She got a six of clubs.

“Better luck next time,” said Mitch, pulling his laptop over. “Okay, let’s see what kind of experiments we can do in this kitchen . . .”

They were halfway through creating a homemade lava lamp when the door swung open, and Victor walked in. He looked tired, his face tight, as if he were in pain. She felt the air go heavy on her shoulders.

“You hungry?” asked Mitch, but Victor waved him away and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. He took up his tablet and began absently swiping through. Mitch set a cup of black coffee at his elbow.

Sydney perched on the counter and studied Victor.

Whenever she’d resurrected an animal, or a person, she’d done it by visualizing a thread, something floating in the darkness. She pictured grabbing that thread and pulling it toward her, drawing them back into the light. But when it was done, she never really let go of the thread.

Didn’t know how, really. So she could feel it now when Victor was home, and when he was out pacing the city, could feel it still, no matter how far he went, as if his energy, his stress, vibrated up the invisible rope until the tremor reached her.

And so, even without the heavy air, the way Mitch looked at Victor, the way Victor didn’t look at her, she knew that something was not right.

“What is it, Sydney?” he asked without looking up.

Tell me the truth, she thought. Just tell me the truth.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

Victor’s cold blue eyes drifted up, meeting hers.

His mouth twitched into a smile, the way it did when he was lying.

“Never better.”

XIII

THREE YEARS AGO

CAPITAL CITY

SYDNEY wove around the base of the tree, sunlight dappling her skin.

She’d drawn a face card—the queen of diamonds—but the weather was so nice she would have played the spade Victor had slipped her just to get out of the apartment.

Victor.

Behind her eyes, Sydney saw him buckling against the door, saw him fighting back a scream as his body curled on the floor. There had been pain, too, a jolt of something straight through her chest, and then darkness, but that part didn’t haunt her.

Victor haunted her. His pain haunted her. His dying haunted her.

Because it was Sydney’s fault.

He had been counting on her, and she’d let him down.

She’d brought him back wrong.

Broken.

That was the secret. The lie.

“It feels like dying.”

Sydney kept her eyes on the mossy ground as she paced. If anyone looked her way, they would probably assume she was searching for flowers, but it was late spring, the time when baby birds flung themselves out of the nest and hoped to fly. Not all of them made it.

And Sydney was always searching for things to revive. Subjects to practice on.