All it took was a thought. One thought, and Margaret was back. Again, I had to wrestle with conflicting emotions. Relief and fear all at once. Summoning her was like pulling a tick from my skin while leaving its head inside. It felt good despite the inevitable infection it left in its wake. And all it took was a thought to bring her back.

  Of course, helping me work through my anxiety was far from her first priority. “She’s… alive?” Margaret whispered a few moments after I pulled her back into the world. I realized I should have brought her back sooner. As soon as we left the graveyard, if not the moment Melody spoke to me. Margaret had thrown herself into the past to save this woman. She had died to preserve her mother’s dignity. And she was alive. Of course it was the only thing on her mind.

  And yet, she didn’t say anything else. Just the two-word question, and silence. She knew I couldn’t respond to her, so it could be assumed she was waiting to speak until I could. But I could feel the truth in the air around her. She just… had no more to say. At least not out loud. All she could do was watch her mother walk. I understood. I imagined being back home, watching Camilla shine her brightest like I’d never lied. Like it was safe for her and she’d never been hated. I wouldn’t have words either. And, of course, Margaret couldn’t actually speak to her mother. It was no surprise she was struggling to say anything at all.

  I needed her help, but it was my own fault she was too distracted to offer. As Margaret walked ahead of me and focused on the woman she’d died to save, I tried to figure out what had changed since the last loop. It was an energy I couldn’t place. And before I could, we’d made it to the familiar gate guarded by the same two men I’d met the first time.

  “Hello, Melody,” the first greeted. “Who’s the fresh face?” The older woman looked back at me and smiled.

  “This is Mars, a new friend,” she explained. The guards looked me over, but their inspection felt dull and practiced, like nothing they found was likely to get me turned away.

  “Well, enjoy the service. The last one ran a little long, so it should be fine that you’re a bit late,” he finally dismissed. And that’s what it was. A dismissal. Compared to the first loop when I’d needed ‘Still World’ to get in, they simply dismissed my presence as an oddity on a routine day.

  “What is this?” Margaret whispered as soon as we walked inside. “Why did you bring Mom here?” Again, I couldn’t answer, but I wasn’t surprised by the vitriol in her voice. My own stomach was churning at the sight that greeted us. It was exactly what I had discovered the first time I’d been in that garden. The bodies of the Quiet’s victims. There were fewer this time. I’d arrived in the middle of the first day. And they weren’t dumped like garbage to be forgotten. It wasn’t the mass grave it had been before.

  What we found was far more grotesque.

  They’d been arranged and placed throughout a series of pews like a church of gargoyles. Others were seated around them, chatting happily as a man in robes gathered notes in the front. I’d been to the temple a few times as a girl, although it was never Grandma’s preference. I recognized the environment well enough. But this was wrong. The smiles on people’s faces as they sat among the discarded bodies and waited for some speech…

  With a start, I noticed Livia walking right past me. She barely acknowledged my presence, offering only a familiar smile as she made her way to the gate we’d just entered. I remembered Marcus saying she was at a meeting, but this was far from what I’d expected. “This isn’t my mother,” Margaret hissed as Melody led me down the aisle and toward a seat in the middle. “She wouldn’t be a part of… whatever this is.” I curled my lower lip in, holding in my response. I was inclined to agree. Livia was too kind to willingly attend a meeting like this. I had to believe almost everyone there was too kind. But I said nothing. I followed Melody, and she led me to Scylla.

  Margaret’s sister and husband were seated next to their son, or the shell that once carried him. Melody turned and smiled at me. I could see she wanted to make introductions despite the horror on my face, but the atmosphere shifted toward silence before she got the chance. I stood frozen, staring at the child’s body as all other eyes were drawn to the front of the arranged seating.

  “The world has been seeing a lot of dark days lately,” the man in the robe announced. I realized this must be Luke, the man Melody had mentioned before. There were a couple of dozen people here, in addition to the bodies. All of them focused immediately on him when he spoke. “It’s funny, isn’t it? That phrase? ‘Dark days.’ As if that wasn’t an inherent contradiction. Why do you think we call them that? Dark days?”

  He had a foul tone to his voice, but not an obvious one. It was laced with the poison of arrogant expectation. Like he knew his words had value, and he could be certain of an intense emotional reaction. The words themselves didn’t seem to matter. His inflection controlled the air, no matter what they were.

  “‘Day’ is the word we use for Aethon’s domain. Isn’t it? So why, when things aren’t going how we’d like, do we call the days dark? It isn’t Aethon who is dim. It isn’t Aethon who brings the darkness, is it? So why do we do that? Why do we take our failures and point them at Aethon? Like it’s his days that are dark, and not our actions?” Melody nodded along next to me, and others in the pews were murmuring agreements of their own. I couldn’t take my eyes off the child’s body.

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  Scylla had let that child kill her, just so he would survive in some way. I had watched her. I had shown it to Margaret. The way she sat still and let him cut her just so he wouldn’t be still. Just so he wouldn’t be so quiet. There was no way she would simply sit and smile next to his body like this now. The same way that the girls sat next to their mother. They were behaving as if these people were alive. It made me shiver just being around them.

  “Because that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Luke continued. “It is our actions that darken the sky. Our lack of faith. Our disobedience. To Aethon’s commands. To our parents. To our spouses. To the leaders Aethon put in place over us. This morning, I passed by the front gate, and there was a crowd. A crowd. Our leaders asked us to stay home and have faith in Aethon’s grace, and what do people do? They gather at the gates, and they try to flee. From a plague? From a curse? No. From responsibility. Because we think we know better. Because we place ourselves on a pedestal, and we question. The god who gave our souls these bodies. We question him, and we question those he put in place to protect us. We worship ourselves instead. Our reason. Our own small minds. Of course the days are dark! We’re blotting out the sun himself and relying on the lights of our own minds! How could that lead us anywhere but to the dark?”

  This I had heard before, and it made me sick. Not this sermon. Not exactly. The way it was phrased was new. Like I should feel motivated and excited by the words. But the sentiment was the same. He was talking about Aethon, but the way he wrapped the Mayor and even parents into the message… It was all the same. ‘It wouldn’t be like this if you would listen to me.’ That was all it was. These were words that already lived in my head. They echoed through my mind as I tried to sleep each night. They were a lie I couldn’t stomach, and I couldn’t listen to them anymore. Not from my grandmother, and not from this stranger. I started to chant under my breath. I tuned the world around me out. The tired pews set up in the garden. The praying crowd. The empty bodies. I just chanted until I once again stood in ‘Still World’. I held my breath and I stood. I had to sidle past the people seated next to me, and I nearly brushed against the frozen body of a woman I’d only ever seen carrying a torch in past loops.

  I held my hand over my mouth to hold the breath in as I made the excruciatingly slow trip back to the central aisle. When I finally stepped into the open grass, I hurried to the gate, taking one last look over my shoulder at the robed man and his adoring audience. He was glaring at the seat I’d been in, and a bead of sweat formed on my head. I shook, then ran through the still-open gate. The only place I could think to stop was Hadley’s home, and I found myself on his porch before I let time resume. ‘How could that lead us anywhere but to the dark?’ The words echoed through my mind as I pushed the door open. Hadley’s body was still inside, standing over drowned flowers. I had to push through it. I closed the door behind me and pressed my back against it, sliding slowly to the floor. ‘Our disobedience. To Aethon’s commands. To our parents. To our spouses.’ My head hurt and my heart ached.

  “What was that?” Margaret asked. I startled, having forgotten that she was there. I took a deep breath and looked up at her. She had her arms crossed, and her fingers were digging into her skin. Or what should have been skin.

  “It was wrong,” was all I could answer. I wasn’t sure if she was asking why I suddenly left or what it was we were witnessing. The answer was the same either way.

  “What was wrong with my… with mom? Why would she…” Margaret trailed. I pictured the smile on Melody’s face and shook my head. I didn’t know. I pictured Livia casually leaving before we sat down. I thought of Junia, begging me to explain my actions to her dead mother. Then I thought of Margaret. Of what she’d done on the last loops. Of the falling star in her graveyard.

  “How did you do it?” I finally asked. “When did you learn to control the earth?” She paused, glaring down at me, then began to pace.

  “What does that matter? That’s all done now. You’re safe, I swear to Aethon, you’re safe,” she insisted. I shook my head.

  “No, that’s not it. It’s just… it was something like… a falling star, right? That kid kept trying to find it, behind your mother’s grave?” I pressed. She paused and gave me a serious look. Then she slowly began to nod.

  “That was when it started, yes,” she agreed quietly. “I found it and… I don’t know how to describe it. I touched it and I understood. The earth. The soul. Everything. Why?” I took a deep breath, holding one hand to my chest as I waited for my heartbeat to slow. I wasn’t sure why, but I was certain they would come looking for me. The people in that strange church service. That Luke. Even Melody.

  “Because, there were three of them. When this spell first started, on the third day. There were three stars, and you only got one of them,” I answered. I was almost certain that whatever was happening was the work of one of the other two. It was the only thing that made any sense. Margaret took a step back, then leaned against the table. Her eyes widened.

  “Mom…” she whispered. She had died to save her mother. And she’d done it after understanding what her magic was actually doing to people. This was different, but if it was connected… Neither of us could stomach the thought of Margaret’s second chance being taken. Of Melody getting her life back, only to have it taken away. We couldn’t live with our friends, happily attending a meeting of the dead. “Luke?” she asked.

  “I… I don’t know,” I responded. I hadn’t known about Margaret when I first met her. There was no way to tell. Of course, Margaret didn’t have a revolving crowd of rotating followers hanging on her every word. Not a living one, anyway. He did seem like a likely culprit, if I was right.

  Margaret wasn’t so uncertain, however, and her next words made that clear. “We should kill him.”