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“You don’t get to decide this.”

“We can decide together then,” said Adam, raising an arm. “All in favor, say—”

“No.”

“This really is about Kevin, ain’t it?” said Adam, smiling like a dog, his accent shifting fractionally, so the twang was a little longer than Gracelynn’s, the vowels thicker.

Kevin, I remember thinking. He was using Kevin’s voice on their widow.

“You couldn’t save your blackbird so you’re going to save this crow?

Poor Gracelynn. Must have just about killed you when you watched your best beloved die.

The way they screamed. I’m going to hear the sound every night for the rest of my damn life. What about you?”

“Quit it.” I stood up. There were certain lines you didn’t cross.

“I’d be careful on that high horse, Alessa,” said Adam now in Gracelynn’s breathy tones and their molasses-sweet accent, a move that had me nauseous. “Fall and something might stomp your spine to dust. Didn’t you just murder a certain girl?”

“Adam Kingsley, stop talking right now.”

If they lived long enough to wrinkle into a little old person, that voice of theirs would mature into a power that could speak the universe to a stop and a new start: theirs was a voice to end worlds, to begin new ones.

Sometimes, I wonder if the Christians had been right.

Maybe there really was a god who jump-started creation with the phrase, Let there be light, and the Bible’s only error was thinking anything happens in linear chronology.

Gracelynn wasn’t quite there yet but they weren’t far.

Adam rocked backward from the force of that command, his eyes rolling up to the whites.

It took a good thirty seconds before he could speak again.

“That was good,” he said, mopping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Almost good enough to make me think about never saying a damn word again for the rest of my life. Do you ever wish you were more than almost good enough?” The mask dropped enough that we could see the solipsistic contempt he held toward them, toward us, toward everything that wasn’t him.

His grin wide and cruel, his eyes as expressive as plastic.

“Do you ever wish you were good enough? Good enough to keep the one thing that ever loved you alive.”

“The Librarian,” I blurted, a new idea forming as the words left my mouth.

An expectant silence laid itself over the group.

“Let’s deal with the fucking Librarian before we start offing each other. Eight people have a better shot of doing that than four.”

To my surprise, Eoan came to bolster my ludicrous proposal.

He passed each of us a skewer and Rowan and I handed ours immediately to Portia, who ate it all, branch and meat, cooing with animal pleasure; Minji turned hers over round and round and round, contemplating the meat; Ford ate his with a groaning pleasure.

Adam turned his down, expression impish, so a fourth stick went to Portia.

“Alessa’s right,” said Eoan. “The Librarian’s probably still full and tired. If there was ever a time she could be defeated, it’s now.”

“Or we could just feed Rowan to the faculty,” persisted Adam.

“Half live,” said Ford unhelpfully. “If Rowan dies.”

“Sullivan would have taken down the Librarian himself,” said Gracelynn.

“Sullivan,” said Adam, “is fucking dead. If he was worth anything, he wouldn’t have just stood there as they devoured him.”

He hadn’t just stood there. Sullivan had fought.

Not immediately, but he’d fought. He’d called his cicada-gods and they’d come loyally to his aid.

But it hadn’t amounted to anything. I remember how he’d struggled even as he began deliquescing under all that concentrated stomach acid, how he had bobbed again and again to the surface of that mass, only to be dragged under.

Each time Sullivan emerged, there was less of him: less meat, less organ.

Until he was only growingly porous bone—and eyes, rolling in panicked circles—through which I could see spongy marrow and brain. It took him forever to die.

But he had fought.

If I lived to be a hundred, which seemed unlikely then given my circumstances, I would remember that Sullivan Rivers had fought.

Minji, perched on the armrest of the battered couch, swung her legs as she said, “You know, we’ve only seen Ford read one organ. Perhaps we need him to take a proper look at the rest of them. That way we can be sure of who is making the right decision.”

“You know what?” said Adam with a dazzling smile, striding over to Ford. “Let’s do it.”

With that, Adam drove his fist straight into the other man’s belly . His knuckles sank through fabric and flesh like so much butter warming on a counter, his arm igniting when he was elbow-deep in Ford’s abdominal captivity, and Ford screamed like a pig halfway in the slaughter.

With excruciating care, Adam removed loop after loop of blackened intestine.

“Tell me what happens, oracle,” said Adam in his normal voice, smiling throughout, smiling like it was nothing, like it couldn’t possibly hurt.

Ford squealed in idiot torment, a black stain leaching across the front of his jeans. The air filled with the smell of piss, of bowels dispensing what little they’d collected.

“You’re killing him,” Gracelynn, snarling, desperate, half rising. “Stop it!”

“Haruspices don’t die that easily,” said Adam, holding on for a moment longer before he released his grip on Ford, flinging him away, viscera suppurating out of the cauterized hole in the other man’s belly. Ford tumbled forward, facedown on the mosaiced floor. I thought I heard Minji giggle.

“Happy?” said Adam, looking at me, ash sleeting from his fingers. “Don’t tell me I never do anything for you.”

“I won’t,” said Minji. “We promise.”

“You’re a fucking bastard, Adam. You’re a monster,” came Gracelynn’s bellowing rejoinder, and I could chart in the inflection of Adam’s smile, her transmutation in his mind, how she went from risible novelty to an insult that required addressing.

But before he could do anything more, the room filled with the sound of Eoan screaming.