“And then you cut yourself, using the razor?”

“Yes. No. I wasn’t trying to cut; I just needed that shade of red.”

Simon poked Meg’s shoulder again. “Tell her the rules.” He raised his voice, even though Jackson could hear him just fine. “There are rules.”

Meg stared at him and bared her teeth.

Vlad muffled a laugh.

Meg leaned toward the phone. “Hope? Is this the first time you’ve cut since you left the compound?”

“Not exactly.”

“The first time with the razor?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Simon is right; there are rules.”

“Told you,” he said quietly.

Meg huffed. “Hope, sooner or later, cutting will kill you. You know that, don’t you?”

A whispered, “Yes.”

“Cutting is about revealing prophecy, and the euphoria that we feel when we cut is our bodies’ way of protecting our minds from what we see. The only way we can remember the visions is to swallow prophecy—if we don’t speak, if we don’t describe what we see, we’ll remember it.”

“I can see my drawings,” Hope said.

Meg nodded even though Hope couldn’t see her. “It’s different for you. But your drawings also mean you don’t have to cut to release the visions of prophecy.”

“I made a drawing for you.”

Meg leaned back. “About me?”

“No. Yes.”

“There is a shop in the Intuit’s part of Sweetwater,” Jackson interrupted. “They have a camera that will take a picture that can be sent through e-mail. We’ll have a picture made for Meg and send it to you, Simon.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll create an e-mail account for Meg, adding it to the ones we have for Howling Good Reads,” Vlad said. “She’ll be able to receive mail for herself in a day or two.”

<She can share my e-mail,> Simon said.

Vlad smiled. <She’ll be more honest if she thinks her messages are private.>

Simon considered that. For a while anyway, Meg would know only what Vlad taught her about e-mail. <Are you the one who sets the passwords?>

<Of course.>

<That’s sneaky.>

<I prefer to think of it as protective.>

No argument from him.

“The drawing you made for me frightened you enough to cut?” Meg asked.

“No! I wasn’t frightened, and it wasn’t the drawing I made for you! It was the other drawing. I made the other drawing.” Hope sucked in a breath. “And then I saw...”

“What?” Simon asked when the only sound coming from the phone was uneven breathing.

“Dead bison,” Jackson replied grimly. “A mound of dead bison.”

“Mound?” Simon frowned, puzzled. “Bison are big. Who would put them in a mound? Who would kill so many?”

A phone began ringing downstairs. HGR’s other line.

“I’ll get that,” Vlad said, rushing out of the office and down the stairs.

“Can you send that drawing too?” Simon asked.