Margot still felt dangerously empty, like a vital part of her had been stolen away the previous night. Her naivete, maybe. But there was no wisdom or better knowledge to replace it with—just emptiness.

And the others were all acting as though she would be fine. As though they were fine. Nora and Ray spoke regretfully of not being able to live outside the hill, but they were already resigned to the idea. And Kant had explained the mechanics of the curse as calmly and easily as if he were explaining a piece of machinery.

This is no longer shocking to him. He’s had thirty years to get used to it.

And she, likewise, would have the rest of her life to confront this new existence.

If she was lucky.

Tears burned her eyes. The cast was too heavy. She tried to flex her hand and hated how rigidly immobile it was kept; only the fingers could move, and not far enough.

“You’ll do better after a drink,” Kant said. He let the jeans fall back into place. Margot never would have known he wore the prosthetic if she hadn’t been shown it. “Coffee? Or something else?”

Her mouth opened, then uselessly closed again. The tears were close to spilling. She couldn’t breathe. “I need a minute,” she managed, and pushed off the table.

Kant stood back so that she could get through the door. Margot paused outside, the glaring sun momentarily blinding her.

She was in the employee building block, like she’d guessed. Either a maintenance shed or a storage room. It was near the outskirts of the cluster, and Margot moved away from the other buildings, toward the patchy trees and the drive leading down to the main road.

Her breathing was ragged. She didn’t have any kind of plan, just an urgent, inescapable need to get out.

A handful of employees paused as she passed them. She was still wearing the clothes from the day before, she realized, rumpled and bloodstained and with one sleeve missing. Her bare feet dragged through the grass. The band holding her hair back had either been lost or broken, and now her curls ran like a mane behind her, tangled and wild and sticking to her skin.

The stares—pity or curiosity or shock, she didn’t meet them long enough to tell—were overwhelming. She turned toward the nearest trees. They would hide her at least.

A bird exploded into angry chattering as she pushed through the branches. The trees were too thin, too sickly. None of the plants she’d seen on the hill had ever thrived. A dozen paces brought Margot out the cluster’s other side, facing the long, slow slope of grassy field to the driveway’s end.