Page 18 of Of Faith and Fangs

I spent the rest of the day pretending to busy myself with chores. I swept the entryway twice, then polished the silver, though we never had guests. I rearranged the pantry, only to find myself putting everything back exactly as it had been.

Still, Mercy’s face haunted every quiet moment. The way her eyes had opened in the coffin, wild and red and desperate. The way she’d screamed not in fear but in rage and unimaginable pain, as if even in death she’d refused to let the world have the last word.

By dusk I was so tired I could hardly stand, but the prospect of sleep terrified me. Even if Mercy was dead—really dead, this time—the thing that made her was still out there. Would he be angry about what we’d done? Would he come after us in vengeance?

I was heading to my room, planning to read until my eyes gave out, when a knock rattled the front door. Not the tentative tapping of a visitor, but a frantic, uneven pounding.

My father met me in the hallway, his face already tight with concern.

“It’s Mr. Brown,” he said. “He’s—he’s in a state.”

I followed him to the entry, and there was George Brown, hatless, his hair in disarray, his coat thrown over his nightshirt. He looked ten years older than he had the night before, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen.

“Alice,” he said, his voice so hoarse I barely recognized it. “You have to come. It didn’t work.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

He looked past me, to my father. “It didn’t work. Mercy’s out there. I saw her, I swear on the Holy Book. She came to the window, just like before.”

My father tried to reason with him, his tone steady but urgent. “Mr. Brown, we burned her heart. There is no way—“

“She was there!” George shouted, spittle flecking his chin. “I saw her, and she saw me. The boy is sick again. Worse than before. Please—please, help.”

A tremor ran through me, cold and deep.

“I’ll come,” I said, before my father could protest. “Just let me get my coat.”

My father stepped between us. “Alice, this is not—“

“I have to,” I said. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I was the one who gave Edwin the ashes.”

“What do you think you’re going to do about it?!” My father screamed. “You’re just a girl. You’ve done enough!”

“Just a girl?“ His dismissal only hardened my resolve. “You want to protect me now, but you sent me into that sanatorium without a second thought?”

“It wasn’t like that—“

“Then you let them use me again. To do that horrible ritual.”

“She’ll be safe,” Mr. Brown insisted. “She might be the only one who can stop… the devil.”

“Your daughter, you mean?” I resisted the urge to stomp through the floor. If I hadn’t been just a girl, I might have had the strength to do it.

Mr. Brown shook his head. “My daughter is dead.”

I clenched my fists. I wasn’t raised to disrespect my elders, but even a minister’s daughter has her limits. “Is that what allows you to sleep at night, Mr. Brown? Because I heard her screams. I heard how she called out to you as you let that witch cut her apart. That didn’t sound like a devil to me. It sounded like a terrified girl, like your daughter.”

“Enough!” My father had heard enough. “Both of you! We’ve reached the end of the line. There’s nothing more we can do.”

“Your daughter has a guardian angel,” Mr. Brown insisted. “There’s no other way to explain it. Given that the rest of us are tainted in our sin, on account of our dabblings with the witch…”

I huffed. “I took part in that too.”

“Not by choice,” Mr. Brown said. “We took advantage of you. You have a pure heart, Alice.”

I snorted. “I don’t know about that.”

Mr. Brown didn’t flinch. “What we’re facing is pure evil. We made a grave mistake, trying to conquer evil with evil. We have no choice now but to turn to someone who is untainted by our sin. Your light might be the only thing that can stand against the darkness that’s consumed—“

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