His eyes went wide with fear, Sebastian realizing, she suspected, that he was dying, all of his options used up, no way to turn back.

“Grace doesn’t know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“That I’m her father. Bring her. Bring her to me so I can tell her.”

For a brief moment she saw a window into his humanity. “Your carriers,” she said. “Where are they?”

Sebastian was looking off in the direction of the Range Rover. “I need to tell her. She needs to hear it from me.” Then, when she didn’t answer: “I can’t die without her knowing. Please.”

The desperate, terrified look in his eyes broke her heart.

“Tell me where your carriers are,” she said, “and I promise I’ll take care of them.”

Sebastian told her. Ellie leaned an ear closer to his mouth and made him repeat it to make sure she had heard him correctly.

CHAPTER 53

WHEN FAYE HAD scrambled to her feet, she staggered up the road, coughing, heading back to the Range Rover, its bright lights shining down on Sebastian like the eyes of God.

Sebastian knew he was dying. The moment he’d reached around his back and prodded the exit wound with his fingers, his intestines coiling out from it like a nest of snakes, he knew he was going to die right here, on this dirt road.

But he wasn’t alone. He had Paul for company.

The fire had caught up to him. Sebastian had Paul’s agonizing, almost inhuman-sounding howls to keep him company. Sebastian turned his head and saw Paul lying on his back and frantically flapping his arms, trying to smother the flames devouring his legs.

At least, Sebastian thought, I have this.

Faye had heard Paul, too. Sebastian saw her whip her head around and look back down the road, past him.

Sebastian looked only at the Rover. He squinted against the harsh bright white lights, hoping to catch a glimpse of Grace somewhere behind the reflection of the flames dancing across the tinted glass. He needed Grace to know something about him. That was how you continued to live long after you were gone, by sharing the story of your life. It made you real, kept you from fading away.

But what would he tell her? Maybe start with a quick story about him and her mother, how they’d met (sophomore year of high school, when Ava and her family moved into the neighborhood); the exact moment when he fell in love with her (when Ava held his hand for the first time, at a football game); about their first kiss (on a brown couch at Kim Jackson’s house party, Ava drunk on wine poured from a box, Ava making the first move). He wanted to tell Grace how Ava, at sixteen, was already so confident, so sure of her place in the world. How if he lived with her for a hundred years he would come away knowing only a fraction of the world that lived behind her beautiful brown eyes; how when he saw those eyes for the first time they soothed that rage inside him, made him feel that everything was going to be okay—not perfect but okay. He wanted to tell his daughter how he had dreamed of this moment before she was born, being married to her mother and having kids. A family. He wanted—