Born in the Morning protested, “I did throw a rock and it did die,” and Nona said, “What, the rock?” at which the others paused in order to jeer at her. Then Beautiful Ruby explained that the rock had been thrown at one of the cages and the necromancer had been almost all the way on fire, and the question of whether or not the rock had even hit the necromancer or the bars was still a live one, but the rock could have helped. A rock hits you in the head you’re going to die, aren’t you.

While the others litigated whether or not the rock still counted if the necromancer was almost all the way on fire, Hot Sauce, sitting with her legs dangling over the side of the broken floor, had gone very still. Nona always noticed when Hot Sauce was still, because her stillness was peculiar: it wasn’t the stillness others got when they were thinking about things in class, markers paused as their brains furiously combed over some answer. It was the stillness of someone rejecting thinking. Midargument, Ruby’s voice rose over the others—“There aren’t any necromancers here anymore, they’re all dead.”

Born said, “Not all of them. My dad says they’re all in the barracks.”

“Which dad? You have like seventy.”

“Don’t say I have like seventy, you know how many dads I got.”

“If I had the amount of dads you got, I’d sell some of them,” said Ruby.

“You think you would, but you wouldn’t,” said Born wisely.

Honesty said, “Some of the zombies go spying outside the barracks, they ain’t all mad. That’s why you got to make sure you see all your friends eating and bleeding, or, you know—bam, you’re dead, or bones, or worse.”

“I eat,” protested Nona.

“Nobody’s saying you’re a zombie, you dumbass,” said Honesty. “I’m saying hidden zombies, you know, spies. You’re pretty stupid for your age, you know that?”

“I watched Nona eat a pebble,” Kevin volunteered, bending one of his doll’s legs into position. Then: “And a marker top.”

“Don’t squeal, Kevin,” said Nona, offended and on her dignity; she had just learnt squeal and therefore used it constantly. “And Honesty, don’t call me a dumbass. At home they said if you called me a dumbass again I should tell you that they know what you look like and they’ll beat you up.”

“Okay. I don’t want to piss off your folks, you live with a pimp,” said Honesty.

By that point Nona knew what pimp was, and was so annoyed she knew she was on the road to a tantrum. But before intragroup violence could erupt or get contracted out, Hot Sauce raised her voice and said—

“The necromancers will come back. They may already be here.”

Everyone subsided into reverent silence at Hot Sauce’s proclamation, even Nona, who took the opportunity to do five breaths in and out like Camilla had shown her.

Eventually Beautiful Ruby broke the silence and said, “What about Varun, Hot Sauce? What about Varun the Eater?”