Chapter 39When he first heard the car outside, the Miraclemaker paused for just a second, just a blink. Everything about him hung suspended as he hovered at the cusp, the long-awaited brink of his final and greatest performance.
His face was turned toward the front door, the portal through which his chosen prey would soon advance; the thin, glossy streaks of tears marked his cheeks, and his eyes were wide. He still slumped against the living room wall, boots planted amid fragments of glass in the green shag rug; his palms were flattened against the wallpaper, arms spread stiffly with undersides hidden, rot concealed.
Listening as tires ground over the driveway gravel, he felt strangely unmoved, not at all as he'd dreamed he would feel at the end of his crusade. Though he'd worried, ju
