Her faith had been hard to find. It wasn't that her life had been so full of tragedy that it was continuously challenged; quite the opposite, that there was nothing extraordinary enough to demand her belief. Until she'd been seventeen, Jodie Slone had gone to church out of routine rather than devotion.

 And the preacher had come, breathing fire and brimstone, and inspired her.

 She couldn't quite say why it was that he'd brought such fervour with him. Perhaps part of it was his presence: he had the lean, taut look of a soldier, unlike Father Morrigan, who sat in his monochrome robes like a fat magpie.

 Part of it was the way he spoke, with flair and determination. He spoke of his religion as if it were his lover, unending, faithful, a silent answer to every question. In his mesmerizing voice, he formed every word as if thought and heart were behind it and when he spoke of sin with such viciousness that his voice filled the chapel, soaring to the very tip of the spire, she was only aware that he had finished when everyone else began to file out. Echoes of his voice seemed to bounce about her mind for days afterwards, and for the first time, she began to seriously consider her life and her religion.

From such simple beginnings, she had found an enthusiasm and conviction she hadn't known lay inside her. She didn't shout or clap: hers was a solid, silent faith, and she liked to think of God arching over her life like a second, invisible sky, high above the wind and rain and sun.

 Later that year, when the children began to go missing - including her best friend's sister - she drew solace from her newfound faith. None ever returned, and she always kept the Dewbury Seven in mind when she had her own children to look after, many years later.

 And so it came as something of a shock when she recognised the profile of the man in the coffee shop, queuing up at the counter.

 "Reverend Martin?"

 He turned to face her, and it was him: the same severe features, patrician nose, hard narrow eyes, a thin mouth, trim grey hair, down to the same silver crucifix. Under the light, it was impossible to tell what colour his eyes were; one moment they appeared blue, the next green, then grey. "How do you know my name?"

 A thrill went through her, an almost girlish excitement at seeing him again. "Jodie Slone, but you won't remember me. You gave a sermon in a little town called Dewbury. It must have been...twenty five years ago now."

 "Dewbury?" He blinked, and there seemed an incongruous wariness about him. "I remember it. Hard to forget, of course. All those children, such a terrible tragedy. Did they ever catch anyone?"

 "Not a soul," she said. "I must just say, you don't look like you've aged a day."

 He chuckled, a soft, caressing sound. "The wages of virtue, I hope. I'm flattered you remember me."

 "What brings you to Ryars Valley?"

 His smiled thinned. Perhaps she was intruding. "Personal affairs, and not particularly pleasant ones, I'm afraid. I hope to leave tomorrow."

 Well, if she was intruding, he would have said something. Persistence had got her where she was in life, and she wasn't about to break such a handy habit. "Where are you staying?"

 "Just up the road. A little bed and breakfast." He made a moue of resignation. "It's functional, at least, but I couldn't face lunch."

 She frowned. "Not Mary Fry's place?"

 "The very one."

 Mary's enterprise would have been more successful if she had anything to offer besides a room. "I'm not surprised - Mary couldn't boil an egg. I'll not have you starving, Reverend, not in my town. Come to lunch with us."

 "Oh, I couldn't impose-"

 "Nonsense," she interrupted. "I cook for five anyway, so one more will make no difference, and the children are quite well-behaved. Roast chicken with all the trimmings."

 "Children?" The oddest sensation struck her, as if those piercing eyes were glancing over her thoughts, examining them for anything of worth. She dismissed the idea as pure fancy.

 "Two daughters, a son, and my eldest daughter's boyfriend." She was never sure just how it was that Tam had convinced her to let Aspen live there. Often it seemed like he had just moved in one day, but that couldn't be right. However he had wheedled his way under her roof, she had to admit the hoodlum had grown on her.

 "Your daughter's boyfriend?" That sensation again, a fluttering in her mind.

 Aspen sprang to mind, scrawny and hesitant, and something twanged in her intuition. Aspen Martin, Reverend Martin-

He laid a hand on her arm. "Nothing to worry about, my good woman," he murmured quietly.

 He was right. Of course there was nothing to worry about. Why had she been worried? Maybe she hadn't. Perhaps it was the fluorescent lighting making her feel so odd. Surely the walk home would clear her head, and she'd be able to have a long chat with Reverend Green...

 Laburnum Martin led Jodie Slone from the coffeeshop, taking care that no one noticed her sudden slump into silence. Her face was as blank as a mannequin's.

~*~

 "Don't you dare drop that!" ordered Tam.

 Billy gave her a wounded look. "You sound just like Mom."

 "Yeah, and if we don't have this all done by the time she comes back with the bread-and-butter sauce, she'll give us that look," muttered Celia, dashing to the oven to check on the potatoes. All three Slones had the same broad features and square jaw, but Celia had inherited her father's pale eyes, while even at twelve, Billy was threatening to tower over his sisters.

 He straightened up and handled the gravy boat with more respect. "Good point."

 Aspen was sat at the kitchen table with that fixed smile on his face that meant he was hiding his laughter. The dynamics of their family still had the power to amuse him - at least until Jodie Slone switched her attention to him, her stare like a searchlight. He'd muttered that if she didn't have telepathy, she was hiding it well.

 Privately, Tam, who'd only managed to get away with one misdeed (Aspen - and he was a pretty huge misdeed in her mother's book), agreed with him.

 "She's taking her time," commented Celia. "I thought we were screwed when Billy undercooked the beans."

 "Language!" snapped Tam, before she realised she really did sound like her mother.
 
 "I didn't overcook them, I just don't like them turned to mush like you do," put in Billy.

 "Excuses, excuses," Celia muttered. "Tam, can I sit down now? I'm so hot..."

 Tam flapped her hands at them. "Sit, the pair of you. But if she complains, you share the blame with me, okay?"

 "Okay," chorused her younger siblings. Pains, the pair of them, always borrowing her things and magically taking up space in the house wherever she wanted to be, but when it came to facing her mother, they always stood squarely beside her.

 The click of the door opening signalled her mother's return.

 Tam checked all the steaming pots. "Ready!" she said, "we-"

 And then the words died in her throat.

 The next few seconds were so cluttered, it was only afterwards she managed to sort out what had happened.

 Her mother came in, but there was an awful expression on her face: a slack emptiness that was everything Jodie Slone, benevolent domestic tyrant, was not. She seemed to glide, and Tam had to check her feet were still touching the floor.

 And then Tam saw she was being pushed forward by a man who flung her aside like a ragdoll. Her mother toppled to the floor, not even bothering to break her fall, limbs lolling uselessly. Her eyes were flat and blank.

 That's not my mother, was her first reaction. My mother wouldn't stand for that.

 There was a crash behind her. She whirled around to see Aspen on his feet, white and shaking, his chair overturned. He'd thrust Billy and Celia behind him, both of them looking as frightened as Tam was starting to feel.

 His voice raked through her mind, brittle and agonised. Run! You have to run!

 Uncomprehending, she turned back to the man, who was shutting the door as if he lived here, and when he faced her once more, she saw what she had missed in her shock. That was Aspen's face, twenty years older and twenty times crueller.

 "What have you been up to, my son?" he said, and the answers fell into place with horrible clarity.

 "Get out!" she screamed, the words torn from her throat, from the part of her that knew Aspen as no one else ever could. His memories flickered in her mind: this man's face, this man's voice, this man's evil.

 "What a shrill creature you are," the man - Aspen's father - said, strolling towards her.

 "Leave them alone," croaked Aspen. He was clinging to the table as it was all that was holding them up. "P-please."
 
 "Oh good lord, no. They'll just make a fuss afterwards, and it will all be very inconvenient." Laburnum Martin looked directly at her for the first time, and she almost recoiled from the black fanaticism in those eyes. "Little girl, you have been corrupted by my son. What lies has he told you?"

 She knew then that something dreadful was going to happen, and she couldn't stop it.

 "Billy, Celia," she said levelly. "Run. Now."

 Where could she send them? Where would be safe? Then she knew: she had known from the moment her sister brought her friends home.

 "Take Billy to Riose. Go!"

 Feet scuttling behind her. Then it was just her and Aspen and the monster. Behind her, she could hear the terrified gasps of Aspen's breath, and in her mind, she could feel him crumbling, dragged down into his own terror as if it were a whirlpool. He was trying to cling on, trying to save her, but she knew he just didn't have the strength to do it.

 Oh god, this monster will kill me, and then he'll take Aspen and keep him in the dark forever, keep him screaming and scrabbling and broken.

 "I'll catch them later," the man said casually. "Get out of my way, little girl."

 She grabbed the carving knife. "No."

 "Unwise," he said with a shrug, and then pain exploded into her head.

 The knife clattered from hands busy with more important matters - her fingers were scratching at her temples, trying to pull out the mass of barbed wire that seemed to have lodged in her skull, twisting and turning. She was on her knees, pressing her forehead to the kitchen floor to try and cool this agony, thought and intent scoured from her. Someone stop this, stop this, please...

~*~

 Jodie Slone rose up from the fog like a swimmer searching for the surface. Whatever it was that had gripped her, transforming her into little more than a ventriloquist's puppet, it had vanished. As she returned to herself, she realised her eyes were open and she was in a messy heap for some reason-

 And then she saw her daughter, bowed on the floor, mewling and sobbing.

 Shock and horror rose in her throat with bile. What had happened? What-

 Reverend Martin was moving towards Aspen, and the boy was cowering backwards, tears streaming down his face. And with fresh horror, she heard his words: "You are not for the likes of humans, my son. Your penance will be high."

 When she caught a glimpse of his face, Jodie Slone stared. His eyes were inhuman, a sickly silver that made her think of the tracks slugs left, gleaming in the morning, and from his lips, fangs protruded, obscenely sharp.

 Monster, her mind whispered. Here is evil: it has face and form, and it is in your house.

Aspen was backed into a corner. The priest reached for him, and when he touched the boy, Aspen screamed. It was a horrible sound, like an animal being tortured.

 She lurched to her feet, all the fuzziness gone.

 There was no doubt in her mind. This man was evil, he who had made her daughter cry, who was torturing a boy she had taken under her roof, and in doing so, sworn to protect. And she couldn't have said how she knew it - later Tam would say that perhaps when Laburnum Martin invaded her mind, he mistakenly transferred some of his own knowledge to her, but Jodie Slone always thought of it as a moment of grace - but she didn't pick up any of the heavy knives lying around.

 Instead, she took the wooden rolling pin that stood next to the kettle. Cat-quiet, she moved behind him, her slowness exaggerated, her side aching where she had fallen.

 Aspen saw her; she was reflected in his eyes, fragmented into a dozen shadowy pieces by his tears. And what she would always remember was that hope never entered his expression. Even those brief moments she had been helpless had been too long, too many - the damage was done, and he was certain of nothing except his fear and his pain.

 "Yes, I think it will be the crucifix for you," Laburnum Martin said, and those words filled her with a cold rage.

 She swung the rolling pin like a baseball bat.

 There was a dull crack as it connected. And then she grabbed him as he slumped, flinging him away from Aspen. One glance showed her a dent above his ear, a split above it oozing blood.

She didn't waste time worrying about carrion: she had her children to tend to.

~*~

 Somehow, things got sorted out.

 Tam staggered to her feet, and promptly fell back down next to Aspen, peering at his face, trying to wrench a reaction from him. There was none: Jodie Slone did the only thing she could think of, and put him into bed until she could take him to a doctor.

To her immense relief, Billy and Celia returned unharmed, Riose Orage and his mother in tow. From nowhere, a boy claiming to be Aspen's friend turned up, and when he went away, the cadaver vanished with him.

 And then explanations occurred - a flurry of them, words upon words, until Jodie Slone could only gape at these people who claimed legends walked: and drove, and cycled, and did everything normal people did, but with a few added extras. One of them lived with her. Several of them were friends with her younger daughter and son.  

 She was, in fact, the last person to know.

 At night, she went to bed knowing that she had murdered and that she had saved her children. Day by day, she found the strength to reconcile the two, falling back on the faith that had bolstered her for so long: understanding with bitter irony that this was in part due to the reverend who had set her on the road to God long after he must have left it.

 She knew too that she would do it again. It was her duty as their mother: to fight the battles they could not.

 And when it was all over, she decided one night, when Aspen was better - or as well he could ever be - when she herself was standing firm on the foundations of her world once more, there would be words with her children. Ferocious words, about secrets and fantastical creatures and coping with the world.

 Most of them words of praise.