“Because we wanted to talk to you, Sherry,” the voices said. “To encourage you to focus your mind on the issue at hand. You’ve been trying to do things your way again. You’ve been thinking about running away. But your way isn’t any good, is it, Sherry? You wasted all of your youth, your way.Yourway made you into someone who never did a single thing that mattered, untilyourway let you take money to help a killer escape from justice. You’ve done so much better since you’ve played by our rules, haven’t you, Sherry?”
Sherry swallowed hard. That was what she hadn’t wanted to think about this whole time. It was true, was the problem. She’d been doing much better since she came to Winesap. In every way, really. Before she’d come to Winesap, she’d felt irrelevant, inconsequential. Nearly invisible. The feeling had been there since she was very young. She could still remember a few early instances. Her father reading his paper and not looking up when she tried to show him a drawing she’d made. A teacher ignoring her raised hand, even after she’dpractically squirmed out of her seat with excitement over knowing the answer. A classmate reapplying her lipstick and remarking, with casual authority, about how annoying it was forus girlsto always have boys bothering us for dates. Boys very rarely bothered Sherry: boys didn’t notice her at all. She’d married the first one who did notice her right after high school, and then regretted it almost immediately. His noticing her, it seemed, only lasted as long as it took for him to install her in the little house at 184 Coconut Grove so that he would have someone to iron his shirts for him.
She’d gotten herself out of that house after what happened with Caroline. As awful as what she suspected Caroline had done was, something about the sheer, swaggering finality of her exit had spurred Sherry on to make an exit of her own. She served her husband with divorce papers and sold everything she owned in her own name, then used the proceeds to buy a bus ticket and a few nights at a cheap hotel. Eventually, she’d made her way to Winesap, where, after a few weeks of rural village peace and quiet, she’d stumbled into her first murder scene. Everything had come to her after that. She’d met Janine when one of two rival orchid fanciers from her gardening club killed the other with a pair of pruning shears. She’d met Alan when she solved the case of the mysterious body found in the alley next to his shop. Everything here had been born out of death, all her triumphs and successes, all the respect and friendships she had earned. It had all come out of evil, and she’d taken it as her due, as the universe finally shifting in her favor. She’d thought of herself as the protagonist. She hadn’t thought of what it all had meant to everyone who’d been hurt so that she could take her starring turn.
“You know that it’s true,” buzzed a fly, very close to the shell of her ear.
She slapped at the side of her head. The fly hummed lazily out of reach. “Leave mealone,” she said. “I don’t understand what youwant.”
“For you to play your part,” said the flies, buzzing in chorus again now. “Winesap has been nothing but good to you, Sherry. All we ask is that you take that into consideration. We would hate for Winesap to need a new detective to save it from itself.”
“But Winesap shouldn’t need saving,” Sherry said, despite her better judgment. “There’s no reason at all for so many people to be killed here.That’sthe problem, not who solves the murder cases after the poor people are already dead.”
The buzzing of the flies changed then. A louder, thicker, meaner sound. Sherry could see more movement from the corners of her eyes. A dark cloud. “That isn’t your role, Sherry,” said the cloud. “That isn’t the job you’re here to do. Do you not find yourself arrogant, Sherry, to think that you ought to change the course of things? It’s your job to be the detective, Sherry.Shut up and investigate.”
The buzzing was getting louder. There were more and more flies. Sherry couldn’t see or hear. She felt as if there were insects in her ears, in her nose, climbing over her eyelids. She opened her mouth to scream and flies poured down her throat. Then, in the distance, she heard a man’s voice.
“Excuse me,” Father Barry said, and then cleared his throat. “Um. In the name of—Christ. I…abjure you!”
The buzzing eased for a moment, and Sherry hacked a few times and spit out a fly. It had only been one, maybe, whichhad felt like a whole lot of them. The flies, when they spoke, sounded affronted. “Youabjureus? In the name ofChrist?”
“Yes,” Father Barry said, a bit more firmly this time. Then he said, “Take that!” and some water splashed against Sherry’s face.
“Why are you splashing water around?” the flies asked. They sounded genuinely baffled this time.
“It’sholy water,” Barry said. “You—are you the same demon as last time? Because if you are, you might remember that Sherry is aCatholic.”
“I am!” Sherry said immediately, opening her eyes to a squint. The cloud of flies had reduced enough for her to be able to see a group of people standing outside the cell, though she couldn’t see many details. “I’m devout! I believe very strongly in the power of holy water to discourage demons!” She wasn’t sure how convincing she sounded.Very, she hoped.
“Oh,” said the cloud of flies disconsolately.
“And I’m a pagan,” said a woman. Charlotte. Charlotte had come, too. “And I’ve brought, uh. Some extremely powerful crystals and things, that I believe ina lot.”
A cloud of flies couldn’t sigh, so it definitely didn’t do that. It made a sort of loud, collective buzz. Then it faded away from moment to moment, vanishing like fog on a mirror, until suddenly it was just Sherry alone in her cell again in what felt like ringing silence, blinking owlishly at the small crowd of people standing just outside the bars.
“Barry,” said Todd. She could tell that he was Todd because he was the one of the two of them who wasn’t wearing a priest’s collar and also didn’t look extremely embarrassed. “That wasbadass. You abjured the demons, bud!”
“Itried, at least,” said the bashful Father Barry. “I think that Sherry was better at it.”
“Aw, shut up, youkilledit,” Todd said. He had his arm wrapped around his brother’s shoulders and looked absolutely delighted. Charlotte, who was looking at him,alsolooked delighted. Sherry couldn’t really blame her. Todd was wearing a blue scarf that made his eyes look very bright.
“Sherry,” Father Barry said, “this is my brother. Todd.”
“We’ve met,” Sherry said. “It’s nice to see you again, Todd.”
“Same,” Todd said. “So what did you do to get arrested?”
“I was brought in for questioning about Alan’s murder,” Sherry said. “I thought that the sheriff was going to let me go, but then things went strange again. With, you know. The…demon things. The sheriff talking with a different voice.” She winced, conscious of how ridiculous it sounded when she said it aloud, even though all of them had just witnessed something strange happening in the room. “How did you know to come look for me here?”
“Process of elimination,” Charlotte said. “I called you a few times this morning to see if you’d talked to the sheriff yet. When you didn’t pick up, I called the library, then I called here when no one there knew where you were, either. When they said that you were being held, I called Father Barry for reinforcements, just in case we had to fight our way out or something. I figured you wouldn’t want me to call Janine. I feel like she’d be really judgmental about this.”
“Todd was having lunch with me when she called,” Father Barry said, in a vaguely apologetic tone of voice. “He wanted to come along.”
“For moral support,” said Todd. “So are we breaking her out of here? Did anyone bring a hacksaw?”
“Thank you,” Sherry said to Charlotte. “I don’t think that Janine would like this very much, no. And I don’t think that ahacksaw should be necessary. Maybe one of you could go and ask Sheriff Brown if he could let me out? The possession might have worn off by now.”
“This town iscrazy,” said Todd, with what sounded like extreme satisfaction.
