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said. “You know that.”
    The house suddenly trembled.
    An earthquake?
    Hannah braced her hands on the wall, staring up at the lights as they swung from side to side. The floorboards trembled, the old walls groaned, and Pamela’s office door swung shut.
    Once the shaking stopped, a deep silence followed.
    A creeping sensation crawled through Hannah’s hairline, down the back of her neck, and slithered over her spine. She wasn’t sure why, but she was certain thatthat hadn’t been an earthquake.
    “Put your jacket back on,” she told Nathaniel.
    “Why?” he asked, a marshmallow rainbow stuck to his bottom lip.
    She snagged his backpack off the floor. “Just do what I say.” Hannah opened the front door to exit—but Landon stood on the porch.
    “Oh, Hannah,” he said, as though pleasantly surprised to see her. The lines on his forehead looked like a road map. “You made it. Wonderful.” Landon stepped in, forcing her to back away to let him enter. He closed the door very deliberately. “And Nathaniel, too. All the better.”
    “We were just on the way to see Leo and Marja,” Hannah said.
    The smile grew fixed to Landon’s face. “They’re on their way. You should get comfortable while you wait.” He kept walking forward, invading Hannah’s space. The backs of her legs struck the couch. She sat down hard.
    Nathaniel set down the box of cereal. “What’s going on, Landon?” He was much too confident for a boy his age, and much too unimpressed by Landon’s authority. Just another consequence of his father’s arrogant blood.
    “Why don’t you sit down, too?” Landon asked.
    Nathaniel dropped onto the couch beside Hannah. She wrapped one arm around him, and the fact that he tolerated it meant that he must have been much more scared than he let himself show.
    We never should have come here. This was a mistake. Hannah clasped her trembling hands together, trying not to shiver in her rain-soaked clothing.
    “Leo and Marja will be here soon,” Landon said again, almost like he was trying to convince himself. He kept glancing at the windows.
    “He’s lying,” Nathaniel whispered to Hannah.
    The high priest cast a sharp look at him. “I’ll be right back. Neither of you move.”
    He stepped out the front door.
    Hannah certainly believed that Landon was waiting for someone. But Nathaniel was right, too—he wasn’t waiting for her in-laws. He was still colluding with that angel, the one that had taken Ariane away when they were girls.
    Whoever stepped through that door next would not be friendly.
    Hannah squeezed her son tighter against her side, and she made a quick decision.
    Landon was old. Hannah wasn’t a fighter—never had been, never would be—but she thought she could overpower him, especially if he didn’t expect it.
    She had to move fast.
    “Get ready to follow me. We have to run,” she said, pushing Nathaniel’s backpack into his arms. She grabbed a paperweight off of the side table. It felt hefty in her hand. Deadly.
    He didn’t argue this time. He just nodded, cheeks pale and eyes wide, and zipped up his coat.
    Hannah took a deep breath.
    Forgive me, Mother Goddess.

    She jumped onto the patio.
    But Landon was already dead.
    She didn’t need to check his pulse to confirm it. The butcher knife sticking out of his chest was evidence enough.
    And Ariane Kavanagh stood over him with a look of shock on her face, bloody hands, and the curve of a pregnant belly under her shirt.

VIII
    Malcolm couldn’t remember the last time that he had been happy. It wasn’t the Union’s fault, really, even though they had turned out to be kind of a bust. The fact that he had spent the last few months as their detainee, rather than as an honored commander, was pretty solid evidence of that.
    But his misery easily predated them. In fact, he thought that the beginning of his slide from “happy drunk guy” into “irredeemable alcoholic” had begun the day that his life tangled with Elise