“And Kayla,” she calls out in a small voice. I pause, turning back. She waves me in closer and lowers her voice.  “You’re wrong,” she says. “You’re not one of them.”

I check over my shoulder, making sure that Aiden and Ryder aren’t listening. “One of what? A Higher?”

“You’re something different—something better.” She says. “That’s why you can fix it.”

God, I hope she’s right. Because the last thing I want to be is the thing I’ve spent my life resenting. I’ve always despised the Highers, at least the ones at The Colony. And if turns out I am one and there’s no cure, I don’t think I could live with myself.

“Keep that one to yourself too,” I tell Maci and say my final good-bye to her.

Aiden and I slink out of the hillside, sealing it shut behind us with the boulder. We head across the desert, the sky a light grey, but I know eventually it will turn black.

“Will we make it there before dark?” I hop over a rock.

Aiden sidesteps around a cactus. “No, we’ll have to travel through the night.”

“But isn’t it dangerous for you to be out when darkness falls? They’ll leave me alone, but not you.”

He tips his head down, his dark hair shielding across his eyes. “I’ll be fine Juniper, don’t worry about me.” He kicks a rock. “You know, you’re still the same as I remember. You’re completely fine with being reckless with your own life, but if it’s anyone else’s there’s no way you’ll risk it.”

I can’t help it: I love the sound of Juniper rolling off his tongue. “Tell me how well you know me.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he says. “I already explained to you that if I start telling you about your past, then you’ll only remember it how I tell you. And you want to remember things on your own. Trust me.”

Blood. Blood everywhere. “You know, Monarch always said that medicine is one of strongest things in the world. Stronger than the human mind. It really is amazing,” I say, taking out the last black vial. “Something this small can do so much damage.” I hold it between my fingers. “I mean, it was something like this that changed humans into to vampires.”

He eyes the vial. “You kept that?”

I close my hand around it. “Yeah, I was thinking that it might come in handy, you know, if we run into something that needs to die.” I make a stabbing gesture with my hand.

“Like what?”

“Like a vampire.”

“That’s what a knife’s for,” he says, holding up his own, which is sharp and has a red jewel embedded in the handle. “You don’t even know if that stuff works on a vampire.”