“Why the fuck do you care?” Ava asks.
Linda flinches, scowl deepening. “Don’t use that dirty language in my house. I care because I need to know—” She pauses, then sighs. “No, I suppose I don’t need to know exactly how many replacements we need. It’s not my problem anymore. Ray can deal with it for once.” She lets out a hiccup of a laugh. This is the end, then. All her work, all her sacrifice, undone by these ungrateful little shits.
“Ray, the one from the diner? The cook?” Ava spins the handgun on the table, scratching tiny patterns in the polished surface.
LeGrand is standing in the entry to the kitchen, rifle held at the ready as though Linda might break free of her bonds at any moment, transforming into a monster to devour them all. It’s not an unwarranted fear, really, not after what he’s seen, what Mack read to them. He can’t shake the feeling that Linda can still hurt him, will still hurt him, will hurt them all.
Linda nods. “Yes, that Ray.”
Ava stops the gun mid-spin. It’s pointing right at Linda. Then she casually spins it again. “Oh, he’s dead.”
Linda lets out an aggravated huff of air. Her breath is stale, competing with the punch of her spiky floral perfume for olfactory dominance. “Wasteful,” she mutters.
“Wasteful?” Ava laughs. “I knew you were a cold bitch, but wow, this is a whole nother level.”
“If you were going to get rid of Ray, the least you could have done was force him into the park.” Linda twitches to rub her forehead, but of course her hands can do no such thing. Perhaps most impressive is that her hair has not migrated a single centimeter from where it is curled and shellacked into a blond sculpture. “Who did you leave behind, though? Jaden?”
“Already gone,” Mack says, staring at her reflection superimposed over the delicate china. Her eyes look like blank hollows, her face white, her hair black. Like an artist’s impression of a person, but one they didn’t think was worth finishing. Tear it out of the sketchbook, start over.
“You didn’t leave sweet Brandon, did you?” Linda has the audacity to sound aghast.
Mack shudders, remembering the sound of Brandon hitting the ground. “We would never,” she whispers.
She would have, in another life. But not this one.
“He’s dead, too.” Ava spins the gun so hard it slides off the table and falls on the floor.
Linda sucks her teeth, a habit meant to clean lipstick off them, now done automatically. “Consumed, or dead?”
“Dead.” Mack finds herself once again happy for him. Sweet Brandon. “The monster got Jaden and the other Ava.”
“Another waste. He died for nothing.”
“As opposed to the rest of them?” Ava’s voice sharpens with a hysterical edge, her face contorted in a smile of disbelief.
“Yes, as opposed to the rest of them! You read my journal. Do you think we do this for fun?”
“I don’t know. White people. You really never can tell.”
“Don’t be racist,” Linda snaps.
Mack never knew her father’s reason, whatever Jaden and that fucking podcast might have projected onto him. It suddenly feels urgent to understand the exact reason so many people were ended in the park. Why she should have ended in the park. “Why?” she asks. “Why do so many people have to die?”
The journal they had was unclear, but Ava knows enough. “Because they’re a bunch of demon-worshipping predators.”
“I am a Christian!” Linda huffs. She rushes to correct Ava’s assumption. “We don’t worship it. You don’t understand that all great things require sacrifice,” Linda says, and her voice takes on a slightly different quality. A sheen as polished as the table. This is something she has recited before, the shape of it familiar and smooth as it leaves her mouth. “And the seven families who founded our town have shaped the world in great ways. Pharmaceutical advancements, surgical innovation, technological titans, not to mention the myriad of judges, senators, local leaders, and business giants that guide our country and provide jobs for countless people.”
“And this requires feeding people to an invisible monster why?” Ava asks.
“You couldn’t see it?” Linda’s voice snaps back to the present, derailed from its well-worn track.
“Nope.”
“Could you two?” She looks at LeGrand and Mack, then laughs. “Of course you could. I can tell. Besides, we never have any question about your father’s lineage, LeGrand. The most prolific Pulsipher.”
LeGrand frowns, but says nothing.
Ava kicks the table. “You were explaining why you need to feed people to an invisible monster?”
“Do you know how many of the founding families of this town lost everything in the Great Depression? How many of their sons were killed in World War Two, Korea, Vietnam?”
“How the fuck would I know that?” Ava mutters, increasingly annoyed. This isn’t getting them anywhere. They should leave. But Mack is hanging on the words, a hungry look on her face. Ava will let Linda finish explaining, and then she’ll tell LeGrand and Mack to get in the car, and then she’ll shoot the old lady. For Brandon. Because he’s dead, and because this woman declared it a waste because it didn’t do her, personally, any good.
“None.” Linda smiles, triumphant. “No one lost everything, no beloved sons were killed on foreign soil. We were protected. We have been protected, since my grandparents’ time. They performed the first sacrifice, made the covenant, traded their blood to protect their blood. Which you are obviously not, Ava. I should have known. Your slut mother must have tricked your idiot father.”
Ava leans down and retrieves the handgun from the floor, setting it on the table with her fingers caressing it. “Say something else about my mother.” A wild grin splits Ava’s face. Her father always knew her mother got pregnant just before they met, put his name on the birth certificate anyway. He never cared, and he never once looked at Ava with anything but love and pride.
Of course he didn’t belong with these people.
“Oh, shoot me then, you filthy little animal. It doesn’t matter. They’ll figure out you’ve escaped, and they’ll get more. Probably from Rulon. He’s always good for it. There’s doubtless a dud daughter or two he won’t mind shipping to us.” She glances at LeGrand, her smile coy.
LeGrand raises the rifle in one smooth movement. “I’ll kill you.”
“Once I’m dead, who knows who they’ll pick to replace you? You’re signing death warrants.”
“We’re not doing anything,” Ava spits. “Don’t turn this on us!”
“Aren’t you? You’re choosing to leave, knowing that someone else will have to take your place. Your whole generation is so selfish, it disgusts me. This was the most noble thing you could possibly have done with your lives, and instead you’re going to turn your backs and run, leaving someone else to die in your place.”
Ava lets go of the handgun and lifts her hands in the air, incredulous. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re batshit. Completely fucking batshit.”