We parked at the golf course, looped around, and walked in through the cemetery. We’d dressed dark. Ricky wore a light T-shirt but had zipped his leather jacket over it. Remembering our game in the cabin woods, I let him take the lead. He walked silently, as if knowing where to step to avoid cracking twigs and crunching stones. As we moved, I could practically feel the low strum of energy vibrating from him, that dark and delicious mix of tension and adrenaline. When he’d glance back to check on me, his eyes glittered, as they had in the woods.

We reached the cemetery. It was a modern one, no weathered headstones and moss-laden mausoleums. Just row after row of death. We cut our way through as if the gravestones were merely obstacles. If there was anything frightening about a cemetery at night, it was lost on me. Always had been.

A strip of woods separated the cemetery and the abandoned buildings. Ricky stopped at the edge. He glanced back to make sure I had my gun out. He nodded, took something from his jacket, and palmed it. When I leaned in to see what it was, he opened his fist to show a metal cylinder. He pressed a button. A knife shot out.

“Switchblade,” I said. “Nice. I could use one of those.”

“That’s not enough?” he whispered, pointing at my gun.

“It does the job, if the job is to kill. I need a backup that’s not always so lethal.”

“You could try getting yourself into fewer situations where you need a weapon.”

“I suspect that’s not happening anytime soon.”

A short laugh and he nodded as we carried on.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

We reached the middle of the strip of forest, which was so thin we could see the fields on either side. When I heard an almost soundless whoosh-whoosh, I looked up to see an owl passing overhead. It was huge, like the ones I’d seen in Cainsville a month ago, a pair that had ripped apart a raven. I found myself looking for a second one. I knew this couldn’t be the same owl, and I was sure they hunted alone. Yet when I looked, I saw another in a tree just ahead. The first lighted in the same one, and they sat there, watching us silently.

Oddly, seeing them seemed to calm me. Their unblinking gazes said to be alert and be safe. Stay watchful.

It took a moment for Ricky to notice them. When he did, he stopped.

“Now that’s creepy,” he said.

“Is it?”

He shivered. “Um, yeah.”

I guess we didn’t agree on everything. As we continued, he kept sneaking glances up at the owls, as if expecting them to dive-bomb us. It was cute, really. He’d just walked through a graveyard at night, accompanying me into a potential death trap, but what freaked him out was a pair of owls.

As we passed, they watched us go. Then they took off, flying overhead in the same direction we were heading.

“Hey, they’re leading the way,” I said as I pointed.

“To our deaths probably,” Ricky muttered. “They carry off children in the night, you know.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we aren’t children. Where’d you hear that?”

“I used to read all that stuff when I was a kid. Every now and then it just pops up.”

“For me it’s omens. Someone stuffed them in my head, and they crop up at the most inconvenient times.”

“Yeah? Nothing about owls, then?”

“Only if it’s daytime. Although if you hear an owl hoot between houses, it means someone has lost her virginity. I think we’re okay there, too. And if a pregnant woman hears an owl, her child will be blessed. Again, we should be fine. At least, I hope so.”

“They didn’t hoot.”

“Excellent.”

He grinned back at me, and I returned the smile. I hadn’t planned to mention the omens, but as soon as the topic came up, I’d jumped on it, as if eager to unburden myself. When I’d confessed my mental library of superstitions to James, he’d thought it was adorable, in that slightly condescending way that made me wish I’d never opened my mouth. Ricky only said, “So I guess you won’t think my stories are so weird, huh?”

“I won’t.”

He returned to cutting the trail. He definitely must have better night vision than me, because he brought us out behind a building, where we could safely exit under cover of shadow.

We were behind a brick structure maybe half the size of the Gallaghers’ cabin. Tiny for a residence, but that’s what it looked like, one of at least a dozen squatting along a narrow road. Sterile brick boxes with barred windows and heavy doors. Cells more than homes. When I touched a brick, I shuddered.

“Can we agree this place is creepy?” Ricky whispered.

I nodded and pulled my hand back. “Macy said it wasn’t an army base, but that’s what it looks like.”

“Could be. We’re heading to the biggest building, right?”

“Yep. In the middle.”

He surveyed the landscape. Beyond the pillbox houses we could make out buildings a couple of stories tall. We stuck to shadows and silence as we made our way toward them.

I made notes of my surroundings, trying to arrange everything into a mental map. There’d been only one road leading in, but there were more here, laid out in a grid pattern. Like an army base or other “prepackaged” community. What else needed to be isolated like this? A prison? A commune? It seemed too open for the former and too industrial for the latter.

We were passing the last of the houselike buildings when I caught sight of words carved into the foundation. I touched Ricky’s arm to stop him as I bent to read. Someone had painstakingly etched a sentence into the concrete blocks.

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I looked around at the tiny houses with no glass in the barred windows. With doors that could be locked from the outside.

I fought chills as I rose. We continued on, me following in Ricky’s tracks as we skirted a two-story building, circling until we could see around the front.

There was a car in the middle of the main road. The interior light was on, the passenger door open. Across the street stood a building that looked like a high school. A long three-story rectangle, saved from architectural obscurity by a tower rising an extra twenty feet over the main doors. On top of the tower was a cross with a broken arm. To the left, an empty flagpole groaned in the wind. There was a balcony on the front tower, half the railing missing.

Over the main doors, I could make out a sign, with letters big enough to read in the moonlight. Part of the first word was obscured, but I could see the rest. State Hospital.