Well, maybe she would, and maybe she wouldn’t. After all, he had been a monster and who knew if such power in his hands would be a good thing? Now as he rode up and down the hills of Virginia and into Tennessee, he had to admit to himself something he had been avoiding for all their time together. He was very good at being a monster— but as a boy he was mediocre at best.

As it happens, Mikey’s sense that Allie was a bit distant was right on target. At that moment, her thoughts were wandering far from the horse they rode. Her mind kept being drawn back to the town they had just left, and the one before that, and the one before that. She was relieved to be away from civilization, and yet in her thoughts, she couldn’t leave it all behind, because the taste of the living was becoming too tempting—and it was a taste—an inner hunger that was powerful and all-consuming. She felt herself becoming like a vampire, feasting not on blood, but on experience. The silky smooth sensation of flesh. The flavor of other people’s lives. Even now she longed to be wrapped in the living—but she could share none of this with Mikey. He wouldn’t understand. Empathy was not his strongest point—even the nature of his own feelings were still a mystery to him, so how could Allie expect him to understand hers? And so even though she sat in a close saddleback embrace, a wall had fallen between them. Allie kept her yearning for flesh a secret, certain that she could control it … but then it started to rain.

In life, Allie had always loved the rain. When other people would bundle up and pull out their umbrellas, Allie would revel in the feel of the rain against her hair, against her face. “You’ll catch your death of cold!” her mother would always tell her, never imagining that Allie would soon catch her death in an entirely different way.

In Everlost, however, rain was different. It washed through you instead of over you, tickling your insides like an itch you couldn’t scratch. It was an unpleasant sensation that Allie had never gotten used to.

As a drizzle became a shower, and the shower became a downpour, Allie longed for the feel of it on her instead of in her. She longed to be wet—not just wet but so completely drenched that the only remedy was a warm fire.

On their travels, they stuck more to rural routes than highways, but the route they now traveled ended at a large lake, with a road continuing to the left and right. They paused for a few moments, and the rain became heavier.