A terrible, knowing cold came over her. How could she have been so stupid? How many times had she heard the phrase and thought nothing of it? It was in the Book of the Brethren, and in Ida Knowles’s diary. She’d heard Pastor Algoode say it when she was under. The new Brethren disciples had preached it outside the fairgrounds. The rotted houses in the old camp on the hill had been painted with exactly the same symbols.
Prepare ye the walls of your houses….
It wasn’t a pendant or a book or any other object keeping John Hobbes alive. It was a place. A room. This room.
The Book of the Brethren lay on the altar, opened to the page for the eleventh offering. Evie stared at the drawing of the beautiful girl dressed in a shimmering gown of gold, an all-seeing eye painted on her forehead and outstretched palms. Her chest was open and her heart was in the hands of the Beast.
This was his true lair, then. The reason he’d had Mary White keep the house ready for him. And now she had walked right into it, into the belly of the Beast. She had to get out of there at once. If she had to, she’d throw a match and send Naughty John back to whatever hell would have him.
From deep in the cellar, she heard him singing, “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on.”
Evie’s fingers fumbled for the matches in her pocket. Yes, she’d throw the match and run. Panic made her thoughts cloudy. Desperate. She sank to her haunches like an animal who knows it’s cornered by the wolf.
Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint, whatever you do, don’t faint, old girl….
The wolf was at the door. His shadow spilled into the room, taking it over. With shaking fingers, Evie lit a match and tossed it against shadow and air, watching the flame fizzle into smoke. She lit another and another, all reason lost now, the whole book of matches reduced to nubs. And despite her warnings, Evie’s mind did not cooperate. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slipped to the ground, unconscious.
THE WOMAN CLOTHED IN THE SUN
Stars. That’s what Evie saw first. Above her, the inky sky twinkled with the false hope of stars. Her head ached where she’d hit it on the floor. Her mouth tasted of blood.
“Ah. You’re awake,” the voice said. “Good.”
Her vision blurred for a second, then focused on the sight of John Hobbes. He was a big man with a thick mustache. He’d removed his shirt, and she saw the brands covering his chest, back, and arms, his body a nightmarish tapestry. Anoint thy flesh….
The eyes were the same ones she’d seen before: cold and blue.
“Very kind of you to come to me. Saved me the trouble of coming for you.” He shimmered before her like candle wax, an unstable thing, but still with the capacity to burn.
“Jericho!” Evie shouted. “Jericho!”
Naughty John smiled. “Your companion is not well at present,” he said, and Evie was afraid to ask what that meant.
Evie sat up and was surprised to see that she could do so freely.
“What would be the point in restraints?” he said, as if he could read her thoughts.
Evie was numb with fear. “Why?” she asked. It was all she could manage; the terror had reduced her words.
“Why?” John Hobbes repeated, as if she were an insolent child and he her annoyed but patient teacher. “Why should I let this world go on? It is filled with sin and vice and all manner of corruption. It requires a new god to lead it, Lady Sun.”
“I’m n-not your Lady Sun,” she whispered.
John Hobbes pulled out the small square of cloth from her gold brocade coat. “The Woman Clothed in the Sun.”
He smiled, making Evie’s blood throb in her head. Her eyes darted about the room, looking for some means of escape, taking in what might be used to her advantage. Her heart began to race again as she realized that the door was slightly ajar. She darted forward, and as if it sensed her plan, the door shut before she reached it. She beat on it with her fists.
“ ‘And the Lord said, let the Beast be joined with the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Anoint her flesh as your flesh.’ ”
John Hobbes walked calmly toward the lit brazier. Several branding irons now protruded from it, their symbols growing hot on the coals.
“I… I…” Fear choked Evie’s words in her throat.
Think, Evie, old girl. She had meant to burn down the house, and Naughty John with it, but that plan was gone. She needed a new plan. Will had said they needed to bind his spirit to a holy object like the pendant, then speak the words and destroy that object. But what was at her disposal? Her eyes darted frantically around the room again, searching out something, any object that could be used.