Possess

of the hospital, and the twenty-foot stone walls topped with coils of barbed wire.
    A guard waited for them at the front door, and he ushered them to yet another security checkpoint. Again, they showed their IDs, and their names were located on a computer file.
    “So you’re the ones here to see Undermeyer?” A beefy nurse-looking guy in light blue scrubs sauntered down a long hallway.
    “That’s us,” Matt said. He was trying to sound light and casual but failed utterly.
    The nurse shifted his gaze from Matt to Bridget, then shrugged and headed back the way he came. “Follow me.”
    Bridget’s boots clunked against brilliantly polished tiles, punctuated by the occasional squeak from Matt’s Converses. She had to hustle to keep up with the nurse, though he seemed to move at an almost leisurely pace.
    “You guys look kinda young,” the nurse said. He paused at an elevator and hit the button. “To be visiting one of our inmates.” His eyes kept drifting to Bridget, which made her think he was either a super perv or he had some idea who
she was.
    “Weird that you’d be seeing Undermeyer too,” the nurse continued when neither Matt nor Bridget responded to his nonquestion. But this time Bridget was interested.
    “Why?”
    The door slid open and the nurse gestured for her and Matt to enter. “Well, he doesn’t get many visitors, is all. And by ‘many,’ I mean ‘none.’”
    From what she’d seen, Bridget wasn’t surprised. “Oh.”
    The nurse hit the button for the fourth floor and the elevator crept upward. “I should warn you guys, though. Whatever you want to talk to Undermeyer about, you probably won’t get very far.”
    Bridget crinkled her brow. “Why not?”
    The elevator dinged for the fourth floor and the nurse turned to her with a big, cheeky grin. “Oh, you’ll see.”
    Bridget shook her head as she followed the nurse out onto the fourth floor. What was she doing? If Undermeyer was even half as crazy as he’d been at his trial, this whole trip was pointless.
    Another security door awaited them at the end of the hall, and the nurse pulled a badge from his belt on a little zip line to scan them through. They entered some kind of recreation area for the inmates: tables with checkers and chess, a television showing Seinfeld reruns, a few magazines strewn on tables. Only four inmates occupied the room, identifiable by their dark blue jumpsuits. All four sat at solitary tables; all four did nothing but stare off into space. Fun times.
    The nurse and/or security guard ratio in the rec room was two to one, and as Matt and Bridget followed their guide across the room and through yet another security door, Bridget couldn’t help but notice the whispers that went up among the staff. Everyone must have known she and Matt were there to see Milton Undermeyer. It was the big thrill of the day.
    Bridget was glad when their burly nurse ushered them into what could only be described as the crying room in the back of a church. There were a couple of plastic chairs lined up to face a huge window that opened onto an adjacent room. There, swaddled in a straitjacket and flanked by linebacker-sized orderlies at each shoulder, sat Milton Undermeyer.
    It had only been a couple of months since Bridget had last seen him in the courtroom, but Undermeyer had aged twenty years. His hair, which had been a wavy black mane, was now heavily lined with streaks of white. Not gray, but stark white. Deep ravines crisscrossed his face, marring his forehead, his chin, and the sides of his mouth with heavy shadows. The violet bands beneath his eyes extended halfway down his cheeks, and his lips were dry and cracked like a man left to die in the desert.
    Undermeyer sat perfectly still in his chair, feet planted firmly on the floor in front of him, his head lowered so he could look out at her from beneath unkempt brows. The eyes were the only part about him that was wholly familiar. Utterly black.
    “Mrs. Long,” she whispered.
    “What?” the nurse asked.
    Bridget shook her head. “Nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing. Those black eyes were the same as the ones Bridget had seen in Mrs. Long. Father Santos was right: Milton Undermeyer was a demoniac.
    She felt a hand on her back and turned to see Matt at her side. “Are you okay?” he asked for the bazillionth time.
    For the first time since she’d known him, Bridget was glad Matt was an overprotective worrywart.
    “I’m good,” she said. And she was. She