“I don’t know.”
Disgusted, she left him and picked up Row’s necklace. The chain was sticky with blood, but she wiped it clean with her shirtsleeve, her movements almost absent, clutching the sapphire in her hand. Row should never have had it anyway; it wasn’t his to begin with. He had cheated to get it. Her eyes fell on Jonathan’s corpse again, and she felt tears leak down her cheeks, not only for Jonathan but for all of it, the Town’s ruined potential, so far sunk as to allow whatever had happened here. She bent to Jonathan’s body, stroking his hair from his forehead. All those years of keeping him from harm, and this was how it ended. And yet deep down she was confused, for beneath the clear outcome she saw here—Row vanished, Jonathan in a heap on the floor—she sensed that nothing was right. This was not how it ended. Just beneath this, almost seen, was a different ending: Jonathan dead, yes, but she had never seen his body. She had fled, fled and gone, leaving Row and Gavin to whatever hell might await traitors to the Town . . . but even as she tried to make it come clear, this second vision vanished, dissipated in smoke. She had not fled; she was still here, and in the thought Katie felt responsibility descend upon her like a mantle.
“Gavin. Get up.”
He looked up at her, his eyes wide and fearful. He was only twenty, Katie thought, and it baffled her that an age that had once seemed so ancient now stood revealed as almost unbearably young. In that moment, Katie thought that she could even have pitied Row, who, after all, had been nearly as young and stupid as the rest of them.
“Get up.”
Gavin bolted to his feet, and Katie saw that he was afraid of her. Well and good.
“You helped break this town, Gavin.”
He gulped, his eyes flicking involuntarily to Jonathan’s body, and Katie nodded as she read his unspoken thought.
“No room for Tears, you said. But I’m not a Tear, and neither are you. Neither is Lear, or Howell, or Morgan, or Alain. You helped Row break this place. Now you’re going to help me fix it. Do you understand?”
Gavin nodded wildly. His fingers crept up toward his forehead, as though he meant to cross himself. But at the last moment, his hand dropped away, and he stood bewildered.
Waiting for instructions, Katie thought contemptuously. Well, Gavin had always needed someone to tell him what to do. She finished cleaning blood from Row’s necklace, using her spit where it had begun to cake, polishing until the sapphire looked good as new. She considered putting the chain over her head, but at the last moment she paused, not sure why; some long-buried fear that demanded caution, that spoke of ghosts . . .
After another moment’s thought, she slipped the sapphire into her pocket. In the long years afterward, Caitlyn Tear would think often on this necklace, and sometimes she would draw it out and stare at it. Once or twice, she even considered putting it on.
But she never did.
Kelsea woke to a bright, sunlit room.
Not her room in the Keep; she had never seen this place before. It was a room of white-painted walls, small, but neat, with a desk and chair and two bookshelves filled with books. The light came from a large glass window over the desk. A small, exploratory wriggle told Kelsea that she was lying in a narrow single bed.
My room.
The thought came from nowhere, from a distant corner of her brain that seemed to still be half asleep.
Kelsea sat up, pulled the covers back, and swung her feet onto the floor. Sheets, pillows, floors . . . everything in this room seemed incredibly clean. She was so used to the Keep, where boots tracked mud and everyone was too busy to be bothered about it. But someone clearly cleaned this room.
I do, Kelsea thought. Again the thought was odd, alien, accompanied by a flash of memory: sweeping the floor with an old, serviceable broom.
What happened? she wondered. How did it end?
“Kelsea! Breakfast!”
The voice made her jump. It was a woman
—Mum—
but the sound was muffled, as though she were calling from a floor down.
Kelsea pushed herself up from the bed, and as she did so, she felt the familiarity of this place solidify in her mind. This was her room, ever since she was little. Over there was the door to her closet, which was filled with the sort of clothing she favored: a few dresses for fancy occasions, but mostly comfortable pants and sweaters. This was her desk, these were her books. She lingered beside the bookshelf, looking over the titles. Some of these books she knew, and she pulled them down and opened them, relieved to find words on each page—here was Tolkien, here was Faulkner, here was Christie, Morrison, Atwood, Wolfe—but she did not recognize the editions. They were in good condition, clearly well cared for. She knew these books, even their spines. Some of them she had loved since childhood.
“Kelsea!”