Ghost Town

by girl-like-substance

December, 1976: psychic-in-training Jodi has come home to sleepy Mahogany for Christmas, and to come out to her family. But when she arrives, she finds her childhood best friend has been murdered - and her ghost is still trapped here on earth. Someone in town has to be responsible. And Jodi is determined to find out who. [Updates every other Sunday.]

8. Four Mourners

EIGHT: FOUR MOURNERS
ELLA

Things are just so weird lately. You know? This time last week, everything was just the way it always had been: school; big brother at uni being all psychic and stuff; painting pictures and sometimes selling them to adults who want some local art for their living-rooms. And then – well, then Tacoma Spearing died. And then there was a murderer somewhere in town for Ella to worry about on her way home in the dark. And then Jodi came home and Ella suddenly had a big sister.

She remembers the drive over here, sitting in the car and staring out of the window so she didn't have to look at Jodi and feel bad for finding her so unrecognisable. She kept her face turned away for so long that Jodi asked if she was okay, and Ella had to admit that she didn't know because there's no point lying about your feelings to Jodi, and then Jodi reached out across the middle seat and took hold of her hand for what must have been the first time in about four years.

"Me either," she said. "I think it's gonna be a rough one."

Ella had no idea what to say. She barely even knew the touch of her; Jodi's fingers were small and smooth and freezing cold, completely unlike what she remembered from when Jodi used to walk her to school in the mornings. Sometime in the years since they last touched hands, Ella had apparently outgrown her.

Another weird thing. Another weird thing, on this weirdest of all days, standing around in the corner of the Spearings' living-room and watching people pretending to be less hungry than they are out of some vague sense that they shouldn't be enjoying the food when someone is dead.

Dead. Can you believe it? Dead, and now Ella doesn't walk home alone any more. She bands together with a few others, and they hurry through the twilight in tense, nervy silence until they reach their front doors. The dark is full of potential lightning and grasping hands these days.

It's awful. Ella has committed to a trip into town on Saturday, but she's determined that after that, she isn't going outside again till either the New Year rolls around or the killer has been caught. She'd rather be bored than murdered, any day of the week.

Honestly, even thinking about it scares her, but it's one of only two topics of conversation at school recently, and she much prefers talking about it to talking about Jodi. By this point, she's an expert on the various schools of thought floating around town: was it Harry, who knew where she was, Nick, whose accent is suspiciously Kantan after all these years, or some out-of-towner, driving the black sedan that Hester reported seeing on the night of the murder? Ella could give you all the fors and againsts, if you wanted.

It's a mess, honestly. Probably the best Ella can hope for is to not think about it and hope Con catches the guy before anyone else gets killed coming home in the dark.

She tugs surreptitiously at her dress, trying fruitlessly to rearrange it into a more comfortable position. She only has this one smart dress, and she's been wearing it for a couple of years too long now; it's definitely too tight around the chest. Ella tells herself she's a nineteenth-century princess chafing in her corset, and for a moment Lucas Spearing and the knot of townsmen gathered around him to express gruff masculine sympathy become a king and his coterie of courtiers before the tapestries of her imagination fade back into yellow wallpaper and brown carpet.

It's different to how she remembers. Ella has been to one funeral before, but that was Asshole Grandpa's (as he was privately known in the Ortega household) and the atmosphere wasn't anything like this. People were sad, sure, but there was a sense in the air that he'd lived his time, that his life had been long and rich and for him to be leaving now was a natural conclusion.

This is worse. Lucas and Annie look like someone cut them open and pulled something important out; Ella can almost smell the blood in the air. Tacoma wasn't meant to die. Ella didn't really understand that properly until she found herself here, and now she feels young and stupid, the only actor in the drama who doesn't know her lines. Look at it all. The snow and sandwiches and the dozens of adults looking grim.

And her sister, Jodi, looking strange and beautiful in a purple dress so dark it's almost black. Talking to Sam Spade from the petrol station, who turned up in a man's suit and a face so firmly set that nobody has yet dared to argue with her about it. Ella watches them both: Jodi's fingernails glinting red in the light as she gesticulates, Sam shaking her head, arms folded. Beside them, Lothian and Sam's clefairy are poking warily at one another, clearly wanting to play but too aware of the mood to dare spoil it.

Ella thinks about going over and trying to join the conversation, but her nerve fails her. How can she talk to anyone in this atmosphere? Besides, Sam is scary. And it really hurts to think this, but – so is Jodi.

It's not that Ella isn't happy about her. She's always thought it would be cool to have a sister, someone to share in the rituals of adolescent girlhood. But now that she actually has one, she finds that she's too nervous to do anything with her. She does want to, does want to talk with her about all the things she never really knew if it was okay to talk to Alex about, but everything is so new and strange. Would Jodi even want to hear about Ella's life? Would she enjoy it if they painted their nails together and shared secrets?

Ella thinks she might. Jodi probably wants to be Ella's sister even more than Ella wants her to be. But she's home from Goldenrod, from a university Ella will never attend in a city she's never visited, and she's so smart and grown-up, and now she's also much prettier than Ella ever managed to be, and honestly how the hell is Ella meant to get on that level?

"Hello, Ella."

She tears her eyes away from Jodi to see Sam's cousin Gabriella approaching, smiling sympathetically. Taking pity on her, she thinks sourly. Because Ella is just that obviously lost.

"Hi," she replies. She should probably say something else as well, but she has no idea what it should be.

"How are you?" asks Gabriella. The question doesn't sound the way it normally does. This isn't just a polite enquiry.

"I dunno," admits Ella. "Um … not great, I guess."

Gabriella nods slowly.

"Yes," she says. "I don't feel so good myself."

Brief pause. Ella's gaze slides back over to Jodi, as it always does. Ever since she came home Ella can't seem to stop staring at her. She's aware she shouldn't, that Jodi can definitely tell she's doing it and that it probably makes her feel bad, but she can't help it. She just looks so different, and yet so much the same.

"How are you getting along with Jodi?" asks Gabriella, following her eye.

Ella shrugs.

"She's my sister," she says, which feels to her like a very inadequate way of communicating what she's thinking but which Gabriella seems to understand.

"Yes, she is," she says. "It's good of you to come today. I think she could probably use the support."

This is patently ridiculous, but talking back to people at a funeral is probably some kind of sin, so Ella can't really point that out.

"She doesn't need me," she replies, in the most neutral voice she can muster. It's just a fact, after all.

"That's selling yourself short," Gabriella tells her. "And it's putting a lot of pressure on her, don't you think?"

"What?"

Gabriella shakes her head.

"At the risk of sounding like an old person dispensing unwanted life advice," she says, "you should talk to her."

Ella gives her a look.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," confirms Gabriella. "Like you said, she's your sister. And I think she might also be about to get Sam angry, so if you'll excuse me, Ella, I'd better go over and intervene."

"Okay," says Ella, slightly too late. "Um. Thanks."

Gabriella flashes her a smile that cuts through the stagnant atmosphere like a laser beam and insinuates herself between Jodi and Sam with the ease of someone who has done this a thousand times before, her hand curling around Sam's arm and gently moving her a step further back. Ella watches her talking for a moment, sees Sam's brows part and Jodi's cheeks redden, and makes a break for the hall, unable to stand it any more.

What is she even doing here? Everyone else knows what to do, how to stand and talk and breathe in the awful air. Ella? Ella's only here because it was awkward to not come when her parents and sister did. Her father said she could just come for the service, if she wanted, but that seemed disloyal somehow. Tacoma was Jodi's best friend. The two of them really loved one another, so much so that Ella was always kind of jealous. And so, well, here she is. Because if everyone else respects what Jodi and Tacoma had, then Ella has to as well.

She sighs, tugs on her bodice again. Jessica Fay cuts through from the dining-room with a plate for Lucas, looking haggard; her daughter Charlie is close behind, holding a couple of full glasses. Probably conscripted to help out. From what Ella hears, Jessica's been holding the household together the past few days.

She tries to say hello with her eyes – Charlie might well be the only person in the house her own age – but the gesture goes unnoticed. Jessica and Charlie go out through the door Ella just came through, and she sighs again, drifts on aimlessly into the kitchen. (The alternative is the dining-room across the hall, but that's where the body is, and though Ella knows she should pay her respects properly she absolutely cannot make herself go in there.) Here are more people, pecking at the assorted food like birds scratching in the dirt. Janine, Chief Wicke, Dr Ishihara; Annie Spearing at the window, looking out while Ella's mother grips her arm and mutters to her in a voice too low to be overheard.

There's some shortbread at one end of the table, beyond the sandwiches and casseroles. Ella would kind of like a piece, but she isn't sure she can walk past all these people to get it. Instead she stands there by the door, willing her mother to turn around and see her, to save her, but this does not happen.

Half an hour by the hall clock till they put Tacoma in the hearse and leave for the service. Half an hour, and yet by the feel of it Ella could swear it must be six months.

---

The church is packed: all the people from the house, sure, all the friends and family and notable townsfolk, but also everyone else, too. Here are the Lockwood triplets, coming down the aisle while Steph and Rocky sit at the back with the other pokémon; there's Mayor Winshaw, in a suit so black it doesn't seem to reflect the light. (How would you paint that, she wonders. It would just look flat, right?) Sarah and Roy from the store. Old Ina, her ancient onix coiled heavily at the back. Dean and Ria. Jackie from the police station. Harry the stationmaster. Lorna, talking quietly to Alistair Buckley, the vicar.

Good crowd, thinks Ella, looking around as they all find their way to their seats, and immediately tells herself off for being flippant. Someone's dead. Her sister is sitting next to her and shaking so hard that she's having trouble breathing. Would it kill her to be aware of the mood?

She thinks about holding Jodi's hand or something, to make her feel better, but she thinks about it for so long that in the end her mother, on Jodi's other side, puts her arm around her instead and all Ella is left with is guilt.

Lorna sits down at the organ. Alistair takes up the pulpit. Ella clenches her fists so tight she can feel her nails cutting into her palms and listens to the music swelling as everything begins.

She can't believe that back at the Spearings' house she was actually looking forward to this. The music. The coffin. There's a dead body in there, she thinks, unable to process the information. There's a dead body in there and it's only three years older than her, barely even a woman. Or it was barely even a woman, anyway. Now it's not anything at all.

The thought feels blasphemous, somehow. But Ella can't see a way in which it isn't true.

"Good morning, all," says Alistair, and somehow in his mouth the words seem to mean something beyond themselves, something slow and painful that makes Ella tremble on the inside. "It is my pleasure, and my deepest regret, to welcome you here today …"

She's losing track of it already, his voice moving on in one smooth wave, rising and falling on the intonations of words she can no longer quite make out. Across the church, Annie is ramrod-straight in her seat, as rigid as a board, and next to her Everett has hunched over like a gargoyle, head barely visible above his shoulders. Named after towns in Washington. Why did they do that? Did they just pick the names out of an atlas or something? Maybe they were following in the family tradition. Phoenix and Anastasia are pretty weird names too.

Her mind is wandering. Next to her, Jodi is as shaky and breathless as a frightened kitten, leaning heavily on her mother's shoulder. Ella feels a buzzing in her teeth and knows that Lothian must be worried too, afraid for his partner but too obedient to leave his place at the back of the hall.

She wishes Virgo were here. She wishes she could do something to help her sister, wishes this was over, wishes that the world around them would crumble into ash and reveal the four comforting walls of their living-room at home, but most of all she wishes Virgo were here.

At least she feels something. She was afraid that she'd get here and have to stare at everyone's grief without even having the decency to be sad herself, but it looks like that isn't going to be an issue.

"… join me now in prayer," says Alistair, and everyone kneels except for some of the older folks and Jodi, who if she got down on the floor would never be able to get back up again. Ella repeats the words after Alistair mechanically, without hearing them; she breathes in the musty scent of old wood and the faded upholstery on the bar against which her knees are braced, and breathes it out again, and straightens up.

Jodi is holding onto her cane so tightly that it looks like her knuckles might burst through her skin. Hold her hand, Ella tells herself. She's your bloody sister, right? Hold her hand.

She does not hold her hand. She looks straight ahead, at the back of the mayor's bald head with its gleam of reflected candlelight, and waits for someone to haul Tacoma out into the yard to burn.

---

They passed the pyre on the way in, a huge platform of stacked wood that reeks of holy oil, crouched in the empty space beyond the memorial stelae like a malevolent toad. In other towns, Ella's father once told her, there are crematoria, where the bodies go into a furnace and come out as an urnful of ashes to be scattered on the wind. But Mahogany is too small for that, and so here they destroy their bodies the old-fashioned way.

Frankly, Ella hates it. The damn thing creeps her out.

"How are you doing, kids?" asks her father, as they all file out of the church and down the path to find places to stand around the unlit pyre.

"Okay," says Ella, not wanting to make a fuss.

"Mmn," grunts Jodi, the way she does when she's deep inside herself, doing her ESP stuff. Her father nods, understanding, and takes her arm so she doesn't trip and fall while she's distracted. Lothian is close behind, tail flicking anxiously back and forth, and Ella follows with her mother and Lucille. Best not to get in their way, she thinks. Dad and Lothian can probably help more than she can.

"Hang in there, darling," says her mother suddenly, slipping cold fingers through Ella's own. Her breath comes out in white clouds with every word. "You're doing great."

Ella swallows and turns her face away so she won't see the way her eyes are watering. It's the cold, she tells herself. And it's a funeral, right? It'd be weird if she wasn't a little bit teary at least.

They take up their positions among the crowd, shuffling back on either side of the path to clear the way for the pallbearers. Across from them, Ella sees the Franklins, their eyes all sharply focused on her sister. Stacy Franklin notices and looks back, one eyebrow raised in a devastating display of wounded teenage dignity. Ella moves as if to scratch her cheek and surreptitiously sticks two fingers up at her. Stacy's mother, Deb, notices and gives her a look, but Ella just looks straight back, and faced with such a stalwart refusal to be intimidated Deb becomes very interested in settling her pidgey on her shoulder.

Ella almost smiles. At least she got that one right. She remembers Stacy coming up to her at the end of their chemistry class and pretty much outright accusing Jodi of being some kind of predator. You sure he isn't just doing it to get close to girls, she asked. And Ella didn't know how to argue with her, because she had no goddamn idea how it is that Jodi being a girl actually works, had no idea it was even possible until she came home looking weird and pretty, so she just stood there and mumbled something vague while Stacy got more and more scornful. You can't even defend him, can you?

No. No, Ella can't. And it's killing her.

She winces when she thinks this. What a tasteless choice of word.

The music starts, a tune picked out on sacred bells by someone Ella can't see, and out of the corner of her eye she sees the coffin coming out of the church, turning the corner onto the path. She looks down at her feet, unable to bear the thought of seeing it again and getting stuck on the idea of Tacoma's body rotting inside, and watches the pallbearers' shoes crunching the salt on the path as they manoeuvre up to the pyre.

There is a final kind of thump, and then a scrape as the coffin is shoved over the stinking wood. The bells stop. Ella holds her breath.

"You have all heard me say my piece," says Alistair. "I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief." She still isn't looking, but he sounds upset. "I now open the field to you. If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time."

She keeps holding it, hears shuffling feet and agonising silence and, at last, someone clearing their throat.

"Suppose I should say something," says Tacoma's uncle Nick, and Ella breathes out. She looks up to see him standing there near the pyre, his face a charcoal drawing in shades of grey. (Coffin just behind him. Don't look. Don't. Don't.) "Morning, all," he says, eyes flicking nervously across the crowd. "Guess you probably all know me, even if I've forgotten some of you. Nick. Tacoma's uncle." Long pause, too long, and then just as Alistair is about to step in he continues. "I've always been the one my family turns to when they want a speech. But today, I … I don't think I've got much I can say to you. Maybe no one can really say what Tacoma meant to them. To all of us. But she's – she was my niece, and there's an obligation there."

He straightens as he speaks, shoulders squaring and head rising, like he's talking himself back to life. When he raises his hand and brushes back his hair across his forehead Ella sees a sudden flash of beauty cross his face, and realises that he must be handsome, under all that grief.

"She didn't suffer fools lightly," he says. "She had principles, and she stuck to them, no matter what. She was smarter than me, and kinder than Annie, and tougher than Lucas: best parts of all of us, just a little bit better." His magneton rises silently behind him and hovers above his head, its cores swapping positions in patterns too complex for Ella to fathom. "I couldn't have asked for a finer niece. I'm proud to have known her, and to have been a part of what made her who she was, no matter how small. And I'm honoured to see all of you gathered here, not just to mourn what could have been but to celebrate what she achieved, even in just nineteen years." He bows his head. Someone is crying; Ella looks, sees Annie clutching Lucas' arm. "Thank you."

"Thank you, Nick." Alistair waits, but Nick seems to have seized up; his shoulders slump again, a loose lock of hair spilling over his brow, and instead of stepping back into the crowd he just stands there. "Thank you," repeats Alistair, and still Nick doesn't move.

"Oh no," murmurs Ella's mother, tightening her grip on her hand without thinking. "Nick …"

Other people are muttering too, heads turning toward one another, and Annie is glaring through her tears as if to say don't ruin this, Nick, and Ella feels all the tension building in her skull like a blocked pipe about to blow―

"Okay, Nick," says Con, stepping forward to put a hand on his arm. Taking charge of the situation. "Time to―"

"Don't you touch me," growls Nick, jerking back into life. "You―!"

His magneton whirrs into motion, rising, orbs spinning up cloaks of sparks; Moira tenses up at Con's heels, arching her tail over her back like a scorpion's sting.

"Easy, Nick." Con steps back smartly, hands raised. "This isn't the time for that."

"Isn't it?" What is that in his eyes? Ella has never seen hate like that before. Schoolyard rage, petty fury – these are things she's familiar with. But this is something else, colder and older and as brutal as the crunch of a scyther's claw into a girafarig's ribs. "I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―"

"Nick."

Annie's voice is shocking in its clarity. Somehow Ella had imagined that she'd have cried herself hoarse, but maybe that's another thing she's got wrong, another part of grief that only adults understand.

"Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again," she says, and he sags like a puppet with slashed strings. "And you," she adds. "Con. You should know better."

"Sure, Annie―"

"I don't want to hear it."

He nods, takes a measured pace back into the crowd without another word. Nick shakes his head and walks away in the opposite direction, ramming his hand viciously into his jacket pocket.

"God, Nick," breathes her mother. Ella can't tell if she knows she can hear. What is going on here? Why does she seem to be the only one who doesn't know?

"Um," says Alistair. "If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak."

There's a long wait before anyone else volunteers, and when someone does it's Harry, with a gentle summary of his encounters with Tacoma at the station over the years. It's a welcome relief from whatever the hell that was between Nick and Con, and it even makes Ella smile a little when he talks about Nikole. It's the kind of smile that stings a little, but it is a smile, and that's what she needs.

After Harry comes Victor Orbeck, who seems to have liked Tacoma more than he ever said; and after him, Steven the butcher, who is badly broken up and for some reason keeps talking about bloodcake; and after him Pryce Aske, who remembers sparring with Tacoma and Nikole with fondness; and on and on, people with memories and stories so warm with history that they take the bite out of the December chill even before anyone sets light to the pyre. Ina. Janine. Ella's mother. Even Everett, although he can't even get through one sentence without his voice cracking and his eyes watering. He loved his sister. Like Ella loves hers, except he can actually show it.

"Thank you, Everett," says Alistair, helping him away from the pyre. "Anyone else?"

Silence. Everyone who has anything to say has said it. Now all that's left is the fire.

"All right then. Lorna, if you'd―"

"Hang on."

Ella's heart pulses erratically. Jodi steps out from between their parents, and as the eyes gather on her like wasps on unattended marmalade she opens her mouth to speak.

---

LEÓN

It's been a while. León hasn't worked the mill floor since '63, and though he takes care to stay in touch with his old friends, goes out drinking with them and lets them mock him for softening at a desk, he still hasn't seen too much of Lucas. Once whatever it was that Tacoma and Alex – Jodi, he reminds himself, as he has done every time this week, Jodi – once whatever that was faded, the Spearings and the Ortegas started to see less of each other. Chelle and Annie still kept in touch, sure, but they stopped bringing their families along for the ride, not wanting to force Jodi and Tacoma back together after their parting. León stayed back too. He regrets it, honestly. Lucas was always good company. But, barring the odd drink in the Briar Rose, they let their lives diverge.

Now they've come to touch again. And it is absolutely nothing like it was before.

Lucas is holding himself together well, but León is a father too, and he knows the shadow behind Lucas' face for what it is. He thought he was going to lose his son once. (Daughter. His eldest daughter, damn it.) If it had actually happened, if Lothian hadn't acted as quickly as he did …

León would say it doesn't bear thinking about, but of course today, talking to Lucas like a stranger in this overheated living-room, he can't stop. Tacoma and Jodi were born just a few days apart. And whoever killed Tacoma is still out there.

"You know, I hear we're getting more snow before the week's out," he says, aware that he is letting his thoughts slow down the conversation. "I keep thinking of all those people living out in the woods." He shakes his head. "You couldn't pay me to do it."

León's distaste for snow is well known. He's travelled extensively, ever since he seized his chance to escape life under Somoza as a young man and worked his passage to Hoenn; after a godawful three months in Sinnoh's Snowpoint, he tried to stick to hot countries, but then he went and fell in love with a Mahogany girl, and he hasn't stopped complaining about Johto winters since. The old familiar gripe makes Lucas' mouth turn up at the corners just a little. Thank God. León was kind of banking on the fact that he might want a little shred of normality to hang onto.

"Shoulda stayed home," says Lucas, and León smiles back. When he first came to town, old Mick Field was still around, and the two of them have been taking the piss out of his half-baked racism ever since. "Good of you to come, León. I … I didn't know if you would."

"Why's that?"

Lucas shrugs.

"Y'know. Your kid. ESP and shi― and stuff."

Your kid. How … delicately put. Christ, but Lucas is holding himself together well. He really wouldn't have blamed him if he'd forgotten, what with his daughter lying in her coffin just across the hall and mourners flitting through the house like overgrown bats. León has enough trouble remembering himself, though he's trying his best.

"She wanted to come," he tells him. "Got, you know, brain control exercises she can do to make it okay."

Lucas' face creases in the middle. León can't really call it a smile, but it is something like the same shape.

"I know Annie appreciates it," he says. "Tacoma really loved him. Her. Sorry."

León nods. He isn't sure whether he's allowed to say it's okay or not. Jodi says that to him when he makes that mistake, but he isn't sure if he can say it on her behalf. There are a lot of things he isn't sure about these days.

"I think Jodi loved her too," he replies. "Even now."

The two of them look at one another for a while, thinking about what they wish they'd done, ways they wish they'd pushed their kids while both of them were still around. Jodi and Tacoma missed years of each other's lives. Too many, for people who still cared.

Before either of them can think of a way to continue the conversation, Con Wicke turns up wearing his Police Chief face, the one that usually means you're about to either get arrested or receive some terrible news, and Lucas has to stand there and accept his halting condolences all over again before he gives a municipal nod and withdraws to talk to John Winshaw instead.

"Seen a lot of him lately, I'll bet," ventures León.

"He's doing a good job," says Lucas. "He'll get the bastard."

He says it like you'd say it was sunny out, like it's just something that happens. León isn't sure what this means, but he's old enough to know pain when he sees it.

"Sure, Luke," he says. "Just a matter of time."

Another lull in the conversation. Voices in the hall: Con and someone else, a woman maybe. Wasn't he speaking to John a moment ago? León looks, but John is talking to – or at; it is John, after all – Nick now. He supposes that explains it. This would be a bad day for a fight.

"I should thank you," says Lucas suddenly. "For helping with Nikole."

"Jodi's idea," replies León.

"Your house. She been okay?"

León shrugs.

"Scared Ella a couple of times," he says. "She came home yesterday, ran into her in the hall and jumped right out the door again. But mostly pretty calm."

"Mostly pretty calm," repeats Lucas. "She broke things here." He shakes his head, so slowly that at first León can't actually tell what he's doing. "Jodi's done good."

"She has," agrees León.

"Didn't bring her?"

"Jodi thought it was best she stay at home. She's got her settled now."

Lucas nods.

"Probably right," he says. "Probably right."

The silences are getting more frequent, harder to climb out of. León reaches for their shared history, but he feels like this might be about as deep into it as he's capable of digging. Emotions are Chelle's thing. He just sells wood. Assuming anyone's still buying.

"Listen," he says. "Luke. I don't know when this ends, if it ever does, but … we're here. You know? Till it does. And then some."

Lucas meets his gaze. One of his eyes is brown, the other blue. León knew that – Tacoma's the same – but after so long it's almost a surprise.

"Never gonna end," he says. "But, León – thank you."

Noise from the doorway: the boys from the mill are here now, five or six all together, looking ill at ease in their suits and twisting their hats between their hands. León is relieved, in a way; now he doesn't have to do this alone. But he's glad that for a few minutes at least he did.

---

Later on, León gathers up his courage and leaves Lucas in the care of Pete and Mike to go and pay his respects in person. After the living-room, warm with a radiator on full blast and a crush of human bodies, the dining-room has the freezing feel of a mausoleum. The chairs have been cleared away, and aside from the china cabinet against the far wall there is nothing left but the table, spread with a pristine white cloth and a little under six feet of smooth, dark pine.

For a few minutes, León stays by the door, trying to ready himself. He remembers Chelle's father lying in his coffin, the way his face seemed to have sunk in on itself like a rotten fruit. Some of that was age, some of that was the cancer, but some too was death. There was something missing in him, and without it his face was barely even his any more.

This is probably not how it is with Tacoma. She is – was – young. And if the rumour mill is to be believed, she was killed by a thunderbolt to the back of the head; nothing there to ruin her features. She'll look like she's sleeping. Probably.

Part of León wants to see. Most doesn't.

He steps forward and sees.

She looks like she's sleeping. Except that she doesn't, that there is something off about her pallor that not even Ellison the undertaker's expert art can hide; that in life Tacoma's wild curls were never possible to tame; that the high neck of her dress and a layer of make-up cannot quite conceal the bruises on her throat. That this kid who couldn't sit still for even a second, whose leg always bounced and jittered with the urge to be moving if forced to stay in her seat, is now as motionless as carved ice.

Tacoma is patient. She stays motionless for the several long seconds that León stays at her side, staring, and when at last he turns away he knows she stays motionless then, too.

He knew it would be bad. But he wasn't prepared for this, for the uncompromising fact of the cadaver in front of him. There is a layer of meaning to a child's corpse that is absent from that of an old man. Not even twenty. Why? What in God's name can a child do to make someone do this to her?

More to the point, who would do it? León has found himself asking this question over and over, as the week wore on and the fact of Tacoma's death sank in, He can understand how someone might come to kill, if he puts his mind to it: anger, avarice, hate, all the usual suspects. But the thought that someone he knows, someone he probably goes to church with every Sunday, could give in to their passions like that and kill a child …

It scares him. León doesn't scare easy; he's seen enough of the world to know how the pieces fit together. People hurt people, constantly, often for no better reason than that they didn't really believe that the other was a person at all. Mahogany is no exception, and yet it always seemed that way. Until now. And, well, León has two kids, one of whom is Tacoma's age, and there's a murderer on the loose, and now? Now León is scared.

He's already had the talk with Ella and extracted a promise that she won't stay out past five; she gave him the distinct impression that she didn't want to go out anyway, poor thing. Jodi said that she won't stay out late either, though León didn't actually ask her. He supposes she sensed the question before he realised he was thinking of saying it.

So they should be safe. From whoever it is that is out there in the night.

Christ.

There's a noise, a familiar click, and he turns to see Jodi leaving Gabriella Kendrick in the hall to join him here in the dining-room. He is awed by her purpose: no hesitation, just straight over to the head of the coffin, to look into her dead friend's face.

She says nothing. León's temples prickle – apparently he too is very, very slightly psychic, which is where the doctors said Jodi gets it from – and he supposes she must be making her goodbyes on a plane where no one else can eavesdrop. It is such a private moment that he takes a few steps back without thinking, and the creak of the floorboards beneath his shoes makes Jodi start, look up over her shoulder towards him.

"Oh," she says.

He can count the number of times he's seen her this pale on the fingers of one hand: lying there in the hospital bed, her shattered leg hidden beneath a stained sheet; that moment last week when she looked into his eyes and told him she was a girl; and now, standing over Tacoma's body. She looks like blown glass, beautiful and too delicate to touch. He is as always startled by the realisation that she and Ella are his daughters, that something so perfect could come from him.

"I didn't see you there," she continues. "Sorry."

"It's okay, kiddo." He chooses the pet name deliberately, not wanting to make this worse by getting her name wrong again. "You take your time."

Jodi shakes her head.

"I'm done," she says. "It's not her, Dad. This is just … what's left."

He can't hold back any more: he steps forward, puts his arm around her. She leans gladly into his grip, head against his ribs. So small. Dr Ishihara said that all the energy that other kids used for their growth spurts just got eaten up by her brain, that she needed thousands more calories a day to actually get much growing done, and now it's too late to fix it. Jodi will be always be short.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's not what he wants to say, but it's all he knows how to. Jodi understands anyway, of course. She always understands.

"I know," she replies. "So am I."

He doesn't know when she got like this, where she got the kind of wisdom to navigate this mess. Sometimes he feels he doesn't know anything at all about Jodi, but she is his daughter, and he is determined to figure it out.

---

Jodi struggles at the service, León can tell; he doesn't know how exactly her empathy works, but he has a feeling it's much easier for her to blank out a single powerful emotion as she did at the house than to resist the curious attention of an entire churchful of people – not to mention the fact that this is Tacoma's funeral, that her body is right there at the front. About five minutes after everyone's found their seats, she starts shaking and struggling to breathe, and León burns with the desire to hold her but he's not sitting next to her and, if he's honest, Chelle's probably the best one for that job anyway. Nothing like a hug from your mum. Or so León is told. He never really got on with his own parents.

Right on cue, Chelle slips her arm around Jodi and pulls her close against her cheek.

"I know, chickadee," León hears Chelle murmur, and feels his love for her vibrate like the string of a guitar. "I know."

Jodi clings to her like a baby aipom, streaks of mascara blackening the skin around her eyes. In this moment she looks so much like a young Chelle that León momentarily forgets how to breathe, catapulted back into the spring of 1950 and one of Simone's cheap boarding room in the husk of Mahogany Manor, opening his door to the girl who cleaned the rooms and being punched straight out of his hangover by the brightness of her eyes. The night before last Jodi was up late watching TV with him, and without thinking he leaned against her the way he would against Chelle before remembering himself and abruptly jumping up to go to bed, equal parts ashamed and afraid of himself.

He was never like this with Ella. That he is with Jodi worries him, as so much about this does, but there's a time and a place for these worries, and this isn't it. León listens attentively to Alistair as he speaks, notes with satisfaction his choice of readings and the strength with which Everett and Lorna deliver them, and does his best to remain focused. It's not Jodi's day. She is incredibly brave to be here, is weathering God only knows what in that strange head of hers, but this is about Tacoma and her family.

It's a beautiful service. The hymns are few but well chosen, calculated to give a kind of release when sung hard into the echoing vault of the roof, and by the time they all rise to leave León imagines that there can't be a dry eye in the house. Exactly as it should be. Clean 'em all out of their emotions, make some space for the stories shared around the pyre. He never really understood why Johtonians do this until Chelle's father died; only when they stood there by the stinking mound of wood and shared memories that made even León remember the old bastard fondly did it start to make sense. Mourn, get all that pain out of the way, then celebrate. Wake, service, pyre. It has a rhythm to it, even if the order seems strange at first.

After the candles and the dim glow of winter light through stained glass, even the weak sun is blinding. León blinks to clear his eyes, and the next thing he knows Lothian is back and all over Jodi, making those squeaks with the strange gaps in where it goes too high for humans to hear. Poor thing. He must have known she was upset all the way through the service, but of course he must also have known that she wanted him to stay where he was until it was over.

"How are you doing, kids?" he asks, wanting to make up for not being close enough to Jodi to help earlier.

"Okay," says Ella, subdued.

Her second ever funeral. León is about to reach out and take her hand, but remembers how embarrassed she was the last time he did that in public and hesitates, torn between paternal affection and an intimate understanding of the fact that fourteen-year-olds want to be adults more than any adult does. Before he can come to a decision Jodi grunts a vague response, eyes clouded over in a way that means her mind is occupied elsewhere, and León's hand automatically redirects towards her arm. Better not let her fall. People don't need any more reason to stare than they already have.

Lothian falls into step alongside them, ears cocked towards her like radar dishes, and the telltale rumble in the nerves starts up a moment later. As they turn onto the path up to the flat space where the pyre has been built up, León catches Chelle taking Ella's hand out of the corner of his eye, and breathes out. Okay. Both the kids have someone looking after them. Good.

He tries to lead them all to a position a decent distance away from the pyre, but the crowd keeps pushing down the path behind them and they end up much too close to the front, where the fishy stink of the oil is almost unbearable. This feels like a bad place for Jodi to be, and for Ella, come to that, but now the Franklins are here, and the mayor and Con and the Fays and dozens of others, and there's no room to back off. León keeps his hand on Jodi's arm and an eye on Ella, looking lost between Chelle and Lucille, and holds his breath as the Spearings are slowly pushed through the crowd up to the pyre. Annie. Lucas. Everett, supporting him on one arm.

Someone starts on the bells, and as one they all take a step back as the casket emerges from the church. Lucas cranes his neck with the rest of them, and inadvertently squeezes Jodi's arm as it comes near, the pallbearers grunting and shuffling beneath its weight. The physicality of corpses has always bothered him. That heaviness. Like the rolls of fat falling from the whales as they flensed them at the station in Albany.

Jodi starts at the tightening of his grip, directs a worried look up into his face. For a moment he contemplates a reassuring smile, but even if he could manage one this is not a time for smiling, and in the end he just nods at her instead. She nods back, with a composure that León is sure he never had at her age, and returns her attention to the coffin as its bearers slide it awkwardly up onto the mound of wood.

Is it just that kids are different now? That all these new ideas, the endless information that the TV and radio beam straight into their heads, gift them things that León didn't learn till at least halfway through his twenties? Or is it that Jodi is exceptional, mind enriched with the emotional awareness of every single person she's ever met?

León first felt old when Jodi went away to university, and he came back one evening to a cold, empty house (Ella out with friends, Chelle working late) and the realisation that his kids were moving on with their lives. Since then, the feeling has returned several times, with varying degrees of intensity; it returns now, standing here alongside the daughter who apparently does not need as much help as he thought to make it through the funeral of her old best friend, and he stands and waits for the speeches to begin in stunned, shameful silence.

---

SAM

Sam hasn't arrived in the right frame of mind. Let's face it, she's a little nervous; it's hard not to be, at a funeral, and when you add the most mockable man in town into the mix something in her just goes for it. It's Jessica who lets them in, but then Con Wicke catches sight of Gabriella as he passes and steps in immediately with an offer to take their coats. And the shark in her head scents blood.

"Thanks," she says, tossing her coat casually over his arm. "Chief of Police on the coat check? You've gone down in the world, Con."

Before he can react, Gabriella shoots her a hard look.

"You'll forgive Sam," she says, laying her own coat atop Sam's. "Sometimes she misses the tone of the situation."

"Yeah," says Sam, chastened. "Sorry. Nervous."

"I get that." Took him long enough to answer, didn't it? Like a teenager whose crush has finally spoken to him. "I didn't know you knew Tacoma."

"Knew her well enough," Sam tells him. "Know Annie better."

Half true. Gabriella knows Annie, because Gabriella knows everyone and given ten minutes alone with them can make them swear she's their best friend. And if Gabriella's coming, Sam is damn well coming with her.

"Right," he says. "I'm … sure she appreciates the support." Sounds like he's having trouble finding words. "You, uh, you let me know if you need anything."

Gabriella gives him the smile, and Sam watches with a certain glee and a certain self-loathing as the blood rises in his cheeks.

"I will, Con," she says, knowing he was talking to Gabriella but completely unable to resist. He's just such an easy target. "I will."

"Sure," he mumbles, eyes still fixed on Gabriella. "Annie's in, um, I think Annie's in the kitchen, if you wanted to talk to her."

"Right," says Gabriella. "See you, then. Come on, Sam."

She takes a firm hold of Sam's elbow and steers her towards the kitchen, Morgan skipping after them with strides too long and floaty to be natural. There was a full moon a couple of days ago; she'll be buoyant and mean for a week till her magic levels die down again.

"Sam," mutters Gabriella, under her breath. "I know he's an ass, but we're at a funeral."

"Yeah. Sorry."

Even Con's upset, isn't he? Everyone is. A girl is dead before twenty, shot in the back of the head and thrown in a river to be washed away. Sam should know better. She's been here before, after all. Back then, she was the only one who cared. And now she's making jokes at Tacoma's funeral.

It's the nerves. It has to be. Nerves and the fact that Sam's default response to any kind of stress is to make fun of it. Sometimes that works; sometimes it just gets you punched. (Goldenrod, mid sixties, a guy calling out to Gabs to leave the dyke and let a real man take care of her.) Gabriella is too well-bred to punch people, but she doesn't need to punch to make you hurt. All she needs to do is look.

She is looking now. Sam holds her gaze, ashamed but asking her to understand, until Gabriella sighs and reaches out to smooth the collar of Sam's shirt back into place. Not much. But it's enough for Sam to know that she gets it.

Christ. If Sam believed that anyone up there really gave a damn about her, she'd never be done with thanking them for leading her into Nero's that night.

"Come on," says Gabriella, taking her hand away. "Let's talk to Annie."

They're at the kitchen door now; Sam can see a table spread with clashing foods from a dozen different households. Morgan perks up at the smell and bounces on ahead, her stumpy wings flaring in the arm air. Sam follows with Gabriella, and over by the stove, Michelle Ortega turns Annie Spearing gently to face them.

"Annie," says Gabriella, rushing up to her with a click of heels on fake parquet. "God, I am so sorry."

Annie nods. How many times has she heard that recently? And she can't say anything, can she, because every single person who said it really means it. Sam nods back at her, unwilling to cheapen this with her attempts at expressing condolences, but she doesn't seem to notice.

"There was no one else like her," Gabriella says, and maybe it's the accent but this doesn't sound trite when she says it. "And I'm going to stop now, because I'm sure you don't need to hear it all again, but we're always here. If you ever need to get out of the house …"

Annie nods again. For some reason Sam can't seem to read her expression at all. Like looking into a broken mirror and seeing only scattered shards of human face.

"Thanks, Gabbi," she says. "It's … it's good of you to come."

Gabriella has a thousand smiles; Sam has counted them, grown first less surprised and then more as she keeps on bringing out new permutations for new situations. This one is sweet, sad, laden with shared pain, and it is so perfectly suited to this moment that it draws a faint response from even Annie's stony face.

"There was never a chance we wouldn't," Gabriella tells her. "I'm sorry we didn't have anything to bring."

Annie shakes her head.

"It's fine. Never gonna eat all this anyway."

"Right." Gabriella's eyes move from Annie to Michelle, appraising. Barmaid's knack for sizing up a situation. Sam's always admired that about her. Sharp as a new knife. "I'll let you go," she says, in response to whatever it is she sees in their faces. "But we'll be right here if you need anything."

She turns to Sam, who knows a cue when she sees one and repeats her earlier nod.

"Sorry for your loss," she says, aware that next to Gabriella she sounds like a worn-out tape recording but unable to do better, and follows her back out into the hall.

They look at each other. Behind them, Michelle says something to Annie and gets an indistinct response.

"You did good," says Sam.

"I hope so," says Gabriella. "Ready for round two?"

Voices from the living-room. Morgan floating out of the kitchen, holding a sugar doughnut that she shouldn't be eating but which Sam can't seem to find it in her to take away. The shark making nervous, hungry circles in her head.

One dead girl in the dining-room and another hanging off her back.

"With you?" she says. "Guess I can stick it out a bit longer."

They let their hands brush oh-so-accidentally against one another, aware as ever that someone might be watching, and then Gabriella goes in and from somewhere comes the energy to yank the doughnut out of Morgan's paws and follow her.

---

Mae just won't leave her alone today. In the living-room, after wandering around and saying a few awkward hellos, Sam runs into Jodi, and she knows right away by the look in her eyes that she hasn't taken Sam's advice.

Not that this is a surprise. Even before Gabriella reported that she was asking questions, Sam knew that Jodi wasn't going to let this lie.

"Hey, kid," she says, as she approaches. Quick look over her head: no, no one's watching. Ella Ortega in the corner there. Bunch of guys around Lucas. Nobody paying them any attention.

Good. Sam has a feeling this is a conversation that they don't want to be overheard.

"Hey, Sam," says Jodi. She looks good. Polished, like Gabriella. Nice nails. Killer eyebrows, like that movie star Gabriella has a crush on. Sam hopes people see these things when they look at her, instead of the edges of her discarded boyhood. As well as them, even, if that's what she wants. Not Sam's place to say. "I didn't know you'd be here."

Sam shrugs.

"Gabs is friends with Annie," she says. "How are you bearin' up?"

Jodi twists her hand back and forth around the grip of her cane. Lothian, who has been sniffing inquisitively at Morgan while she sulks about the doughnut, tenses up, pulls back to curl protectively around the back of her legs. Kind of incredible, really. Most people are close to their partners, of course, but Lothian and Jodi are clearly on a whole different level.

"I'm okay," she says. "I think I'm probably going to sleep through all of tomorrow, but I'm okay."

Sam starts to laugh, but it gives out halfway through and turns into a grunt.

"Yeah," she says. "Must be rough. The psychic thing and that."

A taut little smile.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "The psychic thing."

Neither of them have an immediate follow-up. Across the room, Jessica breaks away from a conversation with Byrne Winter and leaves, trailing her kid behind her.

Sam can almost feel Mae's breath on the back of her neck. Okay. Time to have this out.

"You might as well come out and say it," she tells Jodi. "Whatever the hell it is."

Jodi blushes, which is kind of cute, honestly; Sam is used to Gabriella and her brazen ruthlessness, and it's always refreshing to remember that regular people actually get embarrassed about things like trying to chase leads at their best friends' funerals.

"Um," she says, looking for her voice. "Yeah, we went to the library yesterday."

"We?" Christ. Sam hopes she hasn't dragged anyone else into this.

"Me and Lothian," says Jodi. "He won't leave me alone since I dropped that rock on my leg."

"Right," says Sam, not sure if this is a joke, or whether to believe her at all. "So what're you sayin', anyway?"

"I'm saying that this isn't the first time, is it? I read the old papers on microfiche. I know about Mae West."

In Sam's head, her fist snaps out, sends Jodi tumbling backwards into the wall with a spray of red flying from her nose. But she does not act on these impulses, hasn't done since she kicked a guy's face in when she was twenty and scared Gabriella so badly that she almost lost her for good, and so she just stands there and watches Jodi flinch as her ESP absorbs the aggression.

"No, you don't," she tells her, keeping her voice low and her hands by her sides. "You don't know a damn thing about Mae."

"I know she disappeared. And that you cared enough to start asking questions."

Cigarette smoke spiralling up through the trees. Buds vivid on the branches. And that face, twisted on one side from the scar.

―Listen, Sam, I'm a pretty patient girl but come on. When exactly are you planning on kissing me?

Yes. Yes, Sam cared. Mae was her first, and more than that she was the one who showed her that this was even an option, that she too could love and be loved, if she only knew what it was she actually wanted.

Sam sighs. She could murder a cigarette about now.

"Look," she says, folding her arms to stop herself making fists. "I told you I'm not gonna stop you. But I'm not helpin' you, either."

Morgan's picked up on the tension now; she's shifted into a fighting stance, knees bent and paws wide, ready to cast. Lothian crouches lower, arching his back and opening the edges of his wings to flash the pale membrane within.

"Please, Sam." Jodi moves a little closer, gesturing with her free hand. Her eyes are bright in a bad way, a maybe-tears kind of way. "She was murdered."

Goddamn. The worst of it is that she's right. Sam has stood exactly where Jodi is standing now, and if she had to, if someone disappeared Gabriella the way they disappeared Mae, she'd stand there and do it all over again. This time she probably wouldn't run away, either. She'd stand her ground until either she got her revenge, or they disappeared her, too.

But she can do that kind of thing. She's thirty-one, broke, in charge of a dying petrol station in a town where no one can afford to retire and the kids have no future; if Gabriella wasn't around, then she could afford to burn these petty scraps of a life to ash in her quest to get justice. Jodi is what, twenty, and she's got strong enough psychic powers that she'll get work for sure, as a therapist or psy officer or one of those League counsellors in Pokémon Centres who check the kids are staying sane out there.

That's not something you can throw away. It's definitely not something Sam can throw away for her. She's not sure she has the right to withhold the information, either, but it definitely feels less culpable.

"I know," she says, fighting to keep the anger out of her voice. It's too much. All of this is too much, this house with Tacoma in the dining-room and Mae in her head and Jodi right bloody here in front of her, being young and pretty and distressed. Dead girls and those who want to follow in their footsteps. How the hell did she get herself into this position?

"You think I don't know?" she continues, barely even hearing herself. "Mae was murdered too, Jodi. And I tried to fight about it, and guess what, I lost that fight. 'Cos it ain't one you can win. And it ain't worth you losin' too, just for the sake of someone who's gone."

"But she's not―" Jodi breaks off, her hand curled tight and trembling in a gesture Sam cannot even begin to interpret. "I'm sorry," she says, face falling. It doesn't have far to go, considering, but it does its best. "I didn't mean to have this argument with you again."

What a weird thing to say. Weird, and kind. That's what this is, isn't it? Jodi is being kind. To Sam. To her dead friend. Both their dead friends.

Anyone ever figures out a way to respond to that, Sam would love to know.

Fortunately, it's not on her to come up with one.

"Hello, Jodi."

A gentle pressure on Sam's shoulder. A flash of auburn waves in her peripheral vision.

"Oh," says Jodi. "Uh, hi, Gabbi."

It's her. She's here, with her always-cold hands and her metamorphic smile; and she does nothing to dispel the vague, angry fog clouding Sam's mind but she is here, and that's a start.

"I'm not sure what we're talking about here," says Gabriella, "but I think that this might not be the best time for it."

"No, I know." Jodi bites her lip, takes her teeth away again with red stains along the edges. "I'm sorry, I just … it's Tacoma."

"Yes," says Gabriella. "It is. Let's stick to that for today, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Sam?"

Gabriella's eyes change with the light; right now, fixed on Sam in the wan glow reflected from the snow outside, they are something not green and not brown but which Sam has always thought of as the natural colour of spring.

The fog is fading. It's all there still, the girls who died and the ones they left behind; Sam can hear Mae's laugh, scratchy with cigarettes, and see the fan turning round and round on the shelf in her crappy little trailer. But she can see Morgan and Lothian posturing at one another too, and the woman who turned her from a causeless rebel to someone who could hold a life together, and she is in control of herself, not the anger or the fog, and she is going to be okay.

"Yeah, Gabs," she says. "Morgan, get away from him."

She glares, but she moves, and across from her Lothian relaxes, folds his wings back up again. Behind him the world is moving the same as it ever did, Lucas and his friends, Byrne and Janine, Ella heading out into the hall. Impossible as it seems, nobody has even noticed that this conversation is happening.

Jodi is looking at her like she wants to ask if she's okay, and Sam wonders how much of that she saw. Gabriella says that Jodi can only read emotions, not thoughts, but if Sam could read minds, she'd be lying about it too, so she doesn't see why Jodi wouldn't.

Either way, she's not going to tell her anything. Gabriella's right, as usual. This isn't a healthy conversation to be having.

"Think I might get somethin' to eat," she says instead. "Gabs?"

Gabriella's fingers tighten momentarily on her arm: this conversation isn't over. But it's time for a break.

"Coming," she says."Jodi?"

"No, I should … you know." Hesitation. Her free hand reaching down as Lothian raises his head. "Go see Tacoma."

"Ah. Okay." This time Gabriella's smile is sympathetic, understanding. Watching her fills Sam with the kind of anger that happens to her when her love gets too intense. "Come on. We're heading that way."

"Thanks." She smiles back, shy and pained. Sam would like to get away from all this right now, honestly, but she doesn't leave. No one cared when Mae died. She will not be that asshole now that Tacoma has, too. "I'm ready. I think."

"Okay, then." Gabriella's hand brushes Sam's again, cold as the snow outside, and as the thrill of it echoes down Sam's nerves she follows her out into the hall.

---

Bastard Jack was excluded from both the wake and the service – Gabriella can usually keep him in line, more or less, but she didn't want to risk bringing him to a situation that delicate – but he glides down to settle on her shoulder as they leave the church, wings gleaming like white gold in the December light. His beak is stained an interesting colour, which Sam takes to mean he got bored and went to find a snack. Most wingull are exclusive fish- and garbage-eaters, but since being brought several hundred miles inland Jack has adapted to terrestrial hunting. Once Sam saw him fire a water pulse down a rabbit hole with such force that the unfortunate occupant was catapulted out of another exit halfway across the field.

"Hello, trouble," says Gabriella, rubbing a knuckle down his neck. "Found some wildlife to terrorise, I see."

Jack makes that mewling seagull scream that Sam hates and Gabriella (unaccountably) loves, and shuffles his feet into his preferred shoulder-perching position.

"Okay," she says, letting her hand fall. "Come on, we should get out of the way."

The four of them move off down the path between the rows of memorial stones, each stele wearing its own cap of snow. So damn bright.

"You should have brought your sunglasses," says Gabriella, as if reading her mind.

"Mm." Sam has managed to convince the rest of the town that she wears sunglasses to look cool, but the truth of the matter is that her pale eyes sting and water in even moderately bright lights. About the only time of year she doesn't need them is autumn, when the sky is as dull as rock salt; she's not wearing them today because she didn't know if that's allowed at funerals.

Gabriella's left eyebrow twitches up into a perfect arc.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

Sam's instinct is to lie, but she doesn't. It's fine. You can't help your first reaction: you can only affect what you actually do. She's lived by that line for over a decade now, ever since one of her Goldenrod friends took her out for a drink and a talk about anger.

"No," she says, keeping her voice low so that the others will hear nothing over the crunch of shoes on dirt and salt. "Not really."

Gabriella nods.

"Yes," she says. "I don't think I am, either."

Crunch, crunch. Some pokémon Sam can't see bleats from within the crowd.

"Good to be out," says Sam. "Don't like church."

She knows she sounds like a petulant teenager, but she also knows that Gabriella is aware that what she means is that she hates sitting around on a hard wooden chair while Alistair drones on about the infinite love of the God who hates people like her, and so she says it anyway.

"I know," says Gabriella. "I don't even know if Tacoma liked it, honestly. But being here's the right thing to do."

The right thing. Like nobody did for …

Sam has really got to stop this. Months go by at a time without her thinking of her and then suddenly up she pops again, laughter in her eyes and that big, twisted scar across her face.

―Just got the film star name. Didn't get lucky enough to get the looks as well.

She still doesn't know how Mae came by that wound. But she had other scars too, on her neck and deforming one breast, and even back then Sam knew better than to ask about it.

And then Tacoma … Tacoma. Sam remembers when they heard the news that day last week. Who d'you think did it, she asked Gabriella, and Gabriella shook her head.

I don't know, she said. But they better run, because if they ever get caught then half the town is going to come for their blood.

"Goddamn it all to hell," Sam mutters, earning a disapproving look from Sarah as she passes. "How much longer is this gonna go on for?"

Gabriella lays her hand briefly on Sam's shoulder.

"Let's light the fire when we get home," she says. "And just sit there until it's over."

Until it's over is something they've been saying to each other for years, and it means anything and everything that it ever possibly could: until the fire goes out, until they fall asleep, until the world ends. Sam imagines their living-room, Gabriella leaning into her, soft and fragrant. Firelight turning her hair into red flames. Asleep, or not, and Sam unable to risk moving for fear of ruining things, like when a kitten goes to sleep on your lap and you think, well, I guess I live in this chair now. Until it's over, and they go to bed to dream their intertwining dreams.

"Yeah," she says. "Let's do that."

They find places to stand at the back of the churchyard, between the last two rows of stelae. The names of the dead press in on them from both sides. Sam's eye moves instinctively to read them, but she has had enough of death today and distracts herself by picking up Morgan so she can climb on her shoulders and see over the heads of the Fays in front. Clefairy are always curious; if Sam doesn't let her watch, she'll only start scratching her leg till she does.

Not that there's all that much to see. Just a box being carried down the path and shoved onto a pile of stinking wood. What's holy oil even made of, anyway? It smells like old fish and gasoline. Like Jack when he got stuck in the garage and broke open a grease gun trying to get out.

The bells fall silent, and Morgan tugs petulantly on Sam's ear, uncertain why the pretty noise has stopped but sure that she can bully her partner into fixing it. Sam flicks her nose in return and she quiets down again, understanding at once that there is nothing to be done. This kind of petty insolence is like a language, and savage little things like them are more than fluent.

"You have all heard me say my piece," says Alistair. "I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief."

Sam appreciates it too. The sooner she can get out of here and back home to that fireside, the better. Maybe her irritation shows, because suddenly she feels cold fingers wrapped around her own, squeezing gently. She looks quizzically at Gabriella, what are you doing, and gets a shrug in response: we're at the back, nobody can see.

Risky. But hell, she'll take it.

"I now open the field to you," Alistair is saying, when she returns her attention to him. "If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time."

No one takes up the offer. Sam wonders what they're meant to say. She liked Tacoma, is glad she knew her and sorry that she's gone, but these feel like poor offerings. Everything else she might say isn't the kind of thing she can share with the town; neither Tacoma nor her family would thank her for it. Probably wouldn't do her and Gabriella any good, either.

The silence goes on, long enough for Sam to start getting angry. This is the part where you celebrate the dead person's life, right? That's why they all came. Someone has to do something, has to have something to say to get everyone going. Tacoma deserves better than that. Sam saw her in the summer, sweltering in a long-sleeved shirt, and she's spent enough time among people who hate themselves to have her suspicions about what that means. If no one speaks at her pyre, that's just adding insult to injury.

"Suppose I should say something," says Nick, and Sam heaves a silent sigh of relief. Okay. She's never really been to a funeral before – when she came back home, she found that those of her grandparents who were alive for her childhood had passed away in her absence – but she imagines that the first speech is always the hardest. They've all just spent several hours feeling sad at the house and in the church; now it's time to celebrate, to share in Tacoma's life instead of her death, and that's a hard shift in tone to navigate.

It's a good speech that he gives. Short – which again, Sam appreciates – but punchy. Unsentimental. In Nick's telling, Tacoma is the kind of person Sam would like to be, although of course she is not sure that Tacoma quite made it all the way into being that person, either. She nods along with the rhythm of it, annoying Morgan with the movement, and then all at once Nick's gears seem to grind and he just … stops. Like a run-down car pushed beyond its limits.

Sam can see the situation unfolding even before it happens. There's Alistair, saying "thank you" over and over, but that won't make Nick move, and then someone else will have to step in, and that someone is going to be Con, isn't it, because he just can't shake off that urge to be Police Chief even when he knows that his intervention would be the worst way there is to handle this situation, and then when his hand meets Nick's arm …

It was just before she left town that it happened, and to this day nobody really has any idea why. But she was one of the ones who saw it. Back then, she had part-time work at the post office with Marlo – this was before his drinking got out of hand and someone else had to take over – and she was just coming back from lunch when she saw the two of them coming out the door, shouting like they were trying to wake the dead.

You have no understanding of human suffering, yelled Nick.

You don't have any idea what you're talking ab, yelled Con, but he never quite finished, because at that point Nick laid him out flat on the pavement with the best right hook Sam had ever seen.

That was back when Nick was a student, before he moved away permanently, and apparently he was on the Yellowbrick wrestling team at the time. Still impressive. Con's a pretty big guy, after all.

It was funny at the time, of course, because Sam was eighteen and even more pointlessly rebellious than she is now, but today it just seems ominous.

She holds her breath.

Con steps out from the crowd.

"Ah, shit," she mutters, and feels Gabriella's grip tighten. She knows too. And now they're going to see two grown men slugging it out over Tacoma's funeral pyre like toddlers fighting over a toy in a sandpit.

"Okay, Nick," says Con. "Time to―"

As he speaks, he lays a hand on Nick's arm, and that's where it all starts to go wrong.

"Don't you touch me," growls Nick, exploding back into motion like he just got filled with the breath of Ho-oh. "You―!"

That magneton of his zooms up over his head, arcs of lightning jumping between its cores; Sam can't see Moira, but she imagines she must be responding in kind, arching her tail and making her cheeks spark. The crowd pulls back, muttering like a parliament of owls, and she has to take a step back with Gabriella to avoid getting trodden on. For a moment Danny Fay's head is blocking her view, and the next thing she can see is Nick shifting position, fists rising.

Goddamn. Sam really didn't want to be proved right about this.

"Easy, Nick." Con raises his hands, backs off. "This isn't the time for that."

"Isn't it?" Nick's eyes flash with a cold light. What happened between these two? Sam is no stranger to hate, but this is deep stuff. Maybe he's spent the past decade brooding over whatever slight it was, condensing the hate down into something pure and violent. "I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―"

"Nick."

"Oh thank God," breathes Gabriella, and Sam finds she can't argue with that. Annie to the rescue. If anyone can pull Nick back from the edge of whatever cliff he's standing on, it has to be her.

"Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again," she says, and that's it: all the fight goes out of him in an instant as he remembers where he is, and why. "And you, Con," she snaps, just in case he thought he was getting away with his stupid intervention. "You should know better."

"Sure, Annie," he begins, but she doesn't let him finish.

"I don't want to hear it."

Never has Sam seen anyone so comprehensively shut down. Con barely even reacts, just retreats back into the crowd. Nick shakes his head and stalks off, pushing roughly through the crowd with one hand and searching for something in his pocket with the other. Cigarettes? Sam feels like she needs one, and she only had to watch.

"Um," says Alistair, his nerves obvious enough to give Sam a little thrill of satisfaction. Teach him to preach about what is and isn't natural. "If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak."

The wait for a second speaker is almost as tense as that for the first; Sam's eyes move restlessly around the crowd, flicking back to Nick every so often to see him still fidgeting in his pocket and glaring, but nobody looks like they're psyching themselves up to step forward. Eventually someone does, though, and old Harry makes his slow way up to the pyre, his ancient electivire dragging himself slowly along behind him. Normally Jacob stays at home or in his ball, sleeping, but evidently he felt his human needed support today. It's been years since Sam saw him; his fur is almost completely grey now.

"I mostly saw Tacoma while she was on her way to see something more interesting," Harry begins, to general smiles, and Sam knows that things are finally looking up. It's a nice speech, heartwarming really, and the only sour note is when he mentions that he regrets being the last person that Tacoma saw alive and Sam's mind jumps from Tacoma being killed with electricity to the fact that Harry (and maybe Jacob) knew exactly where she was on the evening she was killed. But that passes – why would he kill her, after all? Sam isn't sure if he's part of the chapter house group or not, but she is sure that Tacoma wasn't killed by members of the group – and then she can relax again. He's always had a knack for putting people at their ease. Good man.

After Harry comes that guy Victor, and that self-centred sap Steven, and Pryce Aske; Michelle takes a turn, talks about the way Tacoma used to run in and out of the Ortega house like it was her own, and Sam's eyes turn involuntarily to find Jodi in the crowd. She sees León and Ella, and assumes that Jodi is with them, but both she and Sam are too short for Sam to be able to see her.

She wonders if Jodi will speak. What would she say? Sam has no idea, really. She's probably sensible enough that she wouldn't talk about the fact that someone here is a murderer, but Sam doesn't know that for sure.

"Thank you, Michelle," says Alistair, and as she walks away to rejoin León Sam feels Gabriella pull her hand free from hers.

"My turn," she tells her, and edges politely through the crowd to tell her story about Tacoma being the first person she met in town. She comes back a little flushed, a little shaky, and grips Sam's hand tighter than before. Sam grips back, whispers that she was great, and feels her heart lift a little with Gabriella's nervous smile.

Ina. Marlo. Elsie. Janine. More and more of them, everyone who knew her and everyone who cared. They come and go, tossing stories into the crowd like coins into a fountain, watching the ripples spread across the mourners. The longer it goes on, the more distant Mae seems, the less ready to leave Sam feels. At some point, she even stops noticing the cold; the pyre still hasn't been lit, will not until the stories are done, but the glow of history here is like the hot charcoal in the bowl of a hookah, a gentle warmth that seeps in through your skin.

And then Everett returns to his parents, Annie wrapping one arm tight around him, and at last it is over.

Alistair looks around.

"Anyone else?"

No takers. Sam feels strange. Satisfied, maybe. She wasn't sure how she felt about watching Tacoma get incinerated, but now she thinks she's probably ready for it.

"All right then. Lorna, if you'd―"

"Hang on," says a thin little voice, and Sam swears under her breath. She's going to do it, isn't she?

She'd better not say anything that anyone comes to regret.

?

This is proving to be a difficult day.

He knew it would be, of course. He's dealt with corpses before, but he was never the one that created them, and he's certainly never had to stand and suffer through their funerals. This Tacoma thing was a bad business. None of it was meant to happen, it was just … well. She got herself involved, even if she didn't mean to. The moment she picked up that package in Saffron, the wheels were set in motion. And that encounter in the park was as good as sealed.

He feels bad about that, he really does. He didn't necessarily understand Tacoma, but he knew she was heading for a life more important than his, and he cared, he did. Sometimes he wants to climb up onto the icy roof of his house and scream it into the night for everyone to hear: please, you have to believe me!

But … but it's happened now, and it can't be taken back, and that means there's nothing left for it but to fight the guilt and suffer through her funeral.

The wake was bad, standing around with everyone else, all so apologetic, so cautious of the Spearings' loss. At least he didn't have to fake his sorrow; on one occasion, he had to excuse himself and stand in the bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink and breathing hard while his partner moved around in erratic little bursts, upset by his obvious distress. When he came out again, face as white as the snow outside, he saw people looking at him, and murmuring sympathetically to one another. If only they knew, he thought. If only they knew.

The service was a little easier; that was just sitting around, after all, and if he concentrated on the chiming of the bell-vanes on the roof as they turned in the wind he could blank out Alistair's sermon easily enough. Got a little dicey when Everett took the pulpit to deliver one of the readings, though. The God that the killer believes in has never quite matched up with the God of the Church, but in that moment he was certain that His judgement was only a matter of time.

Now, standing by the pyre with everyone else, he can take a measure of comfort in the fact that it is almost over, for today at least. (The police investigation is still ongoing, of course, and there's a lot to be done there yet, but that's a problem for another day.) There was that damn stupid fight – God, that was painful – but that's past now, and the speeches are pretty much done. He can't see anyone choosing to follow Everett and his choked-up elegy.

Except that someone does. Except that that damn Ortega kid still has something to say.

"Hang on." Eyes bright. Tears, or determination? Impossible to be certain. "I wanted to say something, actually."

"Of course," says Alistair, although he does not sound very sure about it. Probably wondering whether or not letting the kid make a speech would profane the rites. "Um, come on up … Jodi."

Up there now, moving slowly. Leg playing up, maybe. Lothian is there too, sticking close as a shadow.

He swallows. He has a feeling he knows what he's about to hear.

"Tacoma was my best friend, once. And I really wish that she still was." Surveying the crowd. Absolutely fearless, despite the empathy. He hates this: nerves would be more approachable, easier to deal with. "There were a bunch of reasons why we stopped hanging out, I guess, and I understood those, but I never stopped hoping she'd come talk to me again someday. Maybe I should have taken the lead. I guess that ship has sailed now.

"But that's not the point. The point is, I still cared. She did too, I think. I always got that sense from her, even when she'd pass me in the street and not say anything. And now she's gone, but she's watching, and I want to admit that, here where we can all hear. We missed an opportunity. I really hope we get a chance to make up for it, eventually."

Cute. Maybe this is going to be okay after all. This isn't any worse than what anyone else has said; it just reminds him that he tore a hole in people's lives, is all, and that's something he's been dealing with all this afternoon.

"I probably don't need to repeat what everyone else has said, about how smart she was and all. You know that stuff. But she was, you know. And now she's dead, and … and I'm standing here talking to you, and all I can think is that as I look at you, I'm looking at the person who did it."

People don't like that; heads are turning, low murmurs exchanged. By the pyre, Lothian unfolds his wings and arches his back, unsettled.

"I hope I'm wrong. I hope you're all the people I thought you were. But I don't know any more, and I owe it to Tacoma to be suspicious." Okay. Okay, this is starting to get harder to bear. "I'm not here to make accusations. I don't want to spoil things. But I hope Tacoma gets the justice she deserves."

Their eyes meet. As if … but nobody knows, right? It's impossible. Nobody can know. He was careful. So careful.

But what if someone could read minds?

He can hear the blood roaring in his ears. The world seems to be much further away than it used to be, except for those eyes, drilling down through his face into the dark place in his head where terrible secrets are kept, and suddenly it seems incredibly hard to breathe―

"Sorry." The eyes move on, turn their awful intensity on someone else. Just looking around. All of this was just a coincidence. He knows that. "Tacoma was … incredible. She still is, wherever she is. Let's focus on that." A sigh. "Thanks. I'm sorry for upsetting things."

Gone before anyone can even think of responding. He breathes out, tells himself he's being stupid. He's actually seen mind-readings take place before, and they're not the kind of thing you can pull off standing up while giving a speech; it takes real concentration to make them work. His secret is still safe. Even from the psychic kid.

"Uh … thank you, Jodi," says Alistair, looking confused. "All right. If that's all …? Lorna. It's time."

She hands him the holy taper, its handle carved with phoenix wings, and Alistair's flareon raises her head to light it with a breath.

"Most holy and gracious God," he says, "we commend the soul of this girl into Your eternal care."

It catches instantly, the holy oil flaring like petrol, and as one the crowd takes a step back as the fire roars up towards heaven, heat rolling off it in thick waves that seem to scorch their faces after the long winter cold.

There's an art to making a pyre; you want to choose the right woods, the right mixture of oils, so that it burns hot enough to turn flesh and bone into ash – and too bright to look at, so that you don't have to watch it happening. The coffin should hold for a little while, until the pressure of the hot air inside becomes too great, and by that point most of Tacoma herself should be gone.

In some places, he has heard, they arrange things so that the ash of the person cannot mix with the ash of the fuel, so that the family can keep them as a memorial.

He is very, very glad that this is not what is done here.

"Within the flame and in our hearts," begins someone, begins that damn kid, and as the old Johto hymn spreads throughout the crowd, the words rising up with the pillar of smoke, the killer stands there and keeps his eyes fixed on the flame, on the box even now beginning to crumble at the corners.

He stares until he can stare no more, and after he finally gives in and blinks he finds he cannot see anything at all but the ghost of the fire, flashing blue-green before his eyes.