church, to find out what the trouble was and what they needed to do about it.
Rose stayed on the stairs a minute or so more, waiting to see where, exactly, Henry Dunken would position himself in this emergency.
He dropped the fancy candlesticks in a pile along the wall and rushed outside, the women aflutter behind him. If Rose wanted to leave the building, now was her chance, out the back door. Easy to slip out unnoticed when an emergency was rising. Course she might just run off into the very emergency the town was rallying against if she wasn’t careful. But if choosing between an unknown danger and Henry Dunken, she’d take the unknown.
She blew out the candle, ready to leave
Then it struck her. Maybe it was little Elbert. Maybe Mr. Hunt had found the child alive and brought him home. Maybe he had discovered the bogeyman that took him and all the town was being gathered up to go hunt it down.
Rose moved up the steps just enough the shadows from the attic hid her from a casual glance. She wanted to know what the trouble was, but didn’t want to be volunteered just yet in the fixing of it.
“Bring him in here, Mr. LeFel.” Sheriff Wilke’s voice filled the hall. “Mr. and Mrs. Gregor will be here any minute now.”
Sheriff Wilke strode into the room; then Mr. Shard LeFel, resplendent in his velvet long coat and silk ruffles, strolled in behind him. He held an unconscious child in his arms. Little Elbert Gregor.
The rest of the people, and there was a crowd of them gathered behind him, stayed well back from Mr. LeFel and his man Mr. Shunt, who followed, as he always did, on Mr. LeFel’s heels. Mr. LeFel walked across that floor like a king, his head high, his eyes filled with a sorrow Rose did not believe. He placed the child gently upon a pew at the front of the room, and Doc Hatcher went to one knee, his hands on the child’s stomach, chest, then face, where he gently drew back the child’s eyelids.
The sheriff had taken the stage behind the pulpit. Mr. LeFel and Mr. Shunt stood to the sides and behind him.
“Come in and have a seat, everyone,” Sheriff Wilke called out. The whole town, and then some, seemed to be trying to wedge themselves into the building.
“Mr. LeFel has some information we all should know,” he continued. “First, though, I’ll tell you the Gregor boy is breathing.” He looked over at the doctor.
“He’s in bad shape,” Doc Hatcher said, and if Rose hadn’t been looking right at his face, she wouldn’t have heard him over the chatter of the crowd. “He needs rest.”
“Sit down,” Sheriff Wilke hollered over the crowd. “Take a seat. Make room for your neighbor.”
“Out of the way,” Mr. Gregor bellowed from the door. Rose knew the blacksmith’s voice, though she had never heard that mix of anger and panic in his tone. And just like snowmelt before the fire, the crowd receded, leaving a clear path between the pews for Mr. Gregor and his wife. Little Mrs. Gregor bobbed down that aisle, one hand pressed over her mouth, holding back the sound of her sobs, the other clutching up the hem of her skirt to keep from tripping.
Mr. Gregor stormed down the aisle behind her, his hands curled as if he wished the weight of a hammer and vise lay within them.
“Where is my son?” he demanded.
“He’s here, right here.” Sheriff Wilke pointed to the pew. Mrs. Gregor was already pulling Elbert up into her arms and sobbing over him.
Elbert fussed and then cried softly, clinging to the fabric of his mother’s dress.
Mr. Gregor glared at the men on the stage, the sheriff, the rich dandy, and his servant, Mr. Shunt. “Who found him? Who had him? Where was he?”
Shard LeFel stepped forward and it was like every candle in the room leaned his way, every eye locked on him, every head bowed to hear his words.
“I found him, Mr. Gregor.” Shard LeFel’s voice was like hot wine, and there were folk in the pews who sighed at the sound of it. “And not a moment too soon.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“He’ll be telling us all now, Mr. Gregor,” the sheriff said. “Take your family home, if you want—get that poor boy in bed. We’ll take care of matters here on out.”
“I’ll stand and stay,” Mr. Gregor said.
The blacksmith glanced down at his son, who looked up at him with tearful eyes before burying his face once again in the crook of his mother’s neck. Mr. Gregor placed his hand gently on his child’s head, and the boy turned his face away. Elbert’s eyes were dazed, and Rose shook her head, her heart catching when she thought of what he must have been through.
Then the little boy looked at her. Saw her there, in the shadows. And smiled.
Rose pressed her hand over her chest, as if the boy’s eyes had shot an arrow. A cold and fearful sensation crawled over her skin. That little boy was not Elbert. He might look like Elbert; he might cry like Elbert. But that boy had more of the Strange to him than Rose had ever seen in a child.
She pressed herself up against the stairwell wall, wishing there were more than just shadows between them.
The sheriff took a few steps away from Mr. Gregor so he could catch everyone’s attention. “Listen up, folks. Mr. LeFel has something to tell us all.”
The townspeople had filled the church to the brim, every pew taken, and every wall with people standing along it, right up to stuffing up the aisles. Rose saw more people gathered than she’d seen at the last county fair. Must be nearly three hundred tucked up tight in the room that wasn’t built to hold more than a hundred, most.
“Mr. LeFel?” Sheriff Wilke gave the rail man the floor.
LeFel glided up to take his place behind the podium. When he smiled, it looked like an apology.
“Good people of Hallelujah, I bring you most distressing news.”
Before he could continue, the church doors opened, and a fresh breeze sliced through the thick air, drawing the candle flames straight up on their wicks again.
“Hear there’s been a ruckus,” Alun Madder said as he sauntered in, his brothers, Bryn and Cadoc, shoulder to shoulder with him.
They all clapped their gloved hands together and rubbed them like they were scrubbing warmth up out of a campfire.
“What seems to be the trouble?” Alun asked.
Everyone in the church turned at the brothers’ entrance. Except Rose. She watched LeFel’s face screw into a dark visage of hatred. The kind of hatred that made a man carve another man’s heart out and spit in the hole left behind.
Rose unconsciously clutched the locket beneath the thin cloth of her dress.
At that small movement, Mr. LeFel looked up away from the Madders, his eyes searching the shadows where she stood until he spotted her there. He was startled to find her watching him; that was clear. And the smile he gave her was no comfort. It was a warning.
“Settle in, and quiet down, Mr. Madder,” Sheriff Wilke said. “All of you. Mr. LeFel has the podium.”
Alun’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t see you there, Mr. LeFel,” he said without a hint of apology in his voice. “Must be the rising moonlight so bright it struck me blind. Carry on. Carry on. And
Mr. LeFel licked his lips and glared at them. “As I was saying, I have dire news for us all.”
He glanced out over the people gathered. There was that aristocratic air about him. It hooked up each and every eye and mind, and not a soul seemed able to lean away. When he flicked that gaze at Rose, she put her hand back on the gun in her pocket and glared at him.
He scowled, looked back at the Madders, then once again looked at her. But this time there was surprise, and some kind of new understanding, in his expression.
“Mr. LeFel?” the sheriff prompted.
LeFel finally turned his attention back to his breathless audience.
Rose’s heart thumped hard. In LeFel’s look was the same cold creeping she’d sensed in the boy. But she felt the sure pressure of someone else looking at her. She glanced down the stairs. Alun Madder was indeed watching
