Then she looked past the church and saw the footprints.

“Someone’s been here,” she said, pointing.

“Security?” Angela asked.

“Maybe,” Lilou said. “They’re going the way we’re going.”

“Out of the town?” Sammi asked. She looked uphill past the church, towards where the line of green began several hundred feet higher.

“Not that far,” Lilou said. “There are caves.”

“Is that where your friend Mohserran would have been?” Angela asked.

“Maybe.”

They passed the church, and this time it was Lilou who saw the skeleton. And this time, it was not a dog.

Somehow the body had become entangled with a tree. The trunk was short and stunted, but it retained the stumps of several low branches, pale and bleached by water. Sammi found it difficult to make out where bone began and wood ended, but it was obvious that this was the remains of a human. Or at least, a humanoid.

“They didn’t even remove the bodies,” Angela said.

“Been just hanging there,” Sammi said. She was the first to approach the body, and Lilou called her back, just as she’d expected. Hidden things, she thought, because she was more certain than ever that Lilou wasn’t telling them everything.

“Sammi!” Angela said, and Sammi turned around.

“What? You think it’s going to bite me?” She spoke to her aunt, but looked at Lilou. The nymph said nothing.

Closer to the skeleton, it was easier to see what had happened. The tree was close to crumbling, the skeleton fragmented and with parts missing, but the chain that bound the two together was still obvious.

As was the hole in the skeleton’s skull.

“One of yours?” Sammi asked Lilou.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s more to this than you’ve told us. They never even tried to evacuate the town.”

“Of course they did,” Angela said, and she looked at Lilou, waiting for her to confirm it.

Lilou opened her mouth.

“No lies,” Sammi said, “only the truth,” and she forced herself when she spoke, shoving herself forward, gathering all the change she felt inside—the ache in her bones, the bright sparks of potential blooming and expanding like stars being born—and making it her own. She shocked herself with how different she felt, and the surprise on Lilou’s face was a manifestation of her own feelings. She’d never seen the nymph looking so defenceless and open. Sammi was shocked and a little disgusted to feel a sliver of wicked delight at Lilou’s discomfort. She didn’t enjoy feeling like that. Sickness rose in her throat and she swallowed it down, and Lilou cringed as if she was tasting the same.