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The desolation in her eyes lifted somewhat. “Really?”

“Really.”

“When you thought Jack had died, how did you keep from going crazy?”

Didn’t. “I believed Tess would turn back time, and I’d save him.”

“But after you found her body and thought him gone forever, how then?”

I considered evading Lark’s question again or giving her a pat answer. But if I valued our friendship, didn’t I owe her an honest answer? “I imagined I had a tourniquet around my heart that I tightened until I went numb. With every memory of Jack, I would repeat, Twist, tighten, constrict.” I’d done it again when he’d driven away two weeks ago. A bloodless heart can’t hurt.

“I should try my own tourniquet. Something to keep me from losing it.” Lark swiped at her tears. “Whoever said that it’s better to have loved and lost is full of more shit than a bull.”

I wondered if whoever said that had loved and lost. They definitely hadn’t more than once.

Could I survive another loss of love?

Lark added, “At least you had Death to live for.”

Oh, the irony of that statement. “You’ve got friends. And a mission to save the world.” She looked unimpressed. “When we faced the Emperor a couple of months ago, he told me he likes burning bodies, and he’ll keep doing it until none are left. Those who don’t burn will starve.” Hoping to awaken her single-minded pursuit, I said, “If no one’s left, how will we reincarnate in a future game? In that scenario, you will not see Finn ever again.”

Red flooded Lark’s eyes, and every animal in the room shot to attention in a chorus of growls—even the baby fox. “Then I need to grow another killer beast to help us fight him.”

I frowned. “You were always planning to, weren’t you? Lark, what are you thinking?”

She nibbled her lip with a sharp fang. Then she snapped her fingers. Three monkeys hopped off their climbing perch to clamper under the bed.

What they dragged out made the breath leave my lungs.

4

The Hunter

Day 616 A.F.

“Mère de Dieu,” I muttered when Gabe swept our spotlight over the destruction in an otherwise dark city.

Washington, DC was a corpse of its old self.

The Beast prowled the deserted streets, passing one ruin after another. Graffiti covered the Lincoln Memorial’s walls. Bodies littered the frozen Reflecting Pool. The Washington Memorial obelisk had snapped in half, the tip stabbing the ground.

“I’d always wanted to come here,” I said, but field trips for kids at Basin High had been a laughable dream. Fundraisers sometimes scored us a couple hundred bucks to help with the asbestos removal. We’d been taught to expect little, the only lesson we’d taken away from that school.

“I had no idea cities like this even existed.” Over these weeks on the road, Gabe had confessed that coming across old postcards pained him because he’d never seen anything outside his mountain home before Day Zero. “Had no idea the world had been full of wonders.”

At least I’d gotten to experience the bayou, the moss-draped cypress, and that southern breeze. “I knew about the wonders out there but didn’t figure I’d see any of them.” Thought I’d be stuck in prison, me.

“Do you believe Patrick and the Chariot will be here after all this time?”

“Got to.” If they’d even returned to DC.

With the snow and all the pileups, the trip here had taken us a month. Gabe and I had switched out stints behind the wheel after I’d taught him how to drive.

The Archangel had been excited about his new skill, but then he’d flushed with guilt. “I experience delight, and yet my best friend might be hurt or worse.”

I knew how he felt. Whenever I found myself not completely miserable, I’d think about Evie at Death’s castle. Was she scared about her upcoming labor? Nervous about being back in that place—

Movement out of the corner of my eye. Bagger? Human?

I exhaled a gust of breath. Just a plastic bag floating on the wind. People weren’t even producing them anymore; must be spawning on their own.

I glanced at Gabe. “You scent any survivors?” We’d spotted none in DC so far. And no Bagmen.

Whenever we’d found a zombie on the road trapped in a car or under rubble, I would try to communicate with Sol, like I’d seen Evie do. Only hisses and snapping teeth answered me.

Gabe rolled down the window to smell the frigid winds. “There are no nearby humans. The stench of Bagger seems omnipresent, yet I spot none moving about. I would have assumed this city contained legions of them. Perhaps the Azey killed them all.”

The Azey. The mention of my former army made sorrow well up in me. I wished I could talk to the soldiers who’d survived, but Circe had said they’d scattered to the winds after picking clean the Lovers’ bunker. “Can’t be the Azey. They never occupied DC.”