Page 59 of All Her Ghosts

An upside-down caduceus, skull-headed and dragon-winged, its twinned snakes with fangs bared and drooling.

Department of Necromantic Research.

“How did they catch up that fast?” I gasp, barely louder than an in-drawn breath. “They didn’t even think we were headed in this direction—they said south on the TV. We changed the plates!”

Bas shrugs, shoulders hard and bent.

“Outmaneuvered us. Guess the old man got sloppy.” He digs a fist into his stomach, bent double around a hurt too late to fix. “We should have ditched the RV, changed vehicles. It must be too recognizable.”

“So he takes the RV andruns?” I seize Bas’s arm, prying it away. “He’ll never get out. They’re already at the gates, he…”

Suddenly, I understand—the gravestone certainty in Bas’s eyes, the rot in my mouth, the pounding ocean in my chest breathinghome-home-homein haunting, awful eagerness.

“He’s buying us time,” I realize.

His jaw hard enough to crack glass, Bas nods. He sweeps his curls back from his eyes, glares around the parking lot.

“We need to find a new ride. Have to swap plates but they’re watching for us,” he murmurs, scanning. “So… two cars, butt to butt.”

A black SUV rounds the corner into Lot C. Bas swears, glancing around for a swift exit, but I already know there’s nowhere we can run that they won’t see. Grabbing him by the hoodie, I drag Bas forward and, wearing him like a blanket, barrel-roll us both under the jeep.

Not my best plan. My temple hits something metal under the car. My knee bashes hard into the gravel—and his crotch, too, judging by how Bas wheezes. Head spinning, I tuck close under his jaw, trying hard not to vomit. Thankfully, Bas retains just enough wherewithal to slap out a hand, dragging my carpetbag in after us. He slings it behind me so it lands in the darkness beside the wheel well—just in time. A second later, the SUV pulls down our row, achingly slow.

Like an instinct, Bas’s hand cups the back of my head, cradling me close, protecting me from errant rocks and further muffler-relatedinjuries. Pressed tight to his chest, my face burns in his cast-off heat, our shallow breaths pooling in the divot of his collarbone. I can’t help closing my eyes, drowning in the scent of him—sour straws and silver stars, pomegranate seeds that burn the whole way down. He has no right smelling that good in a crisis, minutes after shotgunning half a pig’s worth of meat.

After an entire eternity, the SUV creeps past. Then, suddenly, it abandons its sweep, spitting gravel into a hard right between parked cars and picking up speed. Answering a call? Target acquired?

Bas’s face crumples into a snarl. He scrambles out from under the jeep with eyes blazing, teeth bared, fingernails clawing rivulets in the dirt. Every line of his body bends to run toward Cain. Only desperate effort drags him back. He rips his backpack open, savaging the contents, and comes up with a shim and a crooked wire.

“We have to go now,” he chokes. He tears his eyes away from the road, and the look on his face when he stares at me is open grief. “No time for finesse.”

I grab his hand before he can jimmy open the window and set off an alarm alerting the whole parking lot to our presence.

“Let me do it,” I urge. “New cars have electronic locks.”

No time to prepare, no time to lose, I pop my seams, shove my hand through the door. Still humming with power from the diner, I flood the battery. My meatsuit only complains a little. The engine thrums to life, the dashboard blinks awake. With one finger, surgically precise, I flick a spark at the locking mechanism.

The passenger door clicks open.

Bas wrenches it open, throws his bag into the back seat, and startsto climb inside. Snapping back into my body, I catch him by his hem, drag him back until he has no choice but to look at me.

“What?” he snarls.

“What about Cain?” I demand. “The government is after us and now they’re after him. If we leave him behind—”

“We’ll see him again,” Bas grinds out between his teeth—not a kind lie, but a vast and terrible grief.

We will see him again. Not whole and hale, but dead.

We will open the door for him. We will ferry him across the river.

Sharper than a gut-punch, I exhale, “No.”

“What choice do we have?” Bas demands, eyes wet. “The more time we cost him, the worse this will go.”

And Cain is not Bas’s father—he’s something bigger, something worse. Baschosehim. Helovedhim. Went to him for help when the world fell apart. And Cain gave it, without question, all so my mother could have himkilled for it.Unless—

My mother, locked in her basement with her ghost maps, her password-protected computers, her traps. The thing she was so busy building toprotect me, always searching for the next threat, the next house, the next place to hide. Why would she risk filing an Amber Alert, when she’s spent seventeen years concealing my existence? When she loved me enough to spend a lifetime running, why would she stop now? Why would she send government-sanctioneddeathto hunt a man down? And why would she give those hounds a direction?