The Hallowed Ones

were nowhere in sight. Inwardly, I cringed when I saw him. I nodded curtly at him, sidestepped him to get to the door.

“Katie.” He reached up and grabbed my hand.

I looked down at him frostily. “Good evening, Elijah.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I have chores to do.”

He shook his head. “They can wait.”

He pulled on my arm, drew me down to the top step. I jerked my arm away and folded my hands in my lap. Maybe if I let him say his piece, he’d go away. I stared out at the field, back in the direction in which I’d come, toward sunshine.

“I’m sorry.”

I flicked a glance at him, said nothing.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you. I . . . know that things have been hard. Hard on all of us.”

I nodded, swallowed. “You did what you had to do. You miss your brothers.” I felt their loss too, like a void in our familiar landscape.

“But I knew better than to push that on you. And I knew better than to take up with Ruth.”

I didn’t care to imagine what all “take up” encompassed. The shadow of a red-tailed hawk soared overhead. I envied him his freedom, his power as he hunted. He was beholden to nobody, to no one’s rules. I wondered if he knew that the ravens had left.

“I was wrong.”

“Ruth is gone,” I said as I watched the hawk plunge into the field, his wings cupped to break his descent as he disappeared under the sea of blond grass.

“She’s gone . . . but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here for you.”

I didn’t say anything. I watched the grass rustle, thought I heard a squeak.

“I heard what you did yesterday for Ruth, for her family. You showed . . . such faith and courage. Such obedience to God. You did what no one else would do.”

“Frau Gerlach was there.”

“You know what I mean. You were . . . I am in awe of you.”

“I did what needed to be done.”

Elijah got in front of me, knelt down, obstructing my view of the field. He grabbed my hands in his clammy ones. “Katie, will you marry me?”

I stared at him, hard. My gaze felt like the hawk’s, as if I saw beneath him. Saw the core of him. He wasn’t a bad man. Just human.

I lifted my gaze to watch the hawk take off, soaring above the field with a mouse in his talons. My heart soared with him, singing and free.

“No,” I said.

I disentangled my hands from his, turned around, and disappeared into the house.

* * *

My mother was making dinner. Sarah was helping, mashing potatoes with great concentration. My father sat at the head of the table. I noticed that there was an extra place set.

I walked past them, toward the stairs to my room.

“Katie,” my father said, his voice stopping me on the second step. He was smiling, a smile that reached the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes.

“Yes, Father?”

“Do you have some news for me?”

I glanced out the back door. Elijah had asked for my father’s blessing before he asked me to marry him. I balled my hand into a fist and hid it in my skirt.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

I climbed the steps, hearing my mother whispering something below me. I walked into my room and shut the door behind me. My gaze fell immediately on the wooden Rumspringa money box Elijah had made for me. It sat on the floor. I knew it was empty. I kicked it under the bed.

Ginger sat up in bed, hands folded on her lap. She stared vacantly at the wall, her mouth turned down.

“Ginger?”

Her eyes slowly turned to mine. “Hello, Katie.”

I came to sit beside her on the bed. I fingered the crochet work in her basket. “This is pretty.”

“Thank you.” Her hand stroked it softly, as if it were a kitten.

Her sadness was so real, so tangible. And more. I could see in her dead gaze that she’d given up.

I reached for her wrist, shook it. “Ginger.”

She lowered her eyes. There was no spark of hope left in them. No tears, even. Just aloneness.

“The vampires are here, aren’t they?” she whispered.

“Yes, Ginger. They’re here. You know that they’ve been here. They took the cows.”

She nodded to herself, stared at the quilt. “That’s good. It’ll be over soon.”

I grasped her wrist harder. “You can’t just lie down and give up,” I insisted. She’d grown despondent since her cell phone had been destroyed. Without that link to the Outside world, she’d fallen into a deeper and deeper depression—one I could not shake her from.

She gave a small shrug. “There’s nothing left for me. This isn’t my world.” She looked down at her dress. “This isn’t who I am. I’m just”—she sighed—“waiting.”

I put my arms around her, but she didn’t cry. She just sat there, still as the bodies of the women I’d handled yesterday.

Waiting for the end of everything.

* * *

We may have been dead.

But I was determined to live.

I had gone to bed without Nachtesse, wrapping myself in a bundle of quilts. My mother attempted to speak to me about Elijah, about how he meant well. I just shook my head at her until she retreated back to the kitchen. Ginger sat in the falling darkness, staring at the wall, while I pretended to sleep.

I didn’t move as Sarah climbed into bed beside me.

Through slit eyes, I watched the light below our bedroom door move, then become extinguished as my parents went to bed. I heard the murmur of their voices beyond, but I could not make out what they were saying. I think that they were arguing, but I was not sure. Eventually, their voices faded. I heard the creak of bedsprings as one of them turned around to present their back to the other.

I stared out the window, waiting for the moon to rise and paint silvery light inside the room.

I looked at Ginger. She had not moved, was still sitting upright. I climbed out of bed, padded toward her.

“Ginger?” I whispered.

She didn’t respond. I didn’t know if she could. Tenderly, I pushed her back down on the bed, facing the ceiling. I pulled the quilt up around her neck. I could see the glassiness of her open eyes shining in the dimness, though her pupils didn’t seem to follow me as I snatched my dress from the laundry. I reached inside the pocket to reassure myself that the Himmelsbrief was still there, but I left my apron and bonnet behind.

I slipped down the stairs, through the dark kitchen. I grabbed my shoes, opened the back door . . .

And plunged into darkness.

The day had rendered this place gold, but the night was cool and silvery. I ran past the pumpkin patch, through the tall grass. Overhead, I could see the Milky Way, the trail of the dead, as I swam through the tall fields and heard crickets singing.

I scanned the silvery darkness for the vampires, but I was not afraid. Not like before. I had been terrified of the violence. But now I had already seen what there was to see. I knew that they could not harm me as they harmed the others. I had the Hexenmeister’s power, however long it lasted.