Page 26

AUTUMN

I t’s strange watching someone else break when I feel like I already have.

Jace’s hands were bleeding from where he gripped the crowbar too tight. The car’s windows lay shattered like shards of fallen ice. At least he still feels something. I’m not sure I do.

Once the anger subsided, and I realized I was at a dead end, all the fight drained from my body.

I wish I could scream and grab the crowbar from Jace and take a whack at the car myself, but my breakdown at the docks took that from me.

The only thing I can do now is walk around, play with this knife, and think about every mistake I’ve ever made.

I walk the edges of the camp in slow, silent loops.

Luna follows at my heels as my new shadow.

The perimeter is nothing more than cracked pavement, sections of fence I never noticed before that are rusted and falling apart, and a line of fire-blackened trees that look like they’re still trying to grow.

My boots crunch over leaves. The knife Caspian gave me rests against my palm. I turn it over and over with my fingers, expecting the movement to ground me. It doesn’t. Luna’s ears twitch at the sound of metal against metal nearby, but she stays close, matching my pace.

I circle back around and sit behind what’s left of the car after Jace’s outburst. The metal’s dented and caved in, and glass glitters beneath the tires like salt crushed into the dirt.

I curl my knees up to my chest and rest my chin on them.

Luna settles down beside me with her warm body pressing against my leg, and I think.

About Summer, all the names carved into the loose floorboard, the music box, the many rotters that have failed to eat me, the guy whose face got eaten.

None of it helps. In fact, the thinking only makes things worse.

My wrist aches, my knees are still sore from hitting the ground, and my chest is empty.

Jace leans against a large mangled cinderblock about fifteen feet from the fire, but he still stares into the flames like they’re the ghosts that haunt him. For all I know, they probably are.

Caspian stirs something in a metal tin, working to get whatever rations we have to taste like actual food.

Mars sits across from them, flipping a knife between his fingers. He looks like he’s pretending to be calm, but the small tremor in his foot betrays him.

I see them, but they don’t see me. Maybe they do, though. Maybe they just don’t know what to say anymore.

They don’t make a big deal out of it when I go back to them and slide into a spot near the fire, but not too close.

Enough to feel the warmth, even though the chill stays lodged in my bones.

Luna follows again and settles herself right in front of me before lying down close enough that she forces me to wrap my arms around her.

Her fur is warm against my chest, and for a moment, the emptiness doesn’t feel quite so vast .

No one says anything at first until Mars shifts and glances over. “Hey. You want something warm? Cas made this…thing. It’s brown and vaguely edible.”

I shake my head and rest my chin on top of Luna’s head. “I’m fine.”

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Mars looks like he wants to argue, but Jace shakes his head. None of them argue, and that’s somehow worse. I miss their noise and their bickering.

I try to talk to fill the void, to tell a joke, to ask what the plan is next and where we go from here, but the words don’t fit in my mouth. They fall apart before they make it out. So instead, I mumble something about needing sleep.

But how can I sleep when I have concrete proof that Summer has been taken by dangerous men, and I’ll likely never be able to find her again? We scouted every inch of the area around the docks, and still didn’t find a single clue about where to go next.

I turn my back to them and curl up on the edge of the circle of firelight.

Luna repositions herself to curl around me as my living blanket.

The flames flicker against my shoulder blades.

It’s warm, but it’s not enough. Nothing is enough right now, but Luna’s breathing and the feel of her body against mine are something.

My eyes drop closed. Not because I want to sleep, but because it’s the only way I can stop watching the people who keep trying to save me, as though they’re starting to believe they’re failing. I don’t want to add that to my conscience.

Before I drift off, I hear one of them speak in a low and sad tone. “We’re losing her.”

Another says, “We’re doing everything we can.”

The words aren’t meant for me. They’re whispering to each other. To themselves. To the ghosts hanging over this place like smoke.

I wish I could tell them…I know. I see them trying.

The words don’t come, so I bury my face deeper into Luna’s fur and let her be the one thing still tethering me to this world as sleep finally drags me under.

I dream of voices I can’t place, and hands I can’t hold.