of the locked display case of cola, where a single bottle had been gathering dust for most of the last year because no one in the neighborhood could afford it. Then I drifted silently toward the half aisle of toiletries and over-the-counter medications while the screen mounted at the front of the store played the news.
“The badly mutilated corpse of April Walden, the teen who went missing from Solace two days ago, was discovered in the badlands south of New Temperance yesterday, less than a month after her seventeenth birthday. Church officials believe she was killed by a degenerate.”
“No shit …,” I mumbled, wandering slowly down the aisle, listening for any mention of the degenerate killed fifty feet from where I stood.
“Still no word on why Walden left the safety of Solace’s walls, but one high-ranking Church official ventured to conjecture that she was, in fact, possessed before she ever left the town.”
After that, the reporter transitioned to the latest death toll from the front lines in Asia, where brave soldiers and elite teams of exorcists were steadfastly beating back the last of the Unclean in the name of the Unified Church. As they’d been doing all my life. The location sometimes changed as one area was pronounced cleared and troops moved to cleanse another region, but the battles themselves were always the same.
We always won, but it was never easy. Losses were inevitable. Sacrifices would be honored and remembered.
I’d taken three more steps toward a narrow white box on the top shelf when a familiar six-note melody signaled the switch to the local news, which played on the hour, every hour, to keep citizens informed about the happenings close to home. The happenings the Church wanted us to know about, anyway.
I’d sold our television almost two years before, when I realized I’d rather have a functioning microwave than hear the same pointless recitation of “news” over and over, night after night.
But this time I listened closely. A degenerate inside the town walls would definitely make the local news, and with any luck, the report would tell me how close the police were to identifying the mystery boy and girl who had fled the scene that morning.
“Church officials are on the lookout for a group of adolescent offenders last spotted near New Temperance, wanted for truancy, heresy, and theft. Reports indicate that the group has between three and five members, only two of whom have been identified at this time. Reese Cardwell is seventeen years old. He has light skin, brown hair, and brown eyes, but his most prominent feature is his size. Cardwell is six feet six inches tall, and his weight is estimated at over two hundred and thirty pounds.”
The school picture they flashed on the screen could have been any boy at my school. He looked young and friendly, and you can’t tell much about a person’s size from a head shot.
“Devi Dasari has dark hair and eyes and is estimated to be five feet seven inches tall. Demonic possession is suspected for all members of the group, but unconfirmed at this time. Citizens are asked to report any suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces to your local Church leaders.”
Fugitives in New Temperance … And if the fugitives were suspected of possession, there would be exorcists in New Temperance too.
I’d seen both suspicious activity and unfamiliar faces that very morning, and New Temperance was too small and dull a town for that to be coincidence. But one of the faces I’d seen had belonged to a degenerate—definitely not a teenager—and the other belonged to an exorcist too young and unbranded to be ordained by the Church.
Why wasn’t the news reporting the dead degenerate? Were the possibly possessed teen fugitives unconnected to the demon that attacked me? Was their story big enough to eclipse reports of a degenerate inside the town walls?
That was almost too far-fetched a thought to process. Obviously, the news was omitting some relevant—and no doubt important—piece of the story. Probably the piece that would connect the dots.
But on the bright side, there was no report of a fifteen-year-old pregnant dissident arrested for disobeying the direct order of a Church official.
Near the middle of the aisle, I took the box I needed from the top shelf, wiped dust from it with my hand, then slid it into my satchel. At the end of the aisle, I turned left, heading toward the gum for my legitimate purchase. But I froze two steps later when Dale stepped into my path.
“Whatcha got there, Nina?” he asked softly so Ruth wouldn’t hear.
“Nothing yet.” I pointed past him at the display of chewing gum.
“Open your bag.”
Shit! “Not today, Dale. Please.” The word tasted sour, but I was willing to beg. I couldn’t leave the store without what I’d come for, and I couldn’t let him see what that was.
“Nothin’s free,” he whispered, stepping so close I could smell the coffee on his breath. “You gotta pay, one way or another.” His pointed glance at Ruth was a threat to rat me out. He knew as well as I did that there were no more than three coins in my pocket—nowhere near enough for what I’d taken, even if he didn’t know what that was. “Your choice.”
But it wasn’t, really. It was never my choice.
He gestured for me to precede him down the aisle, and I did—I knew the way—my stomach churning harder with every step. At the back of the store, he led me past the grimy restrooms and into a small supply closet, where he held the door open for me in a farce of chivalry.
I took a deep, bitter breath, then stepped inside and shoved a mop bucket with my foot to make room. Dale came in after me, and I pressed my back against the wall to put as much space between us as possible. He pulled the door closed and fumbled for the switch in the dark. A single bulb overhead drenched the closet in weak yellow light, casting ominous shadows beneath his features, making him look scarier than he really was.
Dale was a dick, and a stupid dick at best. But he wasn’t scary. Demons were scary. The Church was scary. Dale was just an opportunistic asshole in a position of minor power.
“Give me the bag.”
I set my satchel on the floor and pinned it against the wall with my feet. He couldn’t know. No one could know.
“Fine. Take it off.”
My teeth ground together as I unbuttoned my blouse. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the way his breathing changed. The way his inhalations hitched, his exhalations growing heavier and wetter with each button that slid through its hole.
“Take it off,” he repeated when I reached the last button.
Eyes still closed, I let the material slide off my shoulders, down to my elbows. His feet shuffled on the concrete floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. A second later, his fingers were there, greedy and eager. They pushed at the remaining material, shoving my bra up, squeezing, pinching.
I let it happen. I had no other way to pay.
But when his fingers fumbled with the button of my pants, my eyes flew open. “No.”
His hands stilled but didn’t retreat. “It’s not just a can of soup this time, is it? Or a loaf of bread? Whatever’s in that bag today, I think you really want it. I think you need it. Well, guess what I need….”
He tried for the button again, and I shoved him back, then clutched the open halves of my blouse to my chest. “I said no.”
“You want me to call the police?”
I made a decision then. One I couldn’t have made a day earlier. “Call them. I’ll tell them how you’ve been charging a poor, hungry schoolgirl for a year and a half, corroding my morals and defiling my innocence. We’ll see who they arrest.”
His hands fell away and his gaze hardened, staring into mine. Trying to decide whether or not to call my bluff—and any other day,