Chapter Twenty-Six

Twenty-six

Somehow, the ordinary mechanisms of reality creaked, groaned, and began to move.

Sheriff Brown was the first to stand up and do something. He called out for his backup—the willing young man in question had apparently been waiting in the other room—and told him to go get Alice's garbage from where it had been left by her mailbox. The young man asked whether or not he would need a warrant for that, to which the sheriff, not very politely, replied that if you needed a warrant to pick up garbage, they would have to have a judge riding shotgun in all of the great state of New York's garbage trucks. Then he told Alice that he was bringing her in to the station for questioning. She didn't fight, didn't argue. There was a placidity to her. "I have a daughter," she said, before she was led away. "She's three. She's staying with my mom now. If Alan had called the cops on me and I got arrested, there's no way I could have gotten custody again."

Sherry didn't say anything in response. Instead, she watched, silent, as Sheriff Brown led Alice away. She had a plan. There was someone else for her to talk to. Poor, frightened little Alice. Poor everyone in Winesap. All of this had come to them along with Sherry's arrival in Winesap. She had a chance, tonight, to put it right.

The others, exchanging nervous glances, filed out after her. There was an atmosphere of strained uncertainty in the room. Usually in books and television shows the scene ended after the most dramatic point of confrontation, so no one had to figure out how to gracefully leave a gathering after someone was accused of murder and then marched away in handcuffs. There was a lot of polite, embarrassed mumbling. Jason was the first to leave, his head held high. Eli and Mrs. Thompson flanked Corey as if they were either his jailers or his bodyguards. Sheriff Brown would be visiting him in his bed-and-breakfast soon, Sherry assumed. Not that she cared that much either way. Drugs could cause a murder, but she was only concerned with the murder part. Corey was no longer her problem to solve. Todd left as well, after a brief, tense exchange with his twin. This whole evening, she thought, had managed to profoundly strain more than one family.

She herself didn't move. She felt less worn-out by her performance than enervated , as if it was beyond her to do so much as get up out of the chair she'd dropped into once the sheriff led Alice out. She just watched, still and quiet, as the room emptied out until only her friends were left. Father Barry, Charlotte, and Janine all hovered nearby, watching her as if they expected something else to happen.

She had to rally herself to speak. "You should all go home," she said. "It must be getting late."

Janine was frowning. "Only if you come home with me," she said. "The spare room has clean sheets on the bed."

"That's a great idea," Charlotte said immediately. "You look kind of…gray."

"Thanks," Sherry said automatically. "I'm fine. I just—need a minute. Could you all give me a minute? Please?" She was conscious of begging a little. "I just want a minute alone to…think." They wouldn't stop looking at her. She just needed them to leave her alone. She had a date.

Now they were all frowning. Janine was the first to step in again, in her brisk, no-nonsense way. "Right," she said. "I'm going to run to the diner to get you a hot chocolate and a grilled cheese sandwich. I'll bring it back here, you can eat it, and then you can come home with me. Father Barry, Charlotte, maybe the two of you could wait in the other room until I get back, in case Sherry needs something? No, Sherry, don't argue, I'm sure they'll be happy to wait for twenty minutes."

"We will be," Barry said immediately. "I think we might be able to find something to read if we need to pass the time."

Sherry made a small snorting noise by way of acknowledging that he had made a joke, then subsided back into just sitting there and staring dully into the air just past her face. Leave , she thought. She dimly noticed her friends exchanging worried glances. Then they retreated, and she was, finally, alone.

"You owe me an explanation," she said to the air. "A deal's a deal."

A portion of the air at the corner of the room began to thicken into something else. Like water or fog. She watched it, feeling her muscles tighten. Run , she thought. She didn't run. Instead, she waited, until the strange figure in the room with her finished taking shape. A tall woman with thick dark hair down to her waist. A loose green dress. Bare feet. A wide, lovely smile.

"Caroline?" she found herself saying, even though of course it wasn't. Caroline was much older now, and had never really been this beautiful. This was Caroline as she'd always existed in Sherry's imagination. Her lovely, charming, bewitching liar of a best friend.

"Of course," the spirit said. Her voice wasn't quite Caroline's, either. The face of the creature looked young, but the voice sounded old. Not old like Sherry was. Old like an abandoned well. "Isn't it always Caroline with you, Sherry?"

Throughout her entire ridiculous Poirot performance, Sherry had somehow managed to never take off her coat. She was glad she was wearing it now. It was cold. "I don't know what that's supposed to mean," she said. Then she said, "Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not who," the demon said. "I am, only, and have been, and will be, and all I want is a little amusement."

"What?" Sherry said. She felt like she must be very slow.

"I liked the stories," the creature said, almost dreamily. "The ones that woman wrote. And then the ones on the television. They were such clever stories. You had to guess who did it, and it was never who you thought it was going to be, and then at the end the mustache man explained everything. Like you did, just now. I liked that very much. You did such a good job, like the mustache man."

"Poirot," Sherry said. "I thought you might like that. So—you just like stories? Mystery stories?"

"They pass the time," the spirit said. "There's so much time, isn't there? It piles up. You little persons, you think I care about you. You think that I care about your immortal souls. Those aren't interesting. I've never even seen one. They don't pass any time at all, and I have so much of that."

"You were bored," Sherry said.

" Yes ," the creature said. It looked pleased that she understood. "I'm so bored . And I ran out of stories. There's so much more time than stories. All I had was time. Time and a little bit of power over the minds of the little persons. So I decided to make my own stories."

"I'd wondered," Sherry said. "It seemed like that. Like a play. But why Winesap?"

"Because of you, of course," the demon said. "You were perfect. A librarian, that's perfect. I wanted a librarian. I had to look a long time to find you. A librarian who knows about the stories. A librarian who knows how to act in one. Not this very clever kind with the purple hair on the head and the silver ring in the nose. The proper kind, like in a book. That's the kind I wanted. Just like you. You felt so special when you got to help with a murder. You felt like you were really alive . A nice old lady librarian who'd run away to a nice little town to get away from what she'd done, but you didn't really feel guilty. You were just afraid of getting into trouble. You loved getting to do a murder with your Caroline. All I did was give you more of it. More murder, and more Caroline, and more getting to feel so important. Didn't you like it?" it asked, as if it was genuinely expecting a response in the affirmative.

Sherry's face was so hot. It felt ridiculous to blush at what a demon said, but she couldn't keep from blushing. "What are you talking about? More Caroline? I haven't seen her in years."

"But she's always there, in your little stories," the demon said. "Most murders are so boring . They don't have a feminine touch. One man shoots another man over drug money, and the police catch him twenty minutes later while he's still running down the street with the gun in his hand. That's not a story. That's just an incident . That's not what your stories are like. There's always a Caroline in yours. A woman who needs to be saved, or a woman who needs to be punished, and always all sorts of plots and schemes and lies. Caroline was very good at lies. They kept you from being bored, just like my stories. You didn't let her go, when you left her, so now I've given you more of what you loved so much about her. All of the Caroline that you need."

"But you made all of this happen," Sherry said. "I didn't take over this town and trap everyone here and make everyone forget what year it is and force people to murder each other. That was you , not me."

"I didn't force ," the demon said. It sounded offended. "I never forced . I just suggested . I hinted to the little persons what they could do. It was up to them what they did . And then I let you solve the murders. The only thing I forced was no killing in the library. I wouldn't like that. To get blood on the stories. It would make it harder to read them."

"Oh," Sherry said. "That makes sense." Then she said, "I'm not doing this anymore, you know."

"Yes, you are," the demon said, very pleasantly. "You're good at it. You like it. You'll keep solving the murders and making the stories. We won't be bored ever again."

It felt as if it would be easy to agree. The demon wasn't wrong, not really. Sherry did like it. She loved it. And she was good at it. The trouble was all that death. The demon had threatened her into investigating before, but she knew the truth now. Nudges. The point of the murders was her investigations. The stories. If the investigations stopped, the killings would have no point. She could make Alan's murder the last of its kind, in Winesap, if she was brave enough. She didn't feel brave enough. When she opened her mouth to speak, she felt surprised even while she was doing it. "I can't," she said. "I'm sure that you understand. You said before that I'm like that detective in those stories you like. I'm like him in more than one way. I don't approve of murder."

"I don't care about you," the demon said, and it was closer to her. It didn't step closer. It just was. "I said that I didn't force," it said. "But I can. And I will."

Sherry lifted her chin. Her legs were shaking. "Try it," she said.

The demon climbed into her.

It was a strange feeling, to have your entire self erased. It started from her childhood. Her mother vanishing, and her father. Opening presents under a pink plastic Christmas tree. Trying out for a solo in the recital and not getting it. Digging in the grass of the backyard. Pushing broccoli to the very edge of her plate. Big things. Little things. The demon rifled through them and then discarded them. Her first kiss. Her wedding day in a modern Methodist church that she'd always thought was ugly. In the car with Caroline, the rain pounding on the windshield. Everything but the most essential parts for the character it needed her to play. The nice librarian in the small town. The tea and toast. The marmalade cat. The circle of quirky but loyal friends. No will, and no fury. No capacity to notice the endless, pointless deaths.

The demon settled into her skin and flexed its new muscles. It stretched, and popped her neck. "I can do this whenever I want," it said, with Sherry's mouth. "Wouldn't you rather just be good for me, instead of making me take charge like this?"

Sherry couldn't quite remember how this had happened, or why. For a long moment she didn't think anything or feel anything at all. Then something in a secret little corner of her brain pinged. "Do I have to investigate?" she asked. Her words slurred together. The demon had tightened up her tongue. "I can investigate. I'm good at investigating."

The demon sighed through her mouth. "Ah," it said. "Did I take too much of the mind away? It's so easy to break the little persons." It loosened its grip on her then. She could move her fingers again. "You are good at investigating," it said, warmly and sweetly. "Won't you keep doing it, Sherry?"

Sherry didn't reply. She was still wearing her coat. She put one of her newly freed hands into the pocket and closed her fingers around her yew dagger. She didn't have time to consider what she was about to do. Hear me, protect us, deliver us from evil. Sherry could only hope that she had been able to make it sharp enough. "No," she said. Then she yanked the dagger out of her pocket and, before either the demon or her own instincts could stop her, used both hands to stab it as hard as she could through her shirt, through the coral necklace, and into her own chest.

There was a blaze of pain, and even greater heat, heat that rushed through her hand and the dagger and into the necklace and her chest, a burn that circled her throat and poured straight into her heart. A howl came out of her mouth. She crashed down heavily onto one knee. The demon was tearing out of her like a Band-Aid being ripped off tender skin. Black wind was pouring out of her nose and mouth. It shrieked, then it giggled. " Oh, clever ," it whispered. " Clever little person. You know the old stories, too. The old ones and the new ones. A wand of yew, and a sacrifice of blood, and a stake in a dark creature's heart. I'll abide by the rules, little person. The stories are no good if the rules aren't followed. " Sherry's whole body felt cold. The demon was still laughing. " What a good ending it is ," it said. " Until next time, little friend. "

The room was suddenly quiet. Sherry's shirt felt wet.

" Ouch ," she said aloud, just as someone kicked through the meeting room door, and she passed out.