ever imagined.”

I clench my eyes shut, trying to set my world to rights when it is so, so wrong. I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing left. She’s gone. Whatever light she had in her when I was young has been beaten, tortured, and ground out of her. Now there is only darkness—the same shades that paint my father.

She is lost.

And I am in mourning. For her, for myself, for the life we could have had. Blinking, I open my eyes and look into hers. I don’t see my mother. She’s gone somewhere so far and so deep that I’ll never be able to reach her.

“Adam.” She speaks with my mother’s voice, but she is not my mother. “We had to. For you. Don’t you see? Everything we’ve done was for you. This is your chance to take what’s yours! Get rid of your father. Keep this place for yourself and your brother. You could make it pure again. Lead the people into the light. Show the Father of Fire why you deserve to be a king among men.” She pauses and turns her head to the right, looking through the trees toward the Cathedral. “We’ll have to do something about your father’s other whores and their bastards, but that can come later.”

Everything goes numb, and though my mother continues speaking, her words don’t make it through to me. My mother would never hurt anyone, especially not some young girl with her whole life ahead of her, and not children. But this creature isn’t my mother, I remind myself.

“—and once you’re the Prophet, I’ll be able to help you with the public side, guiding you as your mother. Noah will fall in line, as will the rest of the Protectors, and Castro can deal with anyone who gets out of hand. He’ll be your number one Protector and my companion. All the men will have to swear a new oath to you, and we’ll probably need to tighten the reins a bit at first to make sure they are obedient. But all the rest can continue—building Monroeville, consolidating our people under one umbrella, using them to work the land and make us self-sufficient. We’ll still allow several of them with high-paying jobs to work off-compound and increase their tithes in increments.” She tsks. “That’s something your father never understood. He wants them all here, but that doesn’t make sense when we can pull money from out there.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m rambling, but I’m just so excited to start this new chapter.” She takes my hands again, though I can barely feel her touch. “Just think of it—you, me, Noah, all of us a happy family again.”

“And Dad?”

“We’ll deal with him, Castro and me. His time is almost at hand.” Her voice comes to me as if through a tunnel.

“When?”

“Don’t you worry about that. I want you focused on the future of this place.” She smooths her clammy palms down my cheeks. “You, son, are the future.”

“We’re cutting it close.” Castro taps his watch.

“We must go.” She hugs me tight. “But remember what I’ve said. Your time is almost here. I love you, Adam.”

“Now, ma’am.” Castro tugs at her elbow.

She pats my cheek one more time and lets him lead her away to the car.

“It’s the future, Adam. It can be our future.” Grace moves close. “We can start over. I want to give you another child, to show you that we can have everything we ever wanted. I made a mistake with… Well, before. But this time I’ll do better. This time, with a new little girl, we can be—”

“If you don’t get out of my sight, I will drag you to the creek and do everything I’ve promised you. Understand?”

She cringes and backs away. “You’ll see, Adam. I can be what you want. I’ll show you.”

Grace turns and scampers to the car, shooting me a glance before dropping into the passenger seat. After a few moments, they’re gone. The night is still again, not even the air stirring—and it’s as if they were never here at all.

Some leaves crunch to my left, and Noah appears from the shadowy woods, his steps rushed. “What the fuck, man? What. The. Fuck?” His eyes are wide.

“I don’t know, but please tell me you have a cigarette.”

He pulls one out of his pocket, his fingers shaking. When he drops it, he kneels to retrieve it and finally gets it lit.

“Did you hear all of it?” I take it from his grasp and draw the burn into my lungs. My old habit is becoming new again.

“That you’re the new Prophet and they’re going to kill Dad? Yeah, I heard.” His voice trembles. Maybe from cold. More likely from shock.

“Mom killed that girl. The one who went missing.”

“Georgia, though she was Mary when she was mine.” He pauses for a moment, and something like regret crosses his face. “I just assumed Dad—”

“I did, too. The markings on her couldn’t have come from anywhere else.”

“Yeah.” He wrinkles his forehead with thought. “But he did have us out searching for her.”

“He claimed she must have run away and was hiding somewhere on the compound.” I dredge up the memories from that time, how angry Dad was when we couldn’t find her, and how he went nuclear when an outsider found her body and made a stink. “After she was found, I figured he’d been acting and that he’d killed her all along.”

“Right.” He takes the cigarette from me. “Or at least I thought that was right. But Mom must have gotten the book. Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe she came up with her own symbols. She said she’s been talking—”

“To the devil. Yeah, I heard.” I rub my eyes. So fucked—everything is utterly beyond fucked. “She could have come to us. For years now, we could have taken her and gone.” Too many emotions crowd through me, but there’s a little extra room for rage. Always has been. “This whole time, she’s been sitting back and watching what’s happening all because she wants to be the one to run this place with me as her puppet.”

“She’s still our mom.” He puts a hand on my shoulder.

I shrug him off. “Just like the Prophet is still our dad?”

He frowns at the ground. “It’s all so messed up.”

“No shit.” I take the last pull from the cigarette, then toss the butt.

“What do we do?”

I’m out of options. “We carry on with the plan.”

“But Mom doesn’t want to leave. How can we bring her?”

“I don’t know, but we can’t leave her here, especially if she wants to keep this place going. We have to take her with us one way or another.” A pounding headache sets up shop behind my temples.

“What if she won’t come?”

“Then we make her come by whatever means necessary.”

“Adam.” He grips my upper arm. “We can’t hurt her. She’s our mom.”

“She killed an innocent girl after torturing her, Noah. Your Maiden.”

He winces.

I keep going, “She thinks she talks to the devil. She’s joined forces with that piece of shit, Castro. If she gets her wish, this place will be as bad or worse than it was under Dad.” I point through the trees toward the east. “Did you hear what she had to say about the innocent children at the Cathedral?”

“She didn’t say she would—”

“There’s no coming back from where she is, Noah.” I rub my forehead. “Have you learned nothing from Dad? When he started all this, there was no way to stop him. Remember?”

He furrows his brow, but slowly nods. “Yeah.”

“It’s the same delusion all over again. She’s poisoned, just like he is. And they’d rather die from the poison than save themselves.”

He shakes his head. “We can help her. Just hold off on this Tuesday plan and let me talk to her, or talk to Castro. I don’t know. But hold off.”

“I can’t.”

He throws his hands up. “Because of that fairy girl, some random piece of ass?”

My fist flies before I even think about it. Noah staggers back, one hand going to his jaw as he stares at me, eyes wide. I’ve never hit him before. Not like this.

I step toward him. “Noah—”

“Fuck off.” He stands his ground, anger radiating from him.

“Please, I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” he yells and puts all his frustration and despair of the last twenty minutes into it.

“Shit.” I hang my head.

He lowers his voice, but the anger still bubbles in each syllable. “You have to call it off. Give Mom a chance. Maybe she can end this without as much bloodshed. She said you could turn the Protectors to work for you. We don’t have to kill them. Maybe she’s right. We—”

“I can’t let Delilah go to that senator. I can’t.” The thought of what he plans to do to her almost brings me to my knees.

“You’d choose her over your own blood?” He stops rubbing his jaw and scowls at me. “Her over me?”

“It’s not like that, and you know it.”

He shakes his head.

“Don’t do this, Noah.” I take another step toward him but he backs up. “We were together on this. I can’t do it without you.”

“No.” He walks backward. “I’m out.”

“Noah!” I rush toward him.

He lets a fist fly, catching me off-guard. I stumble and stop, the pain in my face dulling the ache in my feet.

“You chose wrong, big brother.” He shakes his hand out, then turns and walks away into the gloom.