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Mel laughs a little, starting to relax. Abby leans in.

ABBY: Now. We’d gotten to your fifth visit to the town.

MEL: Right. We were still in the Sinner’s Gate, and it was starting to feel like we’d never get out.

11

THE FLOWERS HAVEspread when we get to the sign. They are no longer contained in tidy beds; they thrust up from the grass and the weeds, spilling in every direction, even pushing their way between the stones of the road. I crush one beneath my foot as I walk, and a smell like spices and cut grass fills the air—but with something else beneath it. Something rotten, like meat just beginning to turn.

When we come in sight of the town, Jeremy lets loose a long, quiet string of swearing, and I don’t blame him.

The people are still here, still facing away from us. They are near the road, all of them, standing with an orderly quiet that makes you expect to find them lined up neatly in rows, but they’re more scattered than that. As if they were all walking in a crowd, jostling each other, some walking together, some striking out on their own. And they all just suddenly stopped. Their hands don’t cover their faces anymore; they hang at their sides, loose and relaxed.

At their feet, a thousand flowers bloom.

“Just... try not to touch them.” I know that no one else will move until I do, so I stride forward.

The moment I reach the first of them, a woman with long, dark hair, the whispering begins. She turns her face to me. Her eyes—I don’t have to tell you, do I? Their eyes are all like the preacher’s.

“Don’t leave the road,”she whispers, and it passes through the townspeople like a fever, repeated until the sounds dissolve into formless rustling.

“When it’s dark, don’t let go,”whispers a girl no older than nine, and this, too, dissolves among the crowd like ink into water.

“There are other roads. Don’t follow them,”whispers the girl’s mother.

I know, I want to tell them.Tell me something I haven’t heard yet.But I remember the notebook.Don’t talk to them.

I keep my mouth shut. I look at the others quickly, making sure they do the same, and catch Mel’s eye. Her lips are clamped shut, her eyes wide. We hold each other’s gaze for a moment, steadying each other, until she nods once and I turn my focus back to the path in front of me.

The whispers start to blend together. I try to pick them out as we inch along, try to move slowly, but it’s hard not to hurry. Not to run.

the sea rushes in her lover rushes in the sea rushes—

He’s gone to meet the bramble man

You’re going to the gallows, girl

The gates are open

I smell the blood on you.

I whip around. It’s the man, the bearded man the crow attacked. His shirt is clean, no sign of blood. Where the crow’s beak ripped its hole, a curl of vine grows, grasping its way along histhroat, spade-like leaves lying flat against his skin. He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at Trina, and she is transfixed.

“I smell the blood on you, girl,”he whispers. “And so will he.”

“The toll is blood,”they whisper, until the sentence shreds apart.“The wicked among you must pay. I smell the blood on you.”

Trina’s eyes are wide. She takes a step toward the man, toward the edge of the road, and she starts to open her mouth. I lunge, but Jeremy is faster. His hand is over her mouth before she can make a sound.

“Don’t talk to them,” he hisses. “And don’t listen to them, either. Come on.”

He lets her go, but takes her hand instead, and she follows mutely, footsteps stumbling. Kyle watches her go, a puzzled expression on his face. Like he’s almost begun to realize something, but he hasn’t figured out what yet.

The whispers swell. There are more people than the last time through the town, hundreds of them, and they are crowded close together at the center of the town, making the whispers an impossible rush of sound, as incomprehensible as wind through long grass.

The words around the well have devolved into chaos even more immune to interpretation. Letters layered on top of letters in the same white chalk, so that only the frayed edge, three feet out from the well, can be read.

the gate of sin lies shut until the wicked are bled they bleed the wicked they take them they are given the toll is blood DAHUT OPENS THE GATES THE SEA RUSHES IN