Page 50 of All Her Ghosts

Department of Necromantic Research. Government.

“That’s three,” Bas says.

Three?A cold current of fear sweeps through my body, nerve endings jangling warning. I only saw two.

“Yeah.” Lips pursed, Cain swears. “They’re scrambling. Highways are out. They’ll have agents monitoring at every speed trap and tollbooth.”

“Why is DNR here?” I demand, voice shaking. “Why areyouhere?”

Cain pulls out onto the main road, face grim.

“Making up for past mistakes,” he says. “If DNR finds either of you, you will disappear into the guts of the government and never be seenagain until they figure out how you can best serve them, then deploy you in some soon-to-be-shithole country as the weapon they always wanted.”

“I am not aweapon.” I hate the way my voice shakes, the waterworks threatening in my throat, but the words tumble out one after another. “I’m just a random teenager. And you’re, what? Helping me? After you just told me I’m some kind of fugitive, apparently? Why? Why would you do that? What does it matter to you if I disappear?”

Voice dark, Bas says, “It matters to me,” with the finality of a coffin closing. Like that’s all the answer I need. Like it even makes sense.

“That’s no kind of excuse for—for whatever this is! Kidnapping? Aiding and abetting? Treason?”

Staring out at the encroaching night, Cain sucks in a deep breath. His mouth folds in a determined line.

He says, “Seventeen years ago, I worked asset protection for the government.Deepgovernment. As in, I officially no longer exist government. I was assigned to something called Project Demeter. I don’t know what it was for, what they were trying to build or do. My job was to protect the incoming shipments and later, the scientists.”

Cold dread washes over me. I scan Cain’s face but can’t parse his empty expression. I spin around to look at Bas.Stillhe won’t look at me. Hunched forward, arms tight across his chest, he stares out the window. Every line of his body screams tension, grief, dread—a dead man waiting for the formality of the ax.

“Shipments of what?” I ask.

Cain glances at me. Something flickers across his face, faster than I can place it, but he doesn’t stare through me like my mother, aimingbelievability like a brick to the head. He watches me because he wants to, moves his gaze back to the road only because he has to. Not an excuse to look away but a… regret.

The way he looks at me—it feels like an apology.

“Officially, I don’t know. If the government asks, I was a good little soldier. I signed for shipments and asked no questions.”

“And unofficially?”

A muscle flickers in his jaw. He forces it still.

“At first, they started out as donated cadavers, medical school stuff. Came in official morgue transports. But time went on and they got younger and younger, started arriving in unmarked containers. I signed for… for kids. Then toddlers, infants.” When he breathes in, I hear the catch in it, his eyes on the road distant. “Their transport freezers were sosmall.”

I don’t know what to say, what to ask. I’ve spent so long demanding answers but now, faced with a deluge of them, I can’t break my head above water. The ocean in my chest seeps into my lungs. My soul doubles over my hands. I feel like I’m drowning in my own flesh.

“Bas and I were experiments?” I whisper. “So when you say weapons…?”

“We worked skeleton crews at night. Only asset protection was supposed to man the facility between midnight and 0600. One night, Chloe showed up with a couple other scientists after-hours, carrying some kind of homemade transport. She had a body with her I never signed for, started up the machines.”

The steering wheel creaks under his fingers.

“I knew better. I knew—” He bites the sentence off, pauses, resets his face to smooth stone and starts again. “I should have stopped her.I should have called it in, but it was three in the morning. Nobody answers for glorified bodyguards, and I didn’t have the authority to act alone, to stop her.”

Cain sneers, lips curling in disgust, but in that second, he’s not here with us—he’s staring backward in time, glowering at his past self.

“No—that’s not true; that’s just a convenient excuse for the paperwork. I knew what I was doing. What IthoughtI was doing. Chloe was grieving, she was a wreck—andIknew it wouldn’t work, it never had before, so what was the harm in turning a blind eye to a bastardized science experiment of a funeral? I thought I could grit my teeth and bear it and by the next day it’d be over. We could put that little body in the ground and put it behind us.”

“‘This is somePet Sematarybullshit,’” I choke, voice cracking, and Cain’s whole body jerks. “That’s what you said. What you told her when the ceiling came down. ‘This is somePet Sematarybullshit and that isnotyour daughter.’”

Suddenly, Cain can’t look at me. He faces the road, shoulders bowed, jaw locked. My chest hurts. I swivel in my seat to look at Bas, seeking his eyes across the distance and the darkness. Now, finally, I catch him staring back, his black eyes so sorry, one hand open on his knee and halfway reaching—forever reaching, never getting close enough to grab.

My throat spasms, choking on a sob. I force it down.