Understandably, my declaration garners strong reactions from all three of them.

  “What!?” Ryder and Nancy choke out at the same time.

  The old woman scoffs.

  “It’s like you said,” I remind her. “He kept saying things were going according to plan.”

  “And you’re the plan?” the woman asks, derision in every word.

  I shrug. “Our little commune is the plan,” I say, using her word. But for it to have happened in exactly the way it happened, there needed to have been a Town Hall. He needed to have slipped me a specific address. We needed to get to that address on a certain number of days after the Town Hall in order to stop the attempted lynch mob… It’s all connected.”

  The woman scoffs again.

  I lean back, resting my weight on my hands and stretching my legs out in front of me. Ryder’s got pride shining in his eyes and a small smirk on his face. It kind of eggs me on. “Believe me or not, I don’t really care. All I know is that we’ll be eating a hot, home cooked meal tonight and whoever in there”—I tilt my head toward the chapel—“decides to come can likely get one, too. A proper bed. A private bathroom.” I laugh through my nose, the sound coming out like a snort. “Whether or not you believe me is the least of my issues.”

  I give her a bright smile.

  Nancy lets out a small chuckle.

  The woman seems to stand up even straighter and takes a step backward. “Those who are joining you are packing their things. They’ll be along shortly.” And without another word about Sutherland, about me, or about my descent into snark, she turns on the small kitten heel she’s wearing (it’s the apocalypse, lady, heels are for dummies) and strides back into the chapel.

  Nancy and Ryder explode into laughter.

  “You haven’t gone full-Jane on someone like that in a long time,” Ryder says, flat-out lying on his back, smacking his fist on the ground beside him.

  Nancy’s gasping for air. “Oh man, the look on her face! I thought she was going to combust.”

  I can’t help it. I start laughing too. “You don’t think I was too mean?”

  “From what you told us about that Town Hall,” Nancy says, “I don’t want that woman anywhere near our commune.”

  “Besides,” Ryder says, rolling onto his side and facing me. “I like it when you’re mean.” He frowns. “As long as you’re not mean to me.”

  That gets me laughing all over again, which gets Nancy and Ryder laughing again, and it takes us a few moments to compose ourselves and wait for the church folk who want to join us to come out into the lobby.

  In the end, over half choose to come. Madison does, but her father does not. The other teenage boy, Dustin, chooses to come, too, which I’m glad about—I want to know more about how he developed fire powers so late. The Black woman and her charges, the four kids—all five of them join us.

  “Growing children need sunlight and good food and a secure home,” she says with conviction as she strides out of the chapel, her four charges following behind her like the Pied Piper. Each kid has a little plastic shopping bag in each hand.

  I make a mental note to make a stop somewhere and collect a whole whack load of luggage, to always have some on hand. And to give a suitcase to each kid.

  Not because they need to live out of their suitcases anymore, but because they deserve to have something that is just theirs.

  The small cluster of adults come. They’re an interesting bunch, all strangely silent and moving their heads as one unit.

  “They all share a brain,” one of the kids whispers to me.

  Nancy, Ryder, and I consider that. “Like, one brain for all five of them?” Ryder asks.

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  “Like the Fates who share an eye?” I suggest.

  “Or like a hive mind,” Nancy says. “What one of them knows, they all know.”

  Only one of them speaks, in the end. A woman with long black hair and eyes such a bright blue they’re almost white. When she looks at us, we all shiver at the same time. “We thank you for your kindness,” she says, a small knowing smile on her face. I get the feeling she knew we were creeped out. “And now everyone knows of your kindness.”

  As they head through the doors, I share a glance at my Party. “What do you think that means?”

  “Maybe their hive is actually a lot more than five,” Nancy theorizes.

  “Does that mean more of them are going to show up?” Ryder asks.

  “It’s a very real possibility.”

  It takes some manoeuvring to get all twelve of our new residents into vehicles with their merger belongings and promises that we’ll come back for the rest before we’re off again. We end up with Madison and Dustin in the backseat with Ryder.

  The three of them are talking so fast I have trouble keeping up.

  “And you’re really not mad to be leaving your dad behind?” Ryder asks Madison.

  Dustin huffs. “Roy runs a tough ship.”

  “Hey,” Madison scolds. “He’s tough, and he can be mean and stubborn and so very wrong about everything, but he’s still my dad.” She sighs, and I can feel it on the back of my neck from the front seat. “And it’s not like we’re moving to opposite sides of the world.”

  “You still think he’s going to come back,” Dustin says.

  “I do,” Madison agrees. “He’ll miss me and come hunting us down. And he’ll bring all the rest of the zealots with him.”

  Dustin lets out a grown. “Does that include Ingrid?”

  “Who’s Ingrid?” Ryder asks.

  “The old lady,” Madison says. “The one who looks like a teacher from the stone ages, who had that real gaudy cross around her neck.” Madison lets out a shudder, vocally and physically, and the whole car feels it. “She gives me the willies. Thank god we only had to deal with her for one night.”

  Nancy and I share a quick glance. “One night?” I ask, interrupting the kids in the back. “What do you mean, one night?”

  Madison meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “She just showed up yesterday.”

  Ryder lets out a somewhat crazed-sounding laugh.

  Madison jerks away from Ryder, her head snapping in his direction. “What the hell was that?”

  Ryder stutters a little. “It—I—Just—That it reminds me of something Jane said once. That everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to happen.”

  “And when it’s supposed to happen,” Nancy adds.

  They’re right. We needed to make contact with Ingrid, which meant we didn’t get our assignment to head to the church until after she arrived there.

  “Sutherland strikes again,” I say quietly to myself. But Nancy grins, having heard me.

  It’s Ryder who brings up Dustin’s magic, a few minutes later.

  “It was so weird!” the teen exclaims. “It happened just a couple days after we met you. One day I couldn’t make fire, and then next day I nearly burned the church down because my hands just burst into flame! Johnny Storm style!”

  “That’s so cool and so scary!” Ryder says, matching Dustin’s energy perfectly.

  “That’s exactly what I thought!”

  And that is how friendships are born, I think to myself.

  “What sort of magic could you do before that, Dustin?” I ask, stealing a glance at him in the mirror.

  He shrugs. “I could feel it, sometimes, tingling under my skin. But I couldn’t really do anything or make anything happen.”

  “There was that time that you made yourself invisible,” Madison says.

  Dustin shakes his head. “I told you, that has to do with you power, not mine. You did it.”

  Madison scoffs. “I can’t make people invisible.”

  “What can you do, Madison?” Ryder asks.

  “It’s real cool,” Dustin says. “She can manipulate reflections. Guess she spent too much time looking in mirrors.” He and Ryder start to laugh, but the glare coming from Madison shuts them both up.

  I’m not laughing, either. “Wait, really?” I ask her through the mirror. “That’s really is cool. How does that work?”

  Madison bites down on her lip. “I don’t really know the extent of it,” she admits. “Dad didn’t like us playing around with our powers. At least for everyone but Dustin’s fire.” She fidgets a little. Considering how she had no issue with the attention up until now, I peg her nerves as magic-related.

  I’m not worried. A few days—heck, a few hours—in the safe zone and she’ll be learning all about what she can do.

  “She can, like, see around corners and over her shoulder by messing with a mirror’s surface,” Dustin chimes in. “And that time she made me invisible!”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Actually,” Nancy interrupts. “If you reflected the light around him with your powers, that could have made it seem like he was invisible.”

  There’s a pause of silence as the teens take it in.

  Ryder breaks it. “There’s a way we can know for sure,” he says. “For both of you.” And in as few words as possible, in a way that somehow doesn’t totally give away the Game, he tells them about the safe zone having NPCs and the NPC pop-up. “You’d have to be very, very still, but we can use our power to read yours.”

  I’m almost impressed with how succinctly Ryder put it, though I would have preferred to not be too forthcoming with the whole NPC thing. Still, the way Dustin’s eyes have gone wide tell me it was the right choice, and the two spend the rest of the car ride trying to make it work. The movements of the car make it hard, but as we’re on the final stretch of road before we turn back into our neighbourhood, Ryder lets out a gasp.

  “What!?” Dustin shrieks, leaning forward. But clearly, Ryder already figured it out. “What did it say I am?”

  Ryder looks at me through the mirror. He’s grinning and I can practically see the gears in his head moving. Whatever magic Dustin has, Ryder is excited. He turns back to his new friend.

  “Dustin… you’re a mimic.”