She calmed instantly and blinked. “What?”

I blinked back.

“Why would I kill you?” she asked, her voice suddenly soft. Confused. “Why would I kill a baby?”

I blinked again. “Because that’s what you do?”

“I have never!” she said, appalled. She slapped my hands away.

I dropped them and stepped back.

“I would never do something like that. I’ve tried to stop him every time.”

A dread the weight of the planet crept over me. “Who, Novalee?”

She pressed her lips together. “The man who killed my daughter. The one who had me locked away in an asylum for the rest of my life when I tried to tell people he’d done it. My husband, Delbert Smeets.”

An eerie silence settled about the room. Novalee’s blank eyes watered as she thought back.

“He killed my precious Rose and told everyone I’d done it.”

“And they just believed him?”

“He was The Mayor,” she said, matter-of-fact. “No one questioned The Mayor. He had half the town in his pocket.”

I crunched over to a rickety dining chair, cursing when I stepped on a Lego. No idea. “Novalee, I don’t know what to say. We thought it was you.”

“No.” She sat in the other dining room chair.

If only I had a dining room. Or a dining table, for that matter. As it was, we just sat in the chairs, facing each other.

“I would never harm a child.”

“But a grown woman?” I asked, indicating my poor apartment with a nod. What was I going to tell my landlord?

“No. Never. I was just trying to scare you.”

“Well, it worked. Holy rusted metal, Batman.”

The smile she flashed seemed so rational. So… sane. If not for her solid white eyes and that touch of decomposition.

“Do you still want your doll?”

She lowered her head. Twisted her hands in her lap. “It’s not my baby, is it?”

I shook my head.

“They told me for years it was her, and I began to believe them.”

“I’m so sorry, Novalee. But I need to know, did your husband kill Erin’s first two children?”

She lowered her head farther. “Yes. I tried to stop him.

“But why?” I asked, saddened and sickened.

“My sister. She was the only one who stood by me after what happened. She tried to get me released. Tried to convince the authorities that Delbert had killed our child. Tried to get people to come forward with all the atrocities he’d done to them. Because she defied him, because she dared to stand up to him, he vowed to kill her daughters, too. And all of her son’s daughters. And so on. He’s been doing it ever since. Only the girls and only until they reach a full year. If they survive that long, he leaves them alone.”

“Damn. He really hated girls.”

“He was an evil man.”

“No need to convince me of that. You’ve been trying to stop him?”

“Yes.” Her shoulders wilted, as though she were exhausted from the effort. “I’ve been successful three times in all these years. With Erin’s mother and her twin sister, and then with Erin herself.”

“What about Erin’s aunt? She had a baby —”

“Yes. It was Delbert. I couldn’t hold him back any longer. He’s getting stronger.” She raised hopeful eyes to me. “You have to stop him. Once and for all.”

This went way beyond what I’d signed up for. I shook my head. “Novalee, I don’t know how. I can’t even imagine.”

“But you have to,” she said, panicking.

She was right. I had to try. What was my life worth if I didn’t even attempt to save a child in danger? “Okay. I’ll try. How do I stop him?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

She smiled sweetly. “You just have to see him.” Then she leaned forward and placed her cool hands, soft with age, on either side of my face. “Your light will do the rest.”

“My light? Like, my flashlight? I might need to put new batteries in it, then.”

She patted my cheek and stood as if to leave.

I followed suit. Pointing to the doll that now lay on the floor under Irma, I said, “I’ll give her back to Erin.”

“Thank you.” For a moment she just stared at it, and I thought she was going to cry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her it wasn’t her baby. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. She sniffed and refocused on me. “But you must hurry. I can hold him off, just not for very long, and he’s almost there.”

Alarm coursed through me. Without asking her anything else, I grabbed the doll, then the keys to Mable’s car, and ran.

By the time I got to Erin and Billy’s house, I was shaking uncontrollably. Probably because I was wearing a tank that read I’M PRETTY SURE MY GUARDIAN ANGEL DOES CRACK and a pair of scrubs I’d taken home from the hospital, and the temperature was somewhere between holy-shit and it’s-cold degrees below. I’d torn out of Mable’s backyard, risking her reporting the car stolen, but I didn’t have time to explain. Or, apparently, grab a jacket. I hadn’t realized how badly my foot was cut until it kept slipping off the gas pedal, so blood loss could have been a contributing factor to my convulsive quivering as well.

I skidded to a stop in front of their well-cared-for home and sprinted to the door.

“Billy!” I yelled, pounding as hard as I could. “Erin! Open up! Hurry!”

After about two minutes of disturbing the peace at the most irritating time possible, I’d managed to get everyone in the neighborhood to turn on their porch lights except Erin and Billy.

“Billy!” I screamed, shoving all my weight against the door. If I couldn’t get them to come to me, maybe I could go to them. But the door was made of some kind of super wood. The harder I shoved, the more stuck it seemed to become, until finally, like a light shining down from heaven, their porch light flickered on.

Erin cracked open the door as far as a chain latch would allow, her brows drawn from both sleep and fury. “What the fuck, Janey?” she asked, her voice thick and groggy.

“Open the door,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

Once again, I didn’t have time to explain. “Sorry about this.”

I drew in a deep breath and threw all my body weight against the door. The chain broke, and Erin stumbled back with a scream.

“Erin!” Billy said, scrambling down to help his wife up.

I tossed him the doll. “It’s not the doll. I was wrong,” I said, as I shot past him and up the stairs.

“Janey!” Erin screamed. She hurried up the stairs behind me, but I soon lost track of her movements. The minute I crossed the threshold into her daughter’s room, I stopped short.

Delbert was there, and he had Novalee by the throat, his meaty hands choking her. She slowly sank to the floor. Could he really hurt her? She was already dead.

She looked over at me. At least I thought she did. With no irises, it was hard to tell.

Yep, she was definitely looking at me, and she appeared none too happy with me. Then I realized why. She was keeping him distracted, and I was rubbernecking.