Nothing’s happening. It’s not working. Her eyes are too bright, she’s still too alive, the Flood is devouring her, but it hasn’t devoured enough. My words mean nothing. She’s not a Grace; she’s just a scared little girl. The same kind of little girl I was when Mom took me to New Nazareth, when she became more of a monster than the heathens, the people lost to the Devil, who would be sacrificed to the Lord to save our souls and theirs in turn. Or maybe she’d always been that way. I can’t remember these days.

“I said back up!” Cormac snaps.

“No.” I say it before I can stop myself, grabbing his sleeve. “Put that down.”

“What?”

“Just trust me.”

Cormac coughs out a sick-sounding noise. “Trust you?”

Joey says, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She’s not a monster,” I say. “She’s a kid.” I could have said the same for the choirboys. I could always say the same for something else. “If you won’t talk to her, I will.”

Joey says, “Talk to her?”

Faith says, “Benji, don’t.”

Cormac says, “Don’t you dare.”

Nick says nothing.

Nick is the only person whose opinion I give a shit about.

I step off the concrete foundation and into the grass. The sun soaks into my black clothes, turns what should be winter into near summer, burning the earth like God’s wrath setting fire to the grasses and trees.

We meet between the pavilion and the pond, on the edge of the path. Her head lolls, and her eyes whirl like a scared animal. Her breathing is wet and labored, her lungs full of fluid. Dissolving from the inside, turning into something else, the same thing that’s happening to me.

Oh God, this is me. This is me.

“Hey,” I murmur. Soft nonsense, anything to calm her, to keep her from screaming. This is me, this is me. “Hey, there.”

She says, sick burbling up with each word, “It hurts.”

This is me. If Nick hadn’t found me, I would’ve become a half-dead kid wandering the city, stumbling up to the first person I saw, begging for help they couldn’t give. My skin cracking, black shit coming up my throat as my organs are eaten away.

I am still going to be this, no matter what. Just with four walls and some people who might not kill me, might, might.

“I know it hurts,” I whisper, “but you need to leave. It’s going to hurt more if you keep walking toward us.” She stares, but her eyes aren’t focused on me. She doesn’t have long. “You need to get away.”

Get away.

Almost like this can make up for the dead boys in Reformation, for the ears in that bag, for what the Watch has to do to keep our people safe, alive, and okay.