“But then you will fall asleep. You will sleep and you won’t wake up for nine months… .”

“And you’ll protect me while I’m sleeping, won’t you, Milos?”

Milos took a slow, deep breath, then he nodded. “Yes, I will,” he finally told her. “And I promise I will be waiting for you when you awake.”

“I believe you,” Mary told him. “I trust you.” But then something troubling occurred to her.

Milos must have read it in her eyes, because he said, “Do not worry about this fleshie. He was kind to you, and so I will make certain that your body of flesh is never found, and he will never know what he has done.”

Mary smiled. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

“It is something I learned from you.”

Milos looked to both ends of the alley to make sure they were unobserved, before lowering the blade to her chest. It still quivered in his hand, so he tightened his grip until the blade was still.

Then in that lonely alley in the living world, Megan Mary McGill put her arms over Milos’s shoulders, feeling the steel tip of the blade lightly pierce her new satin gown, just barely touching the skin above her heart. She looked into his eyes until she could see Milos behind the face of the security guard, and then she commanded in a powerful, impassioned whisper:

“… Bring me home, my love… .”

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1 · Connor

“There are places you can go,” Ariana tells him, “and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen.”

Connor isn’t so sure, but looking into Ariana’s eyes makes his doubts go away, if only for a moment. Her eyes are sweet violet with streaks of gray. She’s such a slave to fashion—always getting the newest pigment injection the second it’s in style. Connor was never into that. He’s always kept his eyes the color they came in. Brown. He never even got tattoos, like so many kids get these days when they’re little. The only color on his skin is the tan it takes during the summer, but now, in November, that tan has long faded. He tries not to think about the fact that he’ll never see the summer again. At least not as Connor Lassiter. He still can’t believe that his life is being stolen from him at sixteen.