Page 38 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Water flushed the floor as he rinsed the mop. “Is anyone going with you?”

Am I going with you? Is someone going to be there to shine your boots and make sure your coffee is black enough?

“Willa. She wants to visit Grace’s grave. Inez will stay here. She promised Laurie she would help him.”

Relief ached like a closed wound. “You’re coming back. ”

Safine pressed her bitten lips together, her arms crossed like she was keeping pieces of herself from spilling out.

“When I’ve done something for myself, I’ll come back.

You’ll be fine until then. I’ve been working on the things you and Laurie brought back from the church and I might have something figured out so you don’t have to kill as often.

Some blood invention Whitton was working on. ”

A peace-offering between them, for now.

“Thank you,” Decker said softly. Pain latched onto him, deep and sickening, but he pushed it down and set the mop back in the bucket. “We’ll be waiting for you.” Sister Inez, he knew, would be counting the months. She was devout not only in her faith.

Safine blew a limp curl out of her face and brushed one last stray locust from her plain skirts. “I think we need a distraction until these little bastards leave.”

The ache lessened for a moment. “I’m all ears, Safi.”

Laurie’s head snapped up from the journal when they returned.

“Whitton’s taken care of,” Decker said at the expectant looks of Willa and Sister Inez.

“And I’m teaching both of you how to play faro.

” Safine emerged from the kitchen with a steaming pot of coffee and a wrapped package.

“If the plan doesn’t work, I’d rather go out with coffee and a good drink,” she said, splashing whiskey into her coffee and passing the bottle to Willa who did the same.

Safine ceremoniously unwrapped the package to reveal a golden-edged box bursting with chocolates.

“It’s from the mercantile—snagged it yesterday.

Figured if McKinney was here he’d do the same. ”

Decker made a soft sound of agreement, raising his cup. “To McKinney, and Cricket, and those who lived and died for Ender’s Ridge.” He thought of Nathan, of him being ripped apart and sewn back together to be cured and how it killed him. It was a small solace Whitton was gone.

“To revenge.” Willa managed a tired smile and clinked her glass with Safine’s.

Sister Inez cupped her hot cider, dark eyes glinting. “To truth.”

Laurie took his fourth coffee and raised it, casting a glance at Decker. “To us.”

The sound of five different glasses rang into one clear note that drowned out the gnawing eighth plague destroying their town. In the Loose Goose , drinks flowed and the day marched on as Lucy chased stray locusts and hissed when the faro games grew too rowdy.

“You can’t win every time. You’re doing some of your blood-sucking shite,” Willa said as Decker raked in the third pot of the day.

“Just luck, Miss Brooks.”

“He’s been caught cheating before,” Safine said airily, as if it wasn’t a bold-faced lie. He was never caught cheating. It wasn’t his fault he’d been around long enough to memorize how the cards fell.

“I’ll have to hold a special service after this to save Decker,” Laurie said, hiding his smile behind the journal. His stack of papers grew taller, and he shook his hand out from writing.

Decker pushed a handful of bone chips at him. “Give your eyes a break from all the deciphering.”

Laurie hedged. “We don’t have much time.”

“Are you sure, without a doubt, what you’ve found is going to work?”

Laurie pressed his lips together. “No. ”

“With the chance none of it matters, you can’t die without playing at least one game of faro with your neighbors.”

He tried to protest again and Decker leaned in next to him, the cards fanning in his hand and slotting together seamlessly as he shuffled them.

Their legs pressed together under the table, and Laurie made a small, good-natured sound. “I’ll try.”

“It’s simple, you bet on which one I’m going to lay next.”

“Oh, I don’t—I haven’t gambled.”

“Laurie, if you’re going, you’re going. Have some fun on that wide path to hell.” Safine grinned, her spirits lifting after three cups of cider.

Sister Inez smiled, looking unruffled as ever as she arranged her chips in neat rows.

Laurie flushed, and Decker nudged him under the table as he laid the spread between them. “We can dig out the checkers if you don’t want to gamble,” he said easily.

“No.” Laurie slid away his notes and clasped his hands around the bone chips, sliding one on the jack of spades. “Gambled with death and won, maybe I’ll have good luck with cards.”

Decker grinned. “It’s a good gamble.”

“If you make me lose, you owe me.”

“I don’t cheat, remember?”

Safine booed and shook the bones impatiently in her hand.

A smile tugged at Laurie’s lips and he shifted closer to Decker as he laid the card.

It was the first, and only, hand Laurie won that night.

An hour ticked by, and then another .

Cups refilled and cards bent as the games became more boisterous, Safine batting away Decker’s protested claim to the winnings and scooping them into her skirt with a chortle as if they weren’t going to line another pocket with the next hand.

The register lay open and empty, and Lucy clacked sharp teeth against fallen bone chips on the floor.

The broken hand on the clock clicked against its bent twin, but no one left their game to fix it, too absorbed to notice the fading sounds and the dull light of dusk creeping through the cracks in the boards.

Silence fell outside, and one by one they abandoned their last game, good-natured squabbles forgotten, and filed towards the back door.

Ender’s Ridge was devoured.

Needles from the pines, each scrubby brush and stunted tree was stripped bare by the locusts before they’d moved on.

The locusts could have dissipated into the clouds scudding across the dark sky or simply ceased to exist after their purpose was done.

Tiny teeth marks scarred the boards of each building, like the aftermath of the boils.

Doctor Jacob Whitton was not able to withstand the swarm.

A locust perched in the hollow cavern of his sagging jaw and the insect rasped, low and ugly. Clothing hung in strips about him, skin torn and bitten until it was a mass of oozing red peeling away like his own body couldn’t bear to hold him.

Under the white of his ribs, Whitton’s heart throbbed.

Laurie turned away .

Willa crouched, plucking the locust from his mouth and flicking it to the side. “Tell the Devil to get a room ready for me when you see him.” A faint gurgling sound answered her.

Her stern face twisted and she snatched a rock from the ground. With one clean blow, his skull spun away. Willa wiped her hands off on her red coat. “Hope they ate his bloody tongue first so he couldn’t scream.”

Decker toed the chair leg and it crumbled, Whitton’s body folding to the ground in a heap of mangled flesh and bone. A strange end to the man who caused so much death, all in the name of science, or greed, or curiosity. They would never truly know what lit the fire for him.

“He suffered as much as he made others suffer. I’ve spent years picking up the mess he made. Burying them, telling their families,” Willa said, her voice thick with memory and the honor of the woman she loved—the one she had been able to save from his ruthless conquest.

She hadn’t crumbled like Whitton. Hadn’t aged into a corpse with her revenge fulfilled. She looked the same as she always had, and pity scraped at Decker’s throat. Maybe killing him hadn’t been enough to pull her away from her unexplained, evergreen life.

“River,” Safine said, gaze a mile long as she stared at his corpse. “Scattered in the river. A grave is too quiet.”

Laurie was close to figuring out a way to reverse the plagues, and soon this would be over. Safine and Willa would still head south, but if they pulled this off, their corner of the world would stay as hidden as it was when Laurie arrived.

If the plagues reversed, Laurie might remember him.

Neighbors .

Decker almost smiled.

One last locust clawed out of the fleshy skull. A distorted chirp rasped from its wings, as if it was laughing at them.