Who'll lay the ghost?
I, said the wren,
I'll ring my bell again,
In the muddy fen,
And lay Cock Robin's ghost.

Duke shoved Heather McNamara with both hands. She fell off the tree, on top of Kurt and Ram. Satisfying crunch.

Heather would never use the word 'violate', Duke thought. She was so frightened she felt herself shaking. Her teeth chattered against her will. Her spine was trembling ice water, shook and spilt like pieces of broken glass.

If you're not Heather, then what the hell are you? And isn't hell exactly the right word for it?

Duke screamed into the night, wordless and terrified, and nothing answered her. She felt the first rock fly past her head. It had been a big one. Kurt and Ram, hurt now, weren't playing games any more.

She almost wished for the knife. She saw it lying on the ground. She'd rather be dead and bleeding out than under Kurt or Ram. Scream, hide, run and drown herself.

Up on the hill, J.D. saw the girl in the tree first. He stopped the bike dead, making it soundless, then ran down while the scream rang out. The three on the ground wouldn't see him coming until it was too late, a dark man in a dark coat. The pale gravestones and moving people could barely be seen in the moonlight.

Heather had a couple of preparations to make for her grand entrance first. She picked up the grocery bag.

"Greetings and salutations. You two mewling dickweasels had best vacate this depth of depravity while you can still walk."

J.D. lit his lighter under his chin, turning his face into a skull in the dark. Ram swore in fright, then got back his liquid courage.

"Fuck. Heather was right. That pussy came after all," Ram said.

"Get him," Kurt decided.

They were both on J.D. at the same time; they got in a few good punches. Then he pulled the gun.

"You only shoot blanks, you fucking fag," Kurt gloated. J.D. slipped past his thrown punch, moved his hand to the back of Ram's skull. The gun was pressed close to bone.

He fired.

Heather saw both boys fall. Only Kurt was left standing, his bullet-shaped head suddenly clear in the moonlight. Then Kurt dropped down too.

"Ram? Get up, fuck, oh fuck. He's - "

Kurt touched the back of Ram's skull. His hand came away bloodstained, black in the night. The blank bullet was still charged with enough force to shatter bone.

You could kill people with blanks, if you shot close enough. J.D. probably already knew that the first time he fired blanks into Kurt and Ram. Ram was dead, but something had happened to J.D. too.

J.D. didn't resist Kurt grabbing him and slamming him to the ground, twice in a row. He was limp as a corpse himself. Then Kurt went for the gun.

Heather, white as a ghost, stepped in. She'd emptied the bag of flour over her head. Mundane, but very terrifying in the dark.

"Heather!" Duke screamed. She fell bonelessly out of the tree, landing hard. Kurt dropped the gun in shock. Only Heather McNamara didn't react at all, sitting and watching.

"I'm Heather's ghost," Heather assured Kurt. "Fear me." He screamed like a little girl. No - Heather had never screamed in fright when she was a little girl. Kurt Kelly screamed like the paltry pathetic pantswetting little boy he was.

Somewhere inside her, Heather Chandler wasn't opposed to the death penalty for date rapists. Or even just for people who happened to annoy her in some way.

And this time Heather knew the power she had. She was untouchable, the strongest person in Sherwood. She wanted to feign her death and she made the entire town believe her. She murdered Martha Dunnstock.

She understood, now, exactly how she had killed Martha.

"I'm here to take you to the grave with me, Kurt," Heather said. "Pick up that knife. Do it. Good boy. Now put it into your stomach."

Heather Chandler told Martha Dunnstock to kill herself, and Martha obeyed. Now Kurt was the same, caught in the thrall of Heather's power. Heather took one step toward him and Kurt cringed back. But he was still trying to resist her, holding the knife and looking confused.

Heather raised a clenched hand. In it, she held an egg that Kurt couldn't see. "This is your beating heart I hold in my hand," she said. "Believe me. I own your life, Kurt."

She crushed the egg. Albumen dripped out between her fingers. Kurt cried out like she really was breaking his heart.

"Kill yourself," Heather repeated, and stepped closer and closer to Kurt. He collapsed back on the ground. Heather stood over him. He held the knife, almost but not quite doing it, sniffling and snuffling and crying like a pig being slaughtered. "Stab yourself up and under the ribs," Heather said.

"No. I won't let you do it." Heather McNamara walked to Kurt's side. She dropped to her knees and looked up at Heather with a startlingly hateful gaze. Heather Chandler had never seen McNamara look at her so. "Two blood sacrifices stain your soul. They granted you too much power already. I won't let you take this one too," McNamara said.

And then it was Heather McNamara who slid the knife into Kurt. Blood spurted and there was a horrible long cry. Up and under the ribs, into the heart. McNamara left the knife there, and touched Kurt's cooling cheek with her right hand.

"I used to like him," Heather McNamara said. "But he was a monster. I know that now. Almost as bad a monster as you." She was looking at Heather. She lowered her bloody hands and brushed them on her black skirt. "Look at me now. I'm a cheerleader," she said.

Veronica had come rushing down from the hill behind them, too late to intervene. It seemed she wasn't able to say anything, her breath heaving too much. Heather Duke was on her hands and knees on the ground, bleeding from her fall. The two clung to each other, Duke so desperate she'd wrapped her arms around Veronica's knees and held on like a limpet.

Heather McNamara's accusing gaze fixed Heather Chandler. "You murdered me," she said. Heather was so unused to that look from Heather McNamara that she couldn't answer back, couldn't fight her.

Next came Duke. "You betrayed me," Heather McNamara said.

Heather McNamara nodded at Veronica. "I liked you, a little bit. I thought you were funny and clever. But you never helped me, and I was happy that the darkness in you would kindle another's."

Heather could hear J.D. vomiting on the grass. "Martha," he said, slow and distraught. He looked up at Heather McNamara, but sensed someone else. "Martha Dunnstock. The one who died. You took over the body of one of your murderers. I can feel you. I can feel everyone. Please - I understand how you feel. You had nothing left and it was bleak and blank and all you knew was torment. She made you want to die.

"Then you were dead, and wanted revenge. I guess you had some power too. But you couldn't screw your courage to the sticking-place. If 'twere done, 'twere best done quickly. You had every reason to kill. But something in you didn't want to, so you warned Chandler first. You might be the only good person here. Please." He sounded as if he didn't even know what he was begging for. Heather McNamara looked down at him, with an expression not so far from the real Heather when she saw someone unpopular.

"Your fate lines are black," Martha - not Heather - said. "I've never seen darker. Like a barrow-mound of brambles and thorns, turned on each other and twisted to knots that cut deep inside. You know what your father is, and you are worse than he. You have all that is dark in him, and all that despaired in your mother. You were doomed to kill without mercy, to take my vengeance for me."

Martha-in-McNamara's-body looked back at Heather Chandler. "You're supposed to be dead. Everyone believes you're dead. At least you've lost your old life, for whatever that's worth. You might not see me coming, but I'll never let you hurt anyone again. You'll pay for the blood on your hands."

She didn't seem to notice or care about the blood on her own. None of them ran after her as she walked into the night, Heather McNamara's black cheerleading dress and long golden hair disappearing into darkness.

Heather Chandler walked over to J.D., intending to kick him for lying there so uselessly. He yelled in seeming pain before she'd even raised her foot.

"Get away from me. All of you. I can feel what you're feeling, I can't stop it - anger and fear and disgust and confusion - and you - you burn - " He was frightened of Heather, as scared of her as she'd wanted him to be. His face was paper-white in the dark as he looked into her eyes. What he saw there terrified him all the more.

J.D. turned tail and ran. Heather heard the sound of the bike starting up. Leaving them behind. At a murder scene.

Well, you couldn't blame a dead girl for murder. Particularly ones she hadn't committed.

"We could tell them J.D. did it," Duke said in a small voice. "It's half true and they'd believe it. He fought Kurt and Ram before."

Ruthless and clever, Heather thought. Duke clearly wasn't playing grateful damsel-in-distress. That plan was almost as good as something Heather could come up with herself. Heather thought she needed to quash Heather Duke a lot more, and thoroughly and soon. That idea just wouldn't do.

Not that Heather actually liked J.D., of course, but the new changes that had suddenly come over him were interesting enough that she'd keep him safe from the cops for now.

"Kurt and Ram were drunk and fooling around with the gun. Kurt accidentally killed Ram, then killed himself in remorse. I'll write the suicide note," Veronica said. "Anyone got a torch?"

Heather Duke lit one of her stupid black wax candles. Veronica balanced her paper on the back of Heather's angel statue to write.

"Just don't make it sound as lame and pathetic as the suicide note you wrote for me," Heather said. "Oh, who am I kidding? Definitely make them sound lame and pathetic, as much as possible."

Duke crept up behind her and pinched her on the arm. Heather jumped.

"Just checking that you were alive," Duke said. "Flour's not a good look for you, Heather." She laughed like a mad wife in the attic in some old black-and-white film. She was losing it; Heather had worked hard in the past to find Duke's weaknesses, and she had so many of them. "Did you really fake your own death just so you could see how many people were sorry about it? That's so weak," Duke said. "Were Veronica and J.D. always in on it? Fool me once, shame on you. Shame. People will laugh at the fake suicide girl; you'll never give me orders again."

"You know the hole you vomit out of? Shut it, Heather," Heather said. "Take off your coat and give it to me. Then go sit in the corner."

Heather had figured out that some people, and some commands, were limits on her power. But she'd spent long years telling Heather Duke what to do. Heather meekly handed over her coat - new, hard to tell the color in the dark, reddish, probably - and Heather shrugged it on over her flour-coated shirt. Duke hobbled off and sat next to a gravestone without saying another word.

God, if only I'd known I had the superpower to order people around before. I could've used it so much better, Heather thought.

"Veronica, clean up the candle wax," Heather said, liking this feeling of power more every moment. "Then we have to motor."

If J.D.'s disoriented ramblings were right - and Heather had the nasty suspicion they had been - then the vengeful ghost of Martha Dunnstock was inhabiting Heather McNamara's body.

And Heather Chandler wasn't about to let some vengeful ghost win.