She laid Cat in a patch of moonlight, left her there, and went to clear a space for her to sleep near the debris wall.

When Izza turned back, she saw a thin figure standing over Cat’s body. She forced herself to relax. “Nick. Hi.” She recognized him by the way he held his shoulders: hunched forward, as if pushing against an unseen wind.

“Who’s this?”

“I found her,” she said. “She’s hurt. Give me a hand.”

She walked back to the moonlight and lifted Cat by her armpits. Nick did not move to help.

“Fine.” She dragged the woman across the floor, into the space she’d cleared. Her heels left trails in the dust. Cat groaned, and Izza shifted her grip to put less pressure on the injured shoulder.

“I thought you were going.”

“I am,” she said. “But she needed help. What do you want from me?”

“Stay,” he said.

So simple.

“I can’t.” She looked down at Cat. “I’ll take care of her, for a while. I’ll stay that long.”

“You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you’re breaking up the gang, and then bring someone here to put us all in danger.”

“We were never a gang, and I am leaving. Just. She knocked out two Penitents. She deserves our help. My help.” Izza searched the warehouse, but they were alone. “And what’s this ’all,’ anyway? I don’t see anyone here.”

“Me.”

“Except for you.”

“The kids are hiding,” he said.

“We’re kids.”

“No. We’re not.”

“I need to leave, Nick,” she said. “Nothing’s safe here. Not gods. Not us.”

“Change your mind.”

“No.”

Cat groaned, and Izza returned to her side. The woman’s eyes rolled behind closed lids, and her lips twitched. If they formed words, Izza couldn’t read them.

When she looked up, the warehouse was empty.

She waited for Nick to speak again, from hiding. But he was gone, like her family, like her gods.

Izza left Cat unconscious on the warehouse floor, and went to look for water.

Chapter 5

5

Kai didn’t hear from Mara for two weeks. When the other woman finally made it up the steep cliff steps to the balcony where Kai lay convalescing, she waited out of sight by the stairs, presumably working up the will to speak.

At first Kai—pillow propped in bed, white sheets pooled around her waist, wearing a hospital gown and reading the Journal—ignored her. Mara didn’t like pain, physical or emotional, always last to shed her blood on an altar stone. Kai’d mocked her reluctance, but fourteen days into recovery, she was coming to understand the woman’s caution.