After that they lay down on two mats each, piled atop each other, in the shadiest part of the room closest to the water pipes. Nona found that she was very tired: she just wanted to lie down, not to sleep, but to push her hair out of the way of her neck and try to become cool. She was always a little afraid of sleeping now. She lay down on her side, where her hip bones could be relied upon to stick into the mat and hurt a little bit, and hoped that would be enough. Thankfully Hot Sauce showed no signs of sleeping either. She lay there on the mat, on her side, and did not take her cone of vision away from the little staffroom door that the Angel and the main teacher were ensconced behind.
“Hot Sauce,” Nona said softly, trying to keep herself awake, “what’s the broadcast going to be about?”
“Necromancers,” said Hot Sauce.
She waited for Hot Sauce to elaborate. Hot Sauce refused. Nona said, “Something good about—you know what? Or something bad?”
Hot Sauce said, “It’s never good, with necromancers.”
“You shouldn’t call them that.” Hot Sauce didn’t respond, in either praise or censure. Nona struggled to explain why and ended up with the pathetic, “It’s not nice.”
“Zombies then.”
Nona didn’t think that was much better.
“How do you know about it?” she asked, already halfway to knowing.
“Heard about it last night.”
Last night at the burn cages, Pyrrha said in her brain. Nona picked the long white filaments off her fingernails until some of them went red and started bleeding, and then she tucked her hands underneath herself so that nobody would see them stop bleeding just as quickly. She did not say, From who? Instead she said, very hesitantly, “Last night—in the park?”
But Hot Sauce did not get angry, or even really surprised. She didn’t react in the way that Our Lady of the Passion might. She stared at the door unwaveringly instead. She blinked once, slowly, and that was it.
“Were you there?” she asked, in a slightly different voice.
“No.”
“Don’t go to the park at night.”
“I don’t want to,” said Nona fervently.
“Not good for a girl like you,” said Hot Sauce, like she wasn’t fourteen and like Nona wasn’t nineteen, or more important, six months, just about.
“Did the—” What to call them? “Did the you-know-whats die?”
Hot Sauce misunderstood her question. “They can die,” she said. “They die like anyone else, so don’t believe they can’t.”
“But did these—”
“Yes. Too quickly,” said Hot Sauce. “Someone high up … took them out before they burned … sniper rifle … stupid, when people think you have to destroy the brain or they don’t go … don’t really die, not even if you burn them.”
Hot Sauce, when making long speeches, always ran her sentences into each other, as though they were piled up in traffic. Nona sat up, feeling a little bit dizzy and hot, and made it look as though she were checking on Kevin. She didn’t quite know if Hot Sauce bought it. Kevin after a good feed was reliably dead to the world for at least forty minutes. But when she lay back down on her side, facing Hot Sauce, Hot Sauce didn’t look suspicious or pitying or anything like that. She stopped watching the door and stared up at the ceiling instead, the shiny glassy crinkly bits showing where her shirt rucked up in the middle and where it peeked out at her neck.
Hot Sauce said quietly, “Your people at the park?”
Nona swallowed.
“One of them, I think.”
“Okay,” said Hot Sauce.
“Are you—do any of the others—” Nona didn’t know how to ask. She didn’t quite know how to say, Are you in Blood of Eden? But Hot Sauce simply touched a finger to her lips for shhh, then raised three fingers, then pointed to herself. Nona was proud that she was long past counting on fingers.
“You,” she whispered. “And Honesty. And someone else.”
Hot Sauce nodded. Nona guessed again, “Born in the Morning.”
“You mean Born in the Morning,” said Hot Sauce.
“That’s what I said,” said Nona.
Hot Sauce said, “Yes. One of his fathers is active.”
“Blood of Ed—？”
But Hot Sauce pressed her finger right on Nona’s mouth. Nona, seeing the flinch of alarm in her face, obediently tried to clamp her mouth shut before Hot Sauce had to shut her up, which had the effect that she nearly bit Hot Sauce. But Hot Sauce said fervently, “No. Never.”