Then I blinked again, and the smudge suddenly jumped into a structured shape, closer than I’d been thinking. It was some kind of house or building, small and weathered to a dull gray.

Melanie’s spike of panic had me dancing off the narrow lane and into the dubious cover of the barren brush.

Hold on, I told her. I’m sure it’s abandoned.

How do you know? She was holding back so hard that I had to concentrate on my feet before I could move them forward.

Who would live out here? We souls live for society. I heard the bitter edge to my explanation and knew it was because of where I now stood—physically and metaphorically in the middle of nowhere. Why did I no longer belong to the society of souls? Why did I feel like I didn’t… like I didn’t want to belong? Had I ever really been a part of the community that was meant to be my own, or was that the reason behind my long line of lives lived in transience? Had I always been an aberration, or was this something Melanie was making me into? Had this planet changed me, or revealed me for what I already was?

Melanie had no patience for my personal crisis—she wanted me to get far away from that building as fast as possible. Her thoughts yanked and twisted at mine, pulling me out of my introspection.

Calm down, I ordered, trying to focus my thoughts, to separate them from hers. If there is anything that actually lives here, it would be human. Trust me on this; there is no such thing as a hermit among souls. Maybe your Uncle Jeb —

She rejected that thought harshly. No one could survive out in the open like this. Your kind would have searched any habitation thoroughly. Whoever lived here ran or became one of you. Uncle Jeb would have a better hiding place.

And if whoever lived here became one of us, I assured her, then they left this place. Only a human would live this way.… I trailed off, suddenly afraid, too.

What? She reacted strongly to my fright, freezing us in place. She scanned my thoughts, looking for something I’d seen to upset me.

But I’d seen nothing new. Melanie, what if there are humans out here—not Uncle Jeb and Jared and Jamie? What if someone else found us?

She absorbed the idea slowly, thinking it through. You’re right. They’d kill us immediately. Of course.

I tried to swallow, to wash the taste of terror from my dry mouth.