Page 72 of All Her Ghosts

“Yeah, I bet you’d love that,” he says. “Bet thatcomprehensive apologycomes with three hots and a cot too. No freedom or sunlight ever again but, hey, what can you do, right?”

Way off at the far end of the street, more black SUVs creep into position. Idling so slow they can’t be touching the gas at all, they inch together, bumper to bumper, blocking the road. Casually as I can, I sneak a glance behind me. Four houses away, the cul-de-sac ends without an outlet, just an empty circle of houses overgrown with asphodel and weeds and broken glass. I can’t see what sits behind it, but with the bridge’s shadow covering the farthest yard, I’d bet money it’s fenced off. That just leaves us the way we came in—a shale embankment too treacherous to climb in any kind of hurry—and on the opposite end, the river.

“If I wanted you in a cell, I’d have apprehended you both when you started your new school.” Her smile returns, so gentle and kind I want to scream. “I could have kept you from ever meeting if I’d wanted to, held you in facilities at opposite ends of the country. I didn’t.”

I roll my eyes at her lie. Sure, maybe she knew she was looking for something, but she didn’t know that something wasus. If this woman knew what we were, what we could do, she’d have snatched us up the second the ghost swarm hit the school and—

And Cain would still be alive.

I still. Bas’s hand clamps down on mine, misreading my reaction as fear. His eyes flash gold.

“No,” he says, an ominous surety in his tone. “You couldn’t have.”

The nurse shrugs. Something about her glitters when she moves, like a heat shimmer. A vibration. The bees in my head buzz louder, warning.

“Well, we’ll never know, will we? Because I felt it would be irresponsible to try. I know it’s difficult to believe given the circumstances, but I want what’s best for you. I’m not the bad guy here.”

Holding tight to Bas, I slip outside of my head ever so slightly, squinting with my party trick. My stomach turns, echoing with nauseous wrongness. I don’t like the way the air hazes and warps around her chest.

No—not just her chest. It’s an entire vest. It’sbody armor. And it’s quiet, easy to miss in the shadow of the droning ghost fence, the music pounding in our ears, but I thinkthat’swhat’s whispering to me.

Iknowthis feeling. I pull Cain closer, tuck him behind me. Maybe if I block him with my body, the miniature trap she’s wearing—so like the thing in my mother’s basement, all cruel runes and ugly prisms; like the fence up ahead, beckoning with its sick siren song—won’t wrench at him so badly.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I tell her through my teeth.

The nurse smiles sadly.

“But where else can you go? You’re such a bright kid; I know you see the damage you’re causing simply by existing. And that’s not your fault—no one’s blaming you—we’re just trying to help you.” She tips her head, eyebrows knitted. Gently, kindly, she offers, “I’m sure you have so many questions.”

I’ve had seventeen years to learn to spot a lie. And this woman is not my mother, but she never stops meeting my eyes.

I squeeze Bas’s burning hand so tight I lose feeling in my own, nothing left but the boiling water, the cooling, broken shards. I know he must be hurting—know I’m hurting him—but I can’t stop. I’m the only thing holding him back, but worse,heis the only thing holdingme. This close to the fence, to the ghosts wrapped around that awful woman’s chest like armor, the ocean in my own chest storms. The whispers swell in my ears, begging me to leave my body, a funerary drumbeat made perverse and sickening.

I stare at this woman, her gun drawn during an attempt at peace, hiding a travesty of science beneath her crisp black suit, and I want to scream—how dare you? How dare you wear suffering like a trophy? So proud of this thing you helped cause—of this agony.

And I want to laugh—how simple. Howhuman. How easy it would be to reach out and smother the light in her chest like an errant spark. To rip out her soul and crush the candle flames between my hands. Do they think this little void, this mockery of my divinity, can stop me? I am enormous. I amendless. I caught the candle flames of a dozen souls in the palm of my hand andsqueezeduntil they simply… ceased.

How devastatingly simple to erase what took so many lifetimes to create.

My throat suddenly seizes tight as Cain’s words haunt me—you have a responsibility—and Iknow. I know he’s right. I know what I owe. These government assholes look at me and see a child, a weapon, the start and end to a thousand future wars. They weren’t there when I hung the stars or when Bas plucked them down again. They weren’t there in the asphodel or Helheim or under a library table. There is nothing any of them can tell me that I don’t already know.

Clouds coalesce overhead. Mist steams from the asphalt, sunbeams catching rainbows in a rising frost. Ice creeps up the remnants of broken windows. One of us is shaking; I can’t tell if it’s me or my harvest god.

“I’m sureyouhave a lot a questions,” I tell her, my voice tombstone flat. “I’m sure you have another experiment all lined up to break the world even worse. I’m sure you have a holster for me somewhere, just like that gun you’re pretending you’re not holding, so you can put me away when you don’t need me, save me for another rainy day, for another war.”

Her smile falters. She recovers it a second too late, saying, “Are you accusing us of having great plans for you? Well, of course we do. I’ll admit it freely. With your—well, talents—we can help people. We can end wars, end suffering, end—”

“Death?” I demand.

The nurse frowns. “Well, yes.”

You know, I almost wish she hadn’t said it? Maybe if she’d lied, if she’d let me pretend, we both could have walked away and I wouldn’t have to do this. “You still haven’t learned. You don’t knowanything.”

“We know what you are, Persephone.”

I smile, pained, shaking my head.

“That’s not my name.” And turning to Bas, I tell him, “Catch me.”