“His vitals are strong. We’re giving him antiseizure medication just in case, but if he doesn’t have another episode, he can go home tomorrow morning.”

That sounded good, Mateo decided. Now he could let himself fall asleep. But wasn’t there a reason he didn’t want to go to sleep? He could remember it now if he wanted to—

—but he didn’t want to. He relaxed and let the fog swallow him whole.

For a long time there was nothing.

Then he saw Nadia again.

They sat on the back porch of some house on the beach—not Mateo’s, but it might have been any of a few dozen strewn along the coast of Captive’s Sound. A fire pit flickered from the sand below, and crystal wind chimes sang with the breeze. It was late at night, and the sky was so clear he could see where the stars met the sea. They were curled up on a swing, and Nadia shivered from the chill.

“Don’t kiss me,” she said.

She was cold, so cold. Despite his own shivering, Mateo shrugged off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. Nadia’s dark eyes seemed like part of the night that surrounded them, and he couldn’t stop wanting to bury his hands in her black hair.

Why was this different?

“You’re not dying,” he whispered. “Not this time. It’s okay for me to be with you.”

Nadia smiled up at him as she trailed two fingers along his cheek, a touch that made him feel like he was melting. She smiled even as she said, “I’m dying the whole time this happens.”

Mateo laid one hand along her belly; he could feel the warmth of her skin through her shirt. Slowly he slid his hand toward her back, bringing her into his embrace.

She leaned against him and whispered, her breath soft against his lips, “If you kiss me, we’re both lost.”

It didn’t make any sense. Dreams didn’t have to make sense.

Just as he bent toward her, though, there was light—“Time to check your vitals!” in a chipper voice—and Mateo wasn’t awake but he wasn’t dreaming any longer, either. He let the dream go easily; the fog wouldn’t let him hold on to anything for long.

At three a.m., about when Verlaine was starting to think she might have calmed down enough to go to sleep, she thought again of Ginger’s note.

RUN.

“Forget it,” she groaned, throwing back the covers to grab her phone again. Even as she did so, Nadia texted again: Sorry if I woke you up—can’t sleep.

Me either. Hey, are we considering fleeing as a possibility? I would be good with fleeing. She really should have put that in the PowerPoint as Option D.

Nadia didn’t seem to be thinking about escape—at least not enough, in Verlaine’s opinion. Tell me more about that church fire. The one where Ginger lost her voice.

I was little. I don’t remember much about it. As Smuckers jumped up on the bed, Verlaine absentmindedly petted him, trying to remember anything Uncle Gary had ever said about the fire. He was the one who knew pretty much everything that went down around here. It was the Catholic church—they were in this really old building then, not far from the beach. There was some group meeting in the basement, but just like a women’s club or something. Most of them died. Ginger got out but she never talked after that.