He comes up close. Too close, close enough that his hair gets in my face, close enough that I can feel how warm he is. If it weren’t for the mask, I could have tasted him.

Cormac says, “Nick’s been calling you an it.”

Chapter 17

Violence that begets evil will always be worse than the violence that ends it. The LORD will guide our hands. We will drive a wedge between the faithless through blood, and they will understand the evil they come from. They will understand the truth of salvation and come to us in repentance.

—The Truth by High Reverend Father Ian Clevenger

Don’t say shit like that.

You don’t believe me? Ask him. See what happens.

And I said, Fine. I will.

The ALC erupts when we bring in the supplies. I clean up and change clothes at Sadaf’s urging, then help with inventory because it keeps me in the same room as Nick. People flow around me, peeling open boxes, handing off packages of socks, cradling painkillers like Fabergé eggs.

“You good?” Aisha says as she piles cans in the pantry.

“What?” She’s staring at me. I’m glad to see her out and about, even if she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. “Oh. Yeah, I’m good. Just waiting for Nick to finish up. Sorry, I’ll get out of your way.”

She picks up a few tins of Spam. “Rough trip?”

“Something like that.”

When Cormac said Nick was calling me it, my first thought was awful: What if Nick is just super transphobic? But that doesn’t make any sense. Nick and Erin are so close, they might as well be siblings. He hovers around her like some kind of guard dog, making sure nobody steps out of line. He wouldn’t dare do something like that, not when he adores her.

And there’s no way he thinks I’m just a Grace. An abomination. No, he can’t. That’s just not an option.

The only explanation is that Cormac is lying. He’s sneered at me in the media room, talked down to me, wants me gone. And now he wants me to turn on Nick. Make a scene. Get myself kicked off the Watch and even out of the ALC.

I’m going to call his bluff.

As soon as we’re done restocking and everyone has taken a small treat from the pantry—a can of pears and juice split among so many people, a handful of stale chips for the rest—I see Nick’s jacket slipping through a crack in the kitchen door, and I give chase. Erin squeaks as I blow past her.

“Nick!” I call. “Nick, can we talk for a second?”

I catch him at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor, leaning against the door with a sign reading: FIRE DOOR—KEEP CLOSED, DO NOT BLOCK. He turns with a start.