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My eyes pivot to the door, to his mistake.

I’m going home.

Chapter

Three

My fingers feel the way in the dark tunnel, more stone floor and walls, only as wide as the door itself. Kelt grabs my ankles from behind and pulls as I crawl away, bringing me to my stomach.

“Let me go!”

“Quiet. You’ll get us killed.”

“Now you’re worried about dying?”

He tugs me toward him. “Get back in here.”

“I’m getting the fuck out of here and going home, with or without you, Kelt. I have to finish my map.” An absurd priority, but it’s the closest thing to an escape for me. He has to understand. I need the lead between my fingers, the sketches forming one stroke at a time, the landscape in my head pouring onto the paper. My latest map unfolds in my mind, evoking thesmell of pine and unbeaten paths. The lure of unturned corners. Rivers that seek to be followed…

“Ever!”

“Huh?” I turn onto one elbow, looking behind me at Kelt’s weary face staring back at mine.

“I’m asking you to come back and talk this through with me, and you’re not even answering, as usual.” He mumbles the last bit.

I maintain a delicate line between friend and person he tolerates, and my temper doesn’t help. Some days, I think he’ll walk away, that when I say goodnight, it might be the last time, like everyone else in my past—too put off by myquirksto stick around for the good stuff. If there is any.

It’s my visions of death that drive everyone away. They don’t have to know I have them to see my reaction, the way I freeze or fall to my knees, the look that must take over my face. Maybe that’s why I don’t know who my parents are, why I’ve spent my life trying to find them—I scared them off. Or maybe I’m lost, and they’re looking for me. Or not. But every incomplete file and dead end only makes me crave answers more. Whoever and wherever they are, they’re mine, dead or alive, and I’m going to find them. Because the pain of the unknown—the questioning and searching—has to be worse than knowing.

Only Cam was aware of my visions. I’ve known her since before I knew better than to tell anyone. I asked her why I had them, what they were for, how to stop them, but she always shut me down. And I still can’t explain them. Cam was always there when each family I lived with inevitably sent me away, claiming I had strange behavior and wandered off far too often, as if curiosity were a defect. She would hand me a tiny package with a ring inside—a gift, an attempt to keep my heart in place, I suppose. Then she’d take my hand and lead me away, from onefamily to the next. Soon, I had more rings than I could fit on my fingers.

I didn’t go through all that to die at the hands of a madman. “Say what you’re going to say. I’m not going back.”

Kelter adjusts his grip and slides me along the tunnel floor, closer to him. “We’re safe in this room. We can keep watch.”

I dig deep into the depths of my self-restraint for some patience, but my tone doesn’t reflect it. “How long?”

“A few hours.” His eyes crinkle, desperate.

“That’s long enough for us to be brutally murdered six times over. Are you trying to make it easy for him? I’m going to fall apart here, Kelt. We both are. We couldn’t even see a door right in front of us.”

“I’m not sure it’ll be any better outside this room.”

“Anything is better than this room.”Better than certain death.

“You don’t know what we’re up against.” He’s not pleading anymore. It’s a warning.

“You don’t either.” I tug my ankles free, and he drops his forehead to the tunnel floor, flattened by defeat. That’s the thing about him. He gives in. Not only on trivial things, but also when I want him to fight…with me, for me, for himself, for anything. Like when the cashier at the pastry shop refused to ring me up because part of her roof caught fire when I burned down the house next door. He hauled me away, kicking and cursing.

I continue my slow upward crawl. Kelter follows, no doubt revolting in silence. With the wooden door far behind us, the last of the light dissolves. It’s funny how everything sharpens in its absence, how the darkness becomes so alluring. The stone grates my hands and jabs at my knees. I try to match Kelt’s steady breaths, but I have no rhythm in me, only a mess of erratic vital functions.

“There’s nothing here,” he whispers. “Let’s go back.”

No.I’m silent—as quiet as the pitch black—undetected and on my way to freedom, away from the stifling death that awaited me in that room. Up and up. Faint voices hum in the distance. I check the walls for openings, a fork in the tunnel, a say in my damn fate, but the tunnel offers only a single path forward—or back. And I’m not returning to that room, that much I choose.

The darkness hugs me, the walls of the passage creeping closer. I lower my head to keep it from scraping against the ceiling. Water drips on my neck and back. My hands splash in shallow puddles on the uneven floor, then my trust in all things solid falls away along with the stone below me, and daylight attacks, forcing my eyes closed.

Kelter screams, my name sounding behind me in the chaos of the fall through the trapdoor. My mind panics, and I’m thrown into a vision.