“Why are you even here?” Kade countered. “You can’t pipe the dead out of the ground, you can’t drive, and we’d be a lot more comfortable with only three people in the backseat.”

“I got doused in turtle water,” said Nadya. “That means I get to come.”

Kade sighed. “I want to argue, but I’m too damn tired. Can you at least stay in your seat? We get pulled over, we’re going to have one hell of a time explaining the severed hands, or why Christopher keeps a human ulna in his pocket.”

“Just tell them we’re on a quest,” said Nadya.

“Mmm,” said Kade noncommittally.

“So are we there yet?”

“Almost. We are almost there.” The cemetery was another five miles down the road. He’d looked it up on Google Maps. There was a convenient copse of trees about a quarter of a mile away. They could stow the van there while they went about the business of desecrating Sumi’s grave.

Kade wasn’t religious—hadn’t been since he’d come back from Prism, forced into a body that was too young and too small and too dressed in frilly, girlish clothes by parents who refused to understand that they had a son and not a daughter—but he’d been to church often enough when he was little to be faintly worried that they were all going to wind up getting smote for crimes against God.

“Not the way I wanted to die,” he muttered, and pulled off the road, driving toward the trees.

“I want to die in a bed of marigolds, with butterflies hanging over me in a living canopy and the Skeleton Girl holding our marriage knife in her hand,” said Christopher.

“What?” said Kade.

“Nothing,” said Christopher.

Kade rolled slowly to a stop under a spreading oak, hopefully out of sight of the road, and parked. “All right, we’re here. Everybody out.”

He didn’t have to tell Cora twice. She had the door open before he had finished speaking, practically tumbling out into the grass. Riding in backseats always made her feel huge and worthless, taking up more space than she had any right to. The only reason she’d been able to stand it was that Nadya had been crammed into the middle, leaving Rini, still a virtual stranger, on the other side of the car. If Cora had been told she’d have to spend the entire drive pressed against someone she didn’t know, she would probably have skipped having an adventure in favor of hiding in her room.

The others got out more sedately, even Rini, who turned in a slow circle, eyes turned toward the sky and jaw gone slack.

“What are those?” she asked, jabbing a finger at the distant streak of the Milky Way.

“Stars, stupid,” said Nadya.

“I’m not stupid, I just don’t know stuff,” said Rini. “How do they stay up?”