“I—I thought you might prefer orchids!” he shouted. “Now get off of me and help me stop these—”

Simone scowled. She was kind of hoping he’d give her an excuse to use her rifle again. “They’re dead.” She let go of him and glanced toward the skinless bodies on the packed earth floor. “Or something like it. I killed two more on my way here.” The lighter sparked under her fingertips. “Thought they were Nazi swine, but they didn’t die the same.”

“Then what are they?”

Simone shrugged, letting the smoke scrape out the tension from all the corners of her soul. How should she know? She was here to kill monsters. Didn’t make much difference to her what form they took.

Her contact was still breathing shallowly, sweat clinging to his smooth forehead as he stared at the bodies—or whatever they were. Now that Simone allowed herself to look closely, she saw they were fairly horrific. Nothing like the stories of Nazi atrocities smuggled in from the far corners of Poland and Lithuania, but the visible organs were certainly unpleasant. And that shadow that oozed out of it, like coal smoke . . .

“Ph-Phillip.” He offered her a shaking hand. He was trying to smile, the poor kid. He had a sweet face, with a sturdy jaw and thick eyelashes, better suited for the movies than the war zone. He was bound to be a colossal headache for her. “Phillip Jones. United States Army.”

Simone stared down at his hand. “You told Georges-Yves you could help us.”

“I have no idea what the army told your—uh—Georges-Yves.” Phillip lowered his hand, then ducked to pick up his sidearm and fire poker. “I just know I was supposed to meet you.” He glanced at her sideways. “Whoever you are.”

Simone exhaled smoke instead of offering her name. Her fingers squeezed tight around the cigarette until they stopped trembling. “You have the equipment?”

He gestured, inexplicably, toward his boots. This was already taking too long, and night was falling thick. “They’ve got hidden compartments,” he said. “The shoes.”

“Okay.” She wrinkled her nose; the cigarette was already nearly gone. “Are you ready?”

Phillip stared at her for a long moment before looking back toward the skinned bodies. “Shouldn’t we, uh . . .”

Simone clenched her teeth as she followed his gaze. He wanted to bury them—as if they would care how they were treated now. She could just hear her mother chiding her about respect for the dead, as if the fascists had shown them all a single ounce of respect in two long years. “They knew the dangers when they agreed to help our network.”

“They knew the Nazis were a risk. This . . . This was something else,” Phillip said.