“I feel like shit,” Sammi said. Her head pulsed, eyes throbbed as if they’d been removed and boiled and rolled back in, her throat was dry, and her stomach rolled. She was covered in thick, cloying mud. The sick taste in her mouth brought memories of yesterday, and fears for tomorrow.

Each throb in her head was echoed by the bang, bang, bang coming in from the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Sammi said.

“It’s okay,” Angela said. “I’m not stupid, you know. I knew something was different. It was so obvious. You think I thought you were disappearing into the woods to meet boys?”

Sammi laughed, and groaned. “I wish.” And she did. Secretly meeting boys in the woods would have been much less dangerous than what she had been doing. She had never been out with a boy. She was sixteen and had never been kissed. Hiding out in the wilderness with an aunt obsessed about keeping you safe wasn’t conducive to making new friends, let alone finding romance.

Lilou was still pacing back and forth. Bone was closer to the place where they’d trapped the three Kin. The sun beat down on the metal door.

“What about them?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about them, worry about yourself.”

She brushed off Angela’s soft touch and sat up. Though in pain her senses felt heightened. The smell of the old reservoir hung in the air, the memory of dead fish and water, reeds rotting across the banks and dirty pools slowly being absorbed back into the land. Deeper in that memory was the town of Longford. She drew in a long breath and she could smell that place, as if it was still there and not just the ghost of a town. She was in the belly of the ghost, but she could sense its true, original size and shape. She felt the soil beneath her parting, her hand sinking down into the damp ground, fingers spreading and closing around silt and mud that had once floated in the great reservoir. When she breathed in she could taste the fear and confusion as the town’s life had effectively ended. She heard people shouting, and crying, and then raging as they writhed in agony on the ground, or had their insides blown out by bullets.

Sammi gasped and shook her head, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she was back where she had been.

“What is it?” Lilou asked.

“I can’t control it,” Sammi said.

“Of course you can.” The nymph knelt beside her and held her hand. Sammi caught an expression in Angela’s eye that almost broke her heart. Lilou’s looking after me like she can’t, she thought, and an immense sadness closed over and around her.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“What is?” Lilou asked.

“Is the kid okay?” Bone asked. “That was something.”