“Like I got shot and fell down an elevator shaft.” My stitches pull as I flip the sofa right-side up and drop into the sagging cushions. It sucks me deep into its familiar embrace and I breathe in the smell of it. Kai crunches the last of Chill’s chips, shaking the bag upside down over her mouth. I throw an arm over my face, pretending she’s not here, pretending it’s Chill sitting across from me, reeking like Doritos and trying my patience.

They’re alive. They have to be, I tell myself as I fall asleep. Because I can’t picture a world without them in it.

37

Waste them All

FLEUR

The light at the end of the duct grows brighter. I crawl toward it faster on aching hands and knees, following the smaze around a final turn before tumbling into a cavern somewhere in the catacombs.

A single torch lights the chamber, casting eerie shadows over the archways carved into the stone. I’m surrounded by a maze of cold, damp options, each pathway darker and more uninviting than the next. The smaze brushes my ankle, nudging me into one of the narrow tunnels. I pluck the torch from the wall, uttering a swear when the flame begins to shrink and the tunnel ahead dissolves into a drafty black hole.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” The air smells like moldering bodies. A steady drip, drip, drip bounces off the floor, and an animal skitters somewhere close. I move slowly through the tight passage, my fingers trailing over the mossy surface of the walls. I can hardly see my hands in front of my face, and I drag my feet to avoid tripping or plunging into a hole.

The smaze zooms around me, making the last of the torch fire waver. “I’m going as fast as I can. I can’t see. It’s too dark.” This has to be Jack’s smaze. It’s too impatient to be anyone else’s. It swerves back through the tunnel, chilling the air as it whips past me.

Abruptly, the smaze stops. It hovers perfectly still, alert for something I can’t sense. I draw in a breath, smelling nothing but the musty foulness of the catacombs.

“What is it?” I lower my voice to a whisper as it occurs to me that the things I should fear most in this place aren’t easily tracked by scent. The Guards could be anywhere. Or Doug.

The smaze surges past me, back the way we came, the breeze strong enough to lift my hair as the tiny flame at the end of my torch blows out. Breath held, I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. But there’s no light here. None at all. As the silence stretches out indefinitely, my other senses sharpen to compensate.