And not far behind them Petra ran herd on Fred’s toddler, Dillon, while she pushed the newest addition to Fred and Eddie’s brood in a stroller.

Petra had proven herself an able and willing babysitter.

Petra, in shorts and a tank top, her dark blond hair in a bouncing ponytail, laughed at Dillon as he danced on his busy legs beside her.

It could’ve been a scene out of any small town. The teenage babysitter, the running kids and teens—all likely headed down to the park and gardens for one of the summer youth programs. People working in their own gardens, fussing with those bold summer colors and scents. Others sitting on porches with glasses of iced tea or lemonade.

You could think that, if you didn’t consider the posted sentries, the group out even now on another scouting mission, the armory with so many weapons locked up tight.

Or the fact that most of the kids Petra’s age spent two hours a day in combat training.

But this was the world they lived in, Arlys thought. And she had good reason to know it could be a whole lot worse.

She indulged herself, walked across the street to intercept Petra. She wanted to see the baby.

Dillon ran over to her, reached up those chubby arms, grinned a brilliant grin. “Up! Arls!”

“You bet.” She hefted the toddler, snuggled, sniffed. Who’d have thought the ambitious reporter would find such a soft spot for babies?

“And look at your little sister!”

“Willow poops her pants and cries. I don’t.”

She had reason to know he still did both, but nodded sagely. “Because you’re such a big boy. How are you, Petra?”

“Great, thanks. We’re just heading down to the park. We were there earlier, but Dillon wanted to go see Mr. Anderson, so we took a walk.”

“It’s a hot day for it.”

“We don’t mind.”

“We had popstickles.”

“Popsicles,” Petra corrected, “and that was supposed to be a secret.”

“Secret sickles? Yum.” Which explained Dillon’s bright red tongue.

“I’d never had one before,” Petra said. “They’re really good. Mr. Anderson made them in these little molds and you eat them off sticks.”

A first Popsicle at sixteenish (they didn’t know for sure). That was also the world they lived in.

“I might go see Bill myself. I guess Mina wouldn’t let you take Elijah to the park?”

“She won’t go, and she’s so nervous about him being away from her. She’s a really good mom though.”

“Mm-hmm.” Arlys had a different opinion when a three-year-old boy wasn’t allowed to play with others or go five feet from his mother’s side.

But Mina, only a handful of years older than Petra, had been thoroughly indoctrinated by the cult.

“She never yells. It’s just … she’s still afraid. I guess she’s always going to be afraid. And she …” Petra trailed off, pressed her lips together.

“Go ahead.”

“She still thinks the master—and she still calls Javier that—is going to come back for her and Elijah. She prays for it every night. She’s afraid to leave here, but that’s because of Elijah. She knows he’s safe here. She really loves him.”

“Are you still comfortable living with her?”

“Oh sure. I know I don’t have to, but Mina’s nice, and I like being around Elijah a lot. And, well, she needs me, and I …”

“It’s good to be needed.”

“Yeah. I’m not allowed to use magick as long as I live with her, but I still don’t want to anyway. It just makes me nervous, so it all works out.”

“As long as you’re happy there. I just wish she’d get out of the apartment more, let Elijah run around outside.”

“She goes for walks at night.” Flushing, Petra stopped herself. “Now I feel like I’m telling secrets on her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking a walk. Only at night?”

“When Elijah’s asleep and she thinks I am. Sometimes she takes him, but mostly she just goes out by herself. Not for long, like an hour, even less.”

Dillon squirmed, wriggled, so Arlys set him down.

“Wanna go to the park. See Mama.”

“Okay, we’re going. I should get him back. It was nice to see you.”

Arlys waved them off, turned and studied the building where Petra lived with Mina and Elijah in an apartment over Bill Anderson’s Bygones.

Just what did a woman still caught in the jaws of a cult do when she walked alone at night?

It was time to find out.

She walked up to Bygones.

What had once been a secondhand store with pseudo antiques and castoffs was now, thanks to Bill, an organized shop (though no money changed hands) stocked with the useful and the whimsical.

Kitchen tools and gadgets in one section, toys carefully cleaned and repaired in another. Tools, lamps, furniture, even some locally made art pieces, candles, oil lamps, brooms, mops, and other assortments filled shelves and old display cases.

Much of what scavenger parties brought back passed through Bill’s hands for cleaning, repairing, inventorying.

Often a volunteer or two—generally kids—worked as assistants.

She found him, his glasses sliding down his nose, rewiring an amazingly ugly lamp.

She walked over to study it. “Why bother?”

“One man’s trash.” He shoved his glasses up, smiled at her. “Don’t you look pretty today.”

“What I look is sweaty, since I spent ten minutes outside in the steam bath we call air. I bet I’d cool off if I had a popstickle.”

He laughed, his face, hewed and weathered by nearly eighty years, rolling into it. “Secret’s out.”

“How’d you come up with Popsicles?”

“Had some molds come through. It was our Cybil who came up with it more than me.”

“Cybil?”

“She asked me what they were for, so I was telling her, and she wouldn’t quit until we tried making some. Two of us sampled the first ones yesterday.”

“And she didn’t say a thing to her sweaty mother.”

“My granddaughter knows how to keep a secret. We were going to make a bunch more, then take them on down to the kids at the summer program. I got another batch freezing now, but we’ve got some to sample. You want cherry, grape, or lemon?”

She had a flash of herself, eating a cup of lemon gelato at a street fair in New York. “You have lemon Popsicles?”

He winked at her, rose to go into the back. Her father-in-law didn’t move as fast as he once had, and Arlys imagined he had some aches and pains. But he never complained.

He brought her back a small, frozen spear with a stick through it. An actual stick, she noted, with the bark peeled off.

“Sticks come back,” he told Arlys as he handed it to her. “We spent a lot of time making them.”

“Ingenious.” She sampled. “Delicious!”

“Lemon juice, a little sweetener, water.”

“It’s the little things,” she told him.

“You’ve got a look in your eye that tells me you didn’t just come in to see me or snag a Popsicle.”

“Right, as usual. I ran into Petra and Fred’s two youngest. God, that baby is pretty. All that curly red hair. Anyway, I nudged Petra a little on Mina.”

“You’re good at nudging.”

“I’m a professional.”

“You are that. My son bagged himself a smart one.” He gave her a pat before he sat again. “She’ll talk to me a little—Mina. Every now and then I’ll take up some toy that comes through. She’ll take them for the boy, thank me, but she’s not the sort who asks you to come on in and sit for a visit.

“Place is clean as a whistle though,” he added as he fiddled with the lamp. “So’s the little boy. What did Petra have to say?”

“Among other things, she told me Mina goes out at night. Do you know anything about that?”

“I’ve heard somebody going out the back way from up there. I thought it was Petra. Teenage girl, maybe going out to meet a boy, or some other girls, or just to get out.”