If I’d just gone straight to Tucson. If I had just stayed in San Diego. If I had just skipped this planet and gone somewhere entirely different. If I’d given myself as a Mother like anyone else would have after five or six planets. If, if, if… If I had not come here, if I had not given the Seeker the clues she needed to follow, then Wes would be alive. It had taken her longer than me to figure them out, but when she did, she didn’t have to pursue them with caution. She’d barreled through the desert in an all-terrain SUV, leaving bright new scars across the fragile desert landscape, each pass getting closer.

They had to do something. They had to stop her.

I had killed Wes.

They still would have caught me in the first place, Wanda. I led them here, not you.

I was too miserable to answer her.

Besides, if we hadn’t come here, Jamie would be dead. And maybe Jared, too. He would have died tonight, without you.

Death on every side. Death everywhere I looked.

Why did she have to follow me? I moaned to myself. I’m not hurting the other souls here, not really. I’m even saving some of their lives by being here, by keeping Doc from his doomed efforts. Why did she have to follow?

Why did they keep her? Mel snarled. Why didn’t they kill her right away? Or kill her slow—I don’t care how! Why is she still alive?

Fear fluttered in my stomach. The Seeker was alive; the Seeker was here.

I shouldn’t have been afraid of her.

Of course, it made sense to be afraid that her disappearance would bring the other Seekers down on us. Everyone was afraid of that. Spying on the search for my body, the humans had seen how vocal she was about her convictions. She’d been trying to convince the other Seekers that there were humans hiding in this desert wasteland. None seemed to take her seriously. They had gone home; she was the only one who kept looking.

But now she’d vanished in the middle of her search. That changed everything.

Her vehicle had been moved far away, left in the desert on the other side of Tucson. It looked as though she’d disappeared in the same way it was believed I had: pieces of her bag left torn nearby, the snacks she’d carried with her chewed open and scattered. Would the other souls accept such a coincidence?

We already knew they would not. Not entirely. They were looking. Would the search become more intense?