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it between two gloved fingers. He held the feather out and showed it to the boy, his shadow pulsing in random, manic shapes as he spoke. It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen.
    After they spoke the boy left with a bag and the man in white stood for a long time, smoking a cigarette. Then he too disappeared into the black abyss that was once her room.
    A few moments later, Skyla wept silently as black smoke billowed from the house. It was hard for her to tell if it was the smoke she was seeing or the shadow of the man in white. As the flames roared, Orrin fluttered to her shoulder and croaked into her ear: “ Pree-cher .”

Chapter 3
     
    While Charlie rushed off to tell his cousin Sarah about the job opportunity, Lyle Summers returned to his hotel room, storming past the smiling receptionist as if she were invisible. He felt it before he even arrived at the witch’s house, his opportunity slipping away. It was amazing the girl was even there at all.
    Too slow. Too slow and Charlie let her escape, he fumed.
    He felt the disappointment as a physical thing—a pressure from within. The sin collected on his cheeks and arms, crawling through his clothing, digging into his flesh. A million ticks, finding purchase with every action. The simple act of moving filled Lyle with disgust.
    Perspiration pasted white linen clothes to his skin in damp patches as he rushed gasping into the suite, slamming the door. The tie around his neck felt like a noose. He loosened it, rolling his eyes with relief. Trembling hands tore at the suit jacket, flaying it open, flinging it onto the floor in a pile. The gloves were the last to go, slick with sweat as he removed them like a second skin.
    He thought back to the witness, how she was so trusting at first, those large eyes looking up at him, so cooperative. He promised her it would be over—he hadn’t lied about that at least. After she told them what they needed to know, he had said his prayer, dashing baptismal water on her forehead as the blade made its final pass, sending her to heaven.
    That was our window, our one chance to find the girl. To find the mother.
    She served her purpose, the witness, now off to receive her great reward.  Oh, she screamed and cried at first. They all did once they understood the gravity of their situation, once they saw the tools. But now she was with Jesus.
    A slaughtered lamb, dead and for what? He ended the thought by hitting his fist against the wall. It’s all a waste. All of it for nothing!
    Standing there, naked and scarred, he felt reborn, renewed like a babe. But still his skin crawled with disease. Tiny fingers skittered through the fine hairs on his arms leaving behind slimy trails of black ink. He slapped at them with open palms, leaving welts, but they only burrowed deeper. He slapped his chest as they tunneled into his heart. He clawed at them and the relief was… promising.
    The witness had been consecrated. They all had to be. There was no other way to satisfy the demons, satisfy the voices. It was through their purity of heart that they should suffer the way Christ suffered. The knowledge that it was for a greater good, to save the world, was what made the suffering divine, transcendent.
    And so she had satisfied the beast within him, inviting Lyle to see the witches’ home, her screams a harmony to his jubilation.
    Fingernails gouged at his flesh. So too would he suffer, now that he had failed. Now the punishment would begin.
    “Be gone ,” he prayed in his mind as nails sanctified and tore. Deep gouges leaked dancing red lines of blood down his chest and into the carpet, pooling around his bare knees—the wounds burned as he rocked. He ripped again and again, the pain in his flesh subjugating the pain in his fevered mind.
    “ I’ll not feed you again.”
    Fine threads of curled skin tumbled to the carpet like dead maggots, to join the congealing fluid at his knees. He looked up at the paintings before him, rebuking the sin, purging