Sydney already knew how to reach inside a body and pull it back to life. But what if the thing had been dead for a long time? What if the body wasn’t all there? How much did there have to be, for her to find the thread? How little?

Dol snuffled in the grass nearby, and across the field Mitch leaned back against a slope, a battered paperback open on one knee, a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose.

They were in Capital City, as hilly as Fulton had been flat, a place with as many parks as skyscrapers.

She liked it here. Wished they could stay. Knew they wouldn’t.

They were only here because Victor was searching for someone.

Another EO. Someone who could fix what she’d broken.

Something cracked under Syd’s foot.

She looked down and saw the crumpled body of a young finch. The bird had been there awhile, long enough for its small body to sink into the moss. Long enough for the feathers to fall away and a wing to come detached, the brittle bones shattering like an eggshell under her shoe.

Syd sank to her knees, crouching over the tiny corpse.

It was one thing, she’d learned, to breathe life back into a body.

Another thing entirely to rebuild the body itself. You only got one chance—Sydney had learned that the hard way, threads unraveling, bones crumbling to ash under her touch—but the only way to get stronger was to practice. And Sydney wanted to get stronger—she needed to get stronger—so she curled her fingers gently over the bird’s remains, and closed her eyes, and reached.

Cold rippled through her as she searched the darkness for a thread, a filament, a wisp of light. It was there somewhere, so faint she couldn’t see it, not yet. She had to go by feel instead. Her lungs ached, but she kept reaching, knew she was almost, almost— Sydney felt the bird twitch under her palm.

Flutter, like a pulse.

And then—

Sydney’s eyes flew open, a faint plume of cold brushing her lips as the bird was rising on unsteady wings. Buffeting itself up into the branches of the tree.

Syd rocked back on her heels and let out a shaky breath.

“Well, that was quite a trick.”

Her head snapped up, and for a second—just a second—she found herself staring at a ghost. White-blond hair, and ice blue eyes, a dazzling smile set into a heart-shaped face.

But it wasn’t Serena.

Up close, the girl had higher cheeks than her sister, a broader chin, eyes that danced with a mischievous light. Dol’s lip curled a little, flashing teeth, but when the stranger held out her hand, the dog sniffed it cautiously, and then calmed.

“Good boy,” said the girl who wasn’t Serena. There was a lilt in her voice, a kind of music. Her eyes flicked up to Sydney. “Did I scare you?”

“No,” she managed, her throat constricting. “You just looked—like someone else.”