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really think we can destroy you, old man,” Jefferson said, chest puffed defiantly out, “then you’re not nearly so powerful as we’ve always thought. And if that’s true, maybe you should be destroyed.”
    â€œAnd us?” Mandalay’s other voice said. “Your own people? Your family, who raised you and loves you? Should we be destroyed, too? Because that’s what you’re on your way to doing.”
    Bo-Kate said, “Stop trying to drive us apart. You want us to leave, we’ll leave. But someday we’ll come back, and—”
    â€œSee, that’s what we’re all afraid of,” Rockhouse said. The clouds swirled, slow and majestic, above the crowd, and the faces within them grew more defined. “So we ain’t gonna run you out. We’re gonna sing you out.”
    Bo-Kate and Jefferson looked at each other in horror. “You can’t do that,” Jefferson said.
    â€œGive me one reason why not,” Rockhouse said.
    â€œWe’re Tufa! We’re almost purebloods, even! You’ve heard us sing and play!”
    â€œYes,” Mandalay heard her voice say, “you are. That makes everything you’ve done that much worse. Did you need to kill that entire family? Children, even their dogs?”
    â€œNobody can prove I did that!” she snapped defiantly.
    â€œThis ain’t a court of law,” Rockhouse said. “And the wind is all the proof we need.” He gestured up, where the half-visible cloud-faces now glared down in obvious anger.
    â€œWe do know what you did to Penny Hadlow,” Mandalay’s voice said. She glanced across the circle, where a teenage girl with a huge disfiguring scar on her face stood with her family.
    â€œPenny started it!” Bo-Kate fired back. “If she’d kept her eyes off my prize, she’d be fine!”
    â€œAnd Michael Finley?” Rockhouse added, looking at Jefferson.
    â€œThat was a fair fight,” Jefferson said.
    â€œExcept that you kept smashing his head into the road even after you knocked him out.”
    Jefferson managed a slow little smile. “Didn’t want him coming back someday when I wasn’t looking.”
    Rockhouse looked over at Mandalay, who said, “And then there was Adele’s baby.”
    â€œIt’s not mine,” Jefferson said. “I swear, I never touched that girl.”
    â€œHe’s telling the truth,” Bo-Kate insisted.
    â€œThat’s beside the point,” Mandalay said. “You were plotting to kill a baby because you took offense at a pathetic girl’s desperate cry for attention.”
    â€œShe was spreading lies!” Bo-Kate shouted.
    â€œShe was spreading wishes,” Mandalay’s voice said. “She just wanted to be noticed and not forgotten. She certainly didn’t deserve to have her baby killed.”
    â€œWell, we didn’t do it, so you got nothing on us,” Jefferson said.
    â€œWe got all we need,” Rockhouse said. “What you’ve done is bad enough, what you tried to do was worse, and what you might do is scary enough that we ain’t gonna take any chances.” He looked back at Mandalay. “Enough talk. Count us off, Ruby.”
    So now she knew. She was looking through the eyes of her immediate predecessor, Ruby Montana.
    â€œNo!” Bo-Kate and Jefferson cried in unison.
    â€œOne, two, one two three four…”
    Mandalay snapped out of the vision.
    She looked around her tiny room in the trailer. Her heart pounded, tight and hard in her chest. Sweat made her heavy winter clothes stick to her body. She knew about what she’d just seen, of course; like everything else to do with the Tufa, the memory was packed into her head, there to call up at will. But remembering it and experiencing it were different things. She remembered the words that were spoken, then sung; but now she recalled anew the fear in everyone’s eyes, not