“That car accident I told you about? When I Fell for the first time. I didn’t really Fall because of the accident. I Fell after the accident. After I saw.”

He takes a breath. Lets it out.

“I was in the back,” he says. “Mum and Dad were up front. Mum was driving.” He smiles bitterly. “Dad…he hated being a passenger. He was hassling Mum, same as ever. Slow down, Nayla! Get in the left lane, Nayla! The road’s wet, Nayla!”

Malik picks up a stone and chucks it into the field.

“He could be a real pain in the arse sometimes.”

He pauses and I become aware I’m holding my breath. And, when I suck in the air and blow it out, it sounds unnatural—makes a loud roaring in my ears.

“They didn’t see the sixteen-wheeler until it was too late,” Malik says. “Too busy arguing, trying to be right. By the time Mum saw it, she had seven seconds left to live. And the worst of it is, I should’ve died with ’em. But I didn’t. Know why?”

I shake my head, despite knowing the answer.

“Because I’m a Pathfinder. I Fell instead,” Malik says. “That’s why.”

I can’t speak. I don’t make a sound. I’m numb.

Eventually, after what seems like an age, I turn to him. “Malik,” I say. “They want me to kill Shinigami.”

Malik squints into the distance. “I know. Gabe took me aside. He told me.”

I drag my hand through the dirt. “I don’t think I can do that.”

Malik nods, considering my answer.

“Pathfinders like us,” he says. “We’re the ones that run. We run away from the past and we run away from Reapers. We’re nomads and wanderers. Misfits and outsiders. I mean, look at Vidhan. His foster parents chucked him in an asylum for a year. And Kuji? She’s been through enough juvenile detention centres to last two lifetimes. What they did to her in those places, it’d break a Normal in a day.”

I watch Akuji pace up and down, straight-backed, her fighting sticks in their scabbards again, spiking at her belt. I look at Malik side-on and I realise what I knew about him—about them—I could’ve written on the back of a postage stamp.

“But the thing of it is this,” Malik says. “We’re part of something much bigger than ourselves. We do things and see things no Normal could ever imagine, or believe. We have a job. It makes a difference. It matters.” He turns to me and we look at each other. “The good and the bad,” he says. “It’s a gift, Ana. And it’s a curse.”

Vidhan reappears out of the bushes.

And the moment breaks.