“I am leaving now before this becomes even more absurd,” she said, nodding to Kitty and Maryellen. “And I think you should both come with me before you do something you’ll regret.”

“Grace,” Kitty said, low and calm, staring at her knees. “If you keep acting like I’m feebleminded, I’m going to smack you. I’m a grown woman, the same as you, and I saw a dead body in that attic.”

“Good night,” Grace said, heading for the door.

Patricia nodded to Mrs. Greene, who stepped into Grace’s path, blocking her.

“Mrs. Cavanaugh,” she said. “Am I trash to you?”

Grace did a double take, the first one any of them had ever seen.

“I beg your pardon?” Grace asked, all frozen hauteur.

Frozen hauteur didn’t cut much ice with Mrs. Greene.

“You must think I’m trash,” Mrs. Greene said.

Grace swallowed once, so outraged she couldn’t even get the words lined up on her tongue.

“I said no such thing,” she managed.

“Your actions aren’t the actions of a Christian woman,” Mrs. Greene said. “I came to you years ago as a mother and as a woman, and I begged for your help because that man was preying on the children in Six Mile. I begged for you to do something simple, to come with me to the police, and tell them what you knew. I risked my job and the money that puts food on my table, to come to you. Do you even know my children’s names?”

It took a minute for Grace to realize Mrs. Greene was waiting for an answer.

“There’s Abraham,” Grace said, searching for their names. “And Lily, I think…”

“The first Harry,” Mrs. Greene said. “He passed. Harry Jr., Rose, Heanne, Jesse, and Aaron. You don’t even know how many children I’ve got, and I don’t expect you to. But you owe me. You protected yourself, but you didn’t do a thing for the children of Six Mile because they weren’t worthwhile to you. Well, now he’s coming after your children. Mrs. Campbell’s daughter is one of you. Mrs. Paley is supposed to be your friend. Mrs. Scruggs saw Francine’s body in his house. What are you made of, Mrs. Cavanaugh, that lets you walk away from your friends?”

They watched Grace cycle through a dozen different emotions, a hundred possible responses, her jaw working, her chin clenching, the cords in her neck twitching. Mrs. Greene stared back at her, jaw outthrust. Then Grace pushed past her, threw open the door, and slammed it behind her.

In the silence, none of them moved. The only sound was wind whistling through a chink in the window’s weatherstripping.

“She’s right,” Slick said. “All of us…got scared and sacrificed the children of Six Mile…for our own. We were…embarrassed and frightened. Proverbs says…‘Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain…is a righteous man who gives way…before the wicked.’ We gave way…We wanted to believe…that Patricia was wrong because it meant we didn’t have to do…anything hard.”

Patricia decided it was safe to push them to the next step.

“I don’t know if the word is vampire or monster,” Patricia said. “But I’ve seen him like this twice and Slick has seen it once. He’s not like us. He can live for a very long time. He’s strong. He can see in the dark.”

“His willpower can make animals do his bidding,” Mrs. Greene said.

Patricia looked over at her, both of them thinking about the rats, about the way the house smelled for days after, about Miss Mary in the hospital, unconscious, her wounds stained with iodine, breathing through a tube. Patricia nodded.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “And he needs to put his blood through people to live. They get addicted to him. Right now, Korey would stab me in the back for him to suck on her again. That’s how good it feels. He’s gotten everything he wants, so why would he stop by himself? We need to stop him.”

“Again,” Maryellen said, “we’re a book club, not a bunch of detectives. If he’s so much stronger than us, this is futile.”

“You think…we can’t match him?” Slick asked from her bed. “I’ve had three children…And some man who’s never felt…his baby crown is stronger than me? Is tougher than me? He thinks he’s safe…because he thinks like you…He looks at Patricia and thinks we’re all a bunch of Sunshine Suzies…He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”

There was a long pause, and then Patricia spoke.

“He has one weakness,” Patricia said. “He’s alone. He’s not connected to other people, he doesn’t have any family or friends. If one of us so much as misses a car pool pickup everyone starts dropping by the house to make sure we’re okay. But he’s a loner. If we can make him disappear, totally and completely, there’s no one to ask questions. There may be a hard day or two but they will pass, and it will be like he never existed.”

Maryellen turned her face to the ceiling, arms out in a shrug. “How are you sitting here talking like this is normal? We’re six women. Five women, because I don’t think Grace is coming back. I mean, Kitty, your husband has to open jars for you.”

“It’s not…about that,” Slick said, eyes blazing. “It’s not about…our husbands or anyone else…it’s about us. It’s about whether…we can go the distance. That’s what matters…not our money, or our looks, or our husbands…Can we go the distance?”

“Not with killing a man,” Maryellen said.

“He’s not a man,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Listen to me,” Slick said. “If there were…a toxic waste dump in this city…that caused cancer…we would not stop until we closed it down. This is no different. This is our families’ safety we’re talking about…our children’s lives. Are you willing to gamble…with those?”

Maryellen leaned forward and touched Kitty’s leg. Kitty looked up from studying her knees.

“You really saw Francine in his attic?” Maryellen asked. “Don’t lie to me. You’re sure it was her and not a shadow or a mannequin or some Halloween decoration?”

Kitty nodded, miserable.

“When I close my eyes I see her in that suitcase, wrapped in plastic,” she moaned. “I can’t sleep, Maryellen.”

Maryellen studied Kitty’s face, then leaned back.

“How do we do it?” she asked.

“Before we go any further,” Slick said. “We have to see it through…and then never talk about it again…I have to hear it from each of you…After this there’s no…changing your mind.”

“Amen,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Of course,” Patricia agreed.

“Kitty?” Slick asked.

“God help me, yes,” Kitty exhaled in a rush.

“Maryellen?” Slick asked.

Maryellen didn’t say anything.

“He’ll come for Caroline next,” Patricia said. “Then Alexa. Then Monica. He’ll do to them what he’s done to Korey. He’s just hunger, Maryellen. He’ll eat and eat until there’s nothing left.”

“I won’t do anything illegal,” Maryellen said.

“We’re beyond that,” Patricia said. “We’re protecting our families. We will do whatever it takes. You’re a mother, too.”

Everyone watched Maryellen. Her back was stiff and then the fight went out of her and her shoulders slumped.

“All right,” she said.

Patricia, Slick, and Mrs. Greene exchanged a look. Patricia took it as her cue.

“We need a night when everyone’s distracted,” she said. “Next week is the Clemson-Carolina game. The entire population of South Carolina is going to be glued to their television sets from kickoff until the last down. That’s when we do it.”

“Do what?” Kitty asked in a very small voice.

Patricia took a black-and-white Mead composition book from her purse.

“I read everything I could about them,” she said. “About things like vampires. Mrs. Greene and I have been making a list of the facts they agree on. There are as many superstitions about how to stop one as there are how to create one: exposure to sunlight, drive a stake through its heart, decapitation, silver.”

“We can think he’s evil and not an actual vampire,” Maryellen said. “Maybe he’s like that Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, and he just thinks he’s a vampire.”

“No,” Patricia said. “We can’t fool ourselves anymore. He’s unnatural and we have to kill him the right way or he’s just going to keep on coming back. He’s underestimated us. We can’t underestimate him.”

Her words sounded bizarre in the sterile hospital room with its plastic cups and sippy straws, its television hanging from the ceiling, its Hallmark cards on the windowsill. They looked at each other in their practical flats with their roomy purses by their feet, with their reading glasses, and their notepads, and their ballpoint pens, and realized they had crossed a line.

“We have to drive a stake through his heart?” Kitty asked. “I don’t think I’m up for that.”

“No stakes,” Patricia said.

“Oh, thank God,” Kitty said. “Sorry, Slick.”

“I don’t think that would kill him,” Patricia said. “The books say vampires sleep during the day, but he’s awake in daylight. The sun hurts his eyes and makes him uncomfortable, but he doesn’t have to sleep in a coffin when it’s out. We can’t take the stories literally.”