"Save me," I whispered. "Save me." I wasn't touching her anymore. Tolliver had his arms around me. Tears were streaming down my face.

I put my arms around Tolliver, too; a dangerous indulgence, but I needed him so much. I looked at the masked man in his medical scrubs. "You collected evidence from the body?" I asked.

"I was there," Dr. Hatton said guardedly.

"Did you find any threads in her nose and mouth? Blue, they would have been."

"Yes," he said, after a notable pause. "Yes, we did."

"Suffocated," I said. "But she fought all the way."

Dr. Hatton made a sudden movement with his hand, as if he was going to show me something, but then he stopped in mid-motion.

"What are you?" he asked, as if he was talking to some interesting hybrid.

"I'm just a woman who got hit by lightning," I said. "I wasn't born the way I am."

"Lightning either kills you or you get over it," Dr. Hatton said impatiently.

"I can tell you've never dealt with a live person who's had the experience," I said. "You get hit with a few thousand volts, a few months later you come talk to me about what your life is like."

"If that many volts hits you directly, you're dead," he said simply. "What people survive is the energy discharge from it hitting very nearby."

I couldn't believe this guy, arguing with me about what had happened to me while Tabitha's body was right here between us.

"Whatever," I said, and straightened up to show Tolliver I was ready to go. It was hard to pull my arms from around him, but I did it, and his arms loosened around me.

I went over to the second shape, the larger one. I closed my eyes and placed my hand over the body.

My eyes flew open and I glared at Dr. Hatton. "This isn't Clyde Nunley," I said. "This is some young man who died of knife wounds."

Dr. Hatton looked at me as though he were seeing a ghost. "You're right," he said, as if I weren't standing right there. "You're right, my God. Okay," he said, very carefully, as though I might pounce on him, "let me take you to Dr. Nunley."