Gavin said he talked to Sarah out loud all the time. He said it helped. But to Lily, it felt showy and self-indulgent. What good was a conversation if the other person couldn’t push back? The presumption that the dead are happy just to listen was a selfish, desperate side effect of loss.

“I don’t have any excuses, and I’m sure you wouldn’t even care. But for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. If I had gotten up earlier, or if I had done something—”

Lily wished beyond anything else that she hadn’t gotten up that night. She wished she hadn’t stumbled out onto that lawn littered with plastic cups and moonlight, shuffling one foot in front of the other over roots and leaves down the path to the clearing, her head thrumming with heavy vodka Sprites. She wished she had just stayed in bed where Silas put her, next to a trash can and a glass of water. If she had just rolled over and gone back to sleep, everything could’ve been different. Not for Sarah—Lily couldn’t do anything about that. But for her, and Silas. And, of course, for Philip.

Lily laid the last flower whole on the spit of shore, the bright red garish against the murky silt, as if showing off. Bragging about being alive.

As if it didn’t yet know that it was not.

PEYOTE

“WHY WOULD YOU AGREE to that? It doesn’t matter how many souls he offers us; we can’t go traipsing around the globe looking for—who are we even looking for?” I said when we landed back in the office.

“Not here,” Cal hissed, unsnapping her tablet and putting it back in its cubby. “Meet me at my place after work.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“Just do it,” she said before she turned down the hall between the cubicles, raising her hand to greet someone on the other side of the divide.

—

CAL DIDN’T KNOW I had her file. I held that card the way one holds an autograph, preciously and proudly. I can admit that I fantasized plenty about the moment I could tell her and wipe that smug we-can-pretend-you’re-in-charge-but-we-all-know-I-am smile straight off her face. Not the way we used to Downstairs, of course, with Agent Orange and a scrap of steel wool. I knew I would have to catch her off guard. But it was becoming clear that Calamity Ganon didn’t get caught off guard. She’d never even tried it—loosening into the capable hands of another. Cal knew nothing but guard her whole life, both in the blip of regular and the forever of after.