I reached for the door handle. A single crack rang through the night. The noise was so loud that I felt it inside me, condensed down into a hard knot, slamming into me.
I collapsed into the backseat and then Tom was yelling, “Drive! Drive!” Isabelle, at the wheel, lurched us out of the driveway, tires spinning, the worn-out brakes screeching with the sudden movement, and we were off, going too fast for Kithira’s narrow roads. It didn’t matter, nobody was going to stop us now, we were okay, unhurt—I looked at Tom and grinned, loopy with triumph, but he didn’t grin back. His eyes were wide.
“Morrow.” Cate craned around from the front seat. “Jesus Christ, you’re—” Then she turned around. “Isabelle. Stop. Stop. You have to fucking pull over.”
“Not yet,” Isabelle said, reasonable and resolute. “They’ll get us if we stop now.”
The pain burned, deep and hot, but it was more than that. The wrongness of something foreign and unfamiliar stuck in there with all my organs. I brought my hand away from my stomach; it was blackened and slick.
“How did this happen?” I whispered. I’d let them off too easy, and now—now—
“What are we going to do? We can’t let her—” Tom was saying, frantic.
I was trying to hold on, trying to stay present, to cling to their voices, but I was slipping now, going too quickly backward, into the darkness that waited, ready to suck me up, ready to take me under.
31
It was quiet, the air close and stifling. Swollen with the fake florals of cleaning solution. I was prone on my back, stretched out. I shifted against a cheap nylon coverlet that was already slippery with blood. Somebody loomed above me. My mother. No, Bellanger. No. My eyes adjusted and I understood that it was Cate.
“Where are—are we—” I was trying to articulate a question that hovered beyond the reach of my clotted mouth. “Are they—the others—”
“Morrow, listen. Do you think you can relax for me?”
I could only lie there, my body heavy and drugged, and watch as Cate closed her eyes, then opened them again to reveal a different face than before. She held her hands above me, hovering just over the flesh. Energy built between her palms and my body. The tug of a magnet against its opposite. It made the pain flare hotter for a minute.
I couldn’t bear it.
Then Cate’s hands were on my stomach, her skin soft against mine. My heartbeat thumped up into her palm, so steady that after a moment it felt as if she were transferring the pulse into me directly from her own body. She’d taken over, she was giving life back to me, that shivery beat spreading across every inch of my skin, slipping across the surface, settling into my corners and edges and crevices. Through the murkiness of my pain and confusion came a stirring of life, hard and stinging and good, like the blood in my veins waking back up.
Kneeling over me, she was backlit, dark hair glowing and wiry. A saint: she looked like a saint. Or maybe a witch, face obscured. “Josephine. Lie still, okay? Don’t push yourself.”
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” I said. The room was unfamiliar. Wood paneling, punctuated by a print of a red barn in autumn.The light was muffled by a heavy lampshade. My voice was the voice of somebody imitating me, thickened and hoarse. “Not for my sake—”
“You’re going to die,” Cate said, harsh. “Do you understand that? If I don’t help you now—you don’t make it. You’re losing too much blood. I’m not sure I can do this, but I have to fucking try.”
The tarnished scent of it, pungent in my nostrils. A warmth that felt wrong, inside-out. I should’ve been panicking, but I felt numb. She was right. And yet.
“I deserve it,” I said. “Don’t you get it? To make up for—”
“For what? For saving everyone’s life?” Cate asked. She looked into my eyes. “You saved my life back there, Morrow. Let me save yours.”
“But I didn’t save Fiona.”
“You were just a kid.”
“I should have known,” I whispered. “I’m the oldest. I should’ve seen more.”
“Josephine Morrow, I’m not going to let you go.” Her hands were on me again, the electricity so sharp that I was sure I was going to dissolve from the sheer power of it. But I’d let go already, anyway. I’d let go, let go. I felt myself sinking into blackness, quickly, quickly, and then gently, like a feather drifting. It was the sensation of falling asleep when I was very tired—