She was no longer sorry she’d killed the bogan. She only wished she could have killed the other one, too. She’d like to give them all a taste of their own medicine.

Her gaze was blurred by her tears, her ears filled with the sound she was making, so the first indication she got that something had changed was when she realized that she could no longer feel the cold that had been emanating from the dead little man. He was warm now to her touch. She sniveled, wiped her eyes and nose on the shoulder of her T-shirt, then looked down.

The little man’s pale skin had changed. Now the pure alabaster of it was mottled with varying shades of brown.

Where it was wet from her tears, she realized.

She had no idea what it meant, but she dabbed her fingers in the wet areas and spread her tears to where they hadn’t touched the little man’s skin. Wherever she touched the white skin, she left behind brown, as though she’d dipped her hand in mud and was smearing it on him.

Then suddenly his eyes opened, and she was looking down into a gaze as dark and warm as Walker’s. Deer eyes. They were unfocused, seeing through her or beyond her. She went still with shock, unable to move, unable to even breathe. Slowly the little man’s gaze focused, found her face.

“Why did you kill me?” he asked with a calmness Lizzie couldn’t begin to feel. “Why did you kill me and then bring me back?”

“I . . .” She had to clear her throat, remember to breathe. “I didn’t kill you. The bogans did.”

“Bogans . . . I don’t remember bogans.”

“It must have been the bogans. There’s nobody else here. There’s nothing here. I’ve never heard a forest so still.”

The little man studied her for a long moment.

“Can I get up?” he finally asked.

“What? Of course.”

He’d been lying with his head on her lap all this time, having to look up at her. She put a hand under his head and helped him to sit up beside her. He held his hands out in front of himself and gave his fingers an experimental wriggle, then touched his face and his chest. The wounds were gone.

“I think I remember a blind man,” he said, his gaze returning to her face. “Hesmelledlikeafish.”

Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t know anybody like that.”

But the little man didn’t appear to be listening. “He spoke my name and I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t slip away. And then he . . . then he pulled my soul out of my chest with another word and cast it away . . . far into some darkness . . .”

He smiled as he told her the last.

“That’s awful,” she said.