LITMIR.BIZ

      No amount of reassurance from Joshua could dispel the leaden ball of guilt in my stomach. Almost three pitchers of coffee and nine Mayhew Bakery day-old pastries didn’t do the trick, either, although they had officially proved that I was a nervous eater. During our drive from High Bridge to the Mayhews’ house, I’d felt strangely calm. Impassive, even. Now, I just felt overstuffed with food and foreboding.

      I pushed my half-eaten, stale palmier away in disgust and looked around the kitchen. Across from me, Jillian and Scott had fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, slumped awkwardly in their dining chairs. On this side of the room, Joshua leaned with me against the counter of the kitchen island. He still watched me warily, as though he thought I might try to blow up his parents’ house, too.

      I raked one hand through the ends of my hair. “I’m not going to do anything crazy again, Joshua. I promise.”

      “I know, Amelia,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

      “You’re not worried that I tried to detonate a weapon of mass destruction tonight?”

      Joshua shook his head. “Even if I don’t like how you did it, I don’t blame you for trying. And I don’t think this is your fault, either. It’s not like you invented demons and made them evil.”

      In response, I held my hands up in a pose of surrender. “But does that matter? Will that matter to the person who dies tonight?” Then I peeked at the kitchen clock. “Or this early morning, I guess?”

      I dropped my palms to the countertop in defeat. As he’d done since we arrived home, Joshua placed his own hand comfort-close to mine. I stretched my fingers toward his, aching to tangle both sets together.

      “I don’t know the answer to that, any better than you do,” he said softly, running his thumb across the granite counter, near the length of my wrist. “All we can do is wait out the night, and then spend the next six days coming up with a better plan.”

      I laughed mirthlessly. “You mean: a ‘better than last-minute, ineffective demolition’ plan.”

      He smiled sadly but said nothing. Frowning again, I looked away from him and motioned to the view outside the wide kitchen window, just behind Jillian’s and Scott’s slumped forms.

      “Well, fortunately or not, we don’t have much longer to wait out the night.”

      Through the newly leafing branches in the front yard, we could see the first traces of sunlight. Without taking his eyes off the window, Joshua walked over to another counter and removed a fresh pot of coffee from the maker. Once he’d poured it into our mugs, we waited in silence, drinking and watching dawn break over the Mayhews’ front garden.

      Only when the sunrise shifted fully into early morning did Joshua set down his cup and stretch his arms high above his head. Then he settled back against the countertop with a wide yawn.

      “Well,” he said, stifling the last bit of his yawn, “the demons haven’t attacked the house, and we haven’t gotten a tragic phone call from one of my friends. So . . . no news is good news.”

      “Maybe,” I murmured. I took another long sip of coffee and kept my eyes trained on the brightening sky. As I watched the colors shift from pink and peach to pale blue and gold, I let myself hope. Just for a few, indulgent minutes.

      Maybe Joshua was right. Maybe the demons were bluffing. After all, Eli had told me that demons weren’t omniscient. They didn’t innately know the identity of everyone I’d ever met; the demons merely targeted those unlucky people who happened to be in my proximity. A simple glance around the kitchen showed me that all my companions from last night were very much alive, if thoroughly exhausted. And Joshua had already checked on his parents—more than a few times, actually. So it looked like I could claim the night as a victory.

      With one important exception.

      Although my mother hadn’t been anywhere near our ill-fated grenade attack, I couldn’t help but worry about her. She was the only other person I’d visited lately, which made her a possible victim. Not a likely one . . . but still. I’d feel much better after a quick, invisible peek in her living-room window.

      I laced my fingers and reached my arms forward, across the island, in an attempt to stretch away some of my cramped tension. Then I turned back to Joshua.

      “Feel like driving me to my mom’s house again?” I asked him. “Just for a quick check?”

      In response, he pulled his car keys out of his pocket and began twirling the ring around his index finger. Seeing the exhausted lines around Joshua’s faint smile, I briefly considered plucking the keys from his hand and giving the whole driving thing a try. But I doubted a wrecked pickup truck would help anyone, especially Joshua. I kept my hands to myself and followed him outside, stifling my own yawns as I climbed into his truck.

      On the drive to my mother’s house, Joshua and I agreed that music was a necessity: the louder, the better. We rolled down the windows to let in the cool morning air. As I drummed my fingers against the outside truck door in time to my new favorite song, I felt a twinge of guilt about blasting guitar riffs at seven a.m. on a Sunday. One look at the purplish shadows under Joshua’s eyes made my guilt vanish. On impulse, I started to sing as loudly as possible to keep him awake. Joshua took a surprised, sidelong glance at me, so I added an air guitar, just for effect.

      I thought he would laugh, or at least beg me to stop singing. Instead, he joined me, belting out the lyrics in a painful, off-key pitch. While he wailed, he shot me another sidewise glance, smiling a little during a particularly screechy chorus of “baby, baby, bab-eeee.” The performance continued long after I’d dissolved into a fit of tired, giggly snorts.

      When we pulled onto my mother’s street, however, my laughter died.

      I could see a faint, shifting light in her front window, a sure sign that she’d woken up early to watch the Sunday-morning newscast—a ritual to which she’d strictly adhered for as long as I could remember. That glow, and her brown sedan parked out front, meant that she’d spent the night in the relative safety of her house.

      But inexplicably, my stomach began to sour with fear. I pressed one hand to my abdomen, willing myself to breathe normally as Joshua parked the truck a few hundred feet back from my mother’s driveway.

      He turned toward me in the cab, his eyes suddenly serious. “I’m

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