He couldn’t hold on to his words, either. They slid through his thoughts and out of his mouth and then they were gone before he could grasp their meaning.
The pain had faded for a while, smothered by madness and joy, but now the tallies seared across his skin again, pulsing hotly, and the gunshots rang through his head in a barrage of white noise. He pressed his burning forehead against the cold tiles, his skin hissing like doused fire as the cold fought against the fever.
His body finally cooled and he slumped back against the wall of the tub, letting the cold water rise over his shins, up his spine, closing over his ribs.
Kate came and went, her dark eyes floating in the steam, here and gone and here again.
She was here now.
“Listen to me,” he said, trying to hold on to the words before they got away. “You need . . . to go.”
“No.”
“You can’t . . . be here . . . when I fall.”
Her hand on his again, one of them cold and the other hot and he didn’t know which was which. Lines were blurring. “I’m not going to let you fall, August.”
Again, the fear, the wrenching sadness. “I . . . can’t . . .”
“You can’t hurt me,” she cut in. “Not as long as you’re you, right? So I’m going to stay.”
He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on his heart, his bones, his muscles, his nerves. Picked himself apart piece by piece, cell by cell, tried to feel every little atom that added up to him.
Every one of those atoms begged him to let go, to give in, to let the darkness wash over him. He felt himself sliding toward unconsciousness and forced himself awake, scared that if he went under now, something else would surface.
Kate perched on the edge of the couch, a cigarette between her teeth.
She’d scavenged and come up with half a pack, her mother’s old stash.
Those things can kill you, he’d said that first day.
Kate’s lips quirked around the cigarette. She clicked the silver lighter, watched the flame dance in front of the tip, then put the fire out, and tossed the cigarette aside, unlit.
Plenty of other ways to die.
She clicked the television on, cringing at the sight of her face on the screen.
“. . . the hours since Harker’s press conference,” the news anchor was saying, “there has been a rise in unrest along the Seam, and FTF and Harker forces have reportedly come to blows. We go now to Henry Flynn . . .”
The screen cut to a press conference. A slim man stood behind a podium, back straight.
A dark-skinned woman stood at his left, her hand on his shoulder—his wife, Emily. On his other side, an FTF with his arm in a sling. Thousands of task force members, and Flynn had picked a wounded one. Clever, thought Kate grudgingly, casting himself as the victim. Then again, he was: His son was missing, framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Because of her father. Because of her.
“My family had nothing to do with the attack on Katherine Harker.”
“Is it true you planted a spy at her school?”
“Is it true one of your Sunai is missing?”
“Is it true—”
Kate clicked the television back off, dug the cell from her pocket, and was halfway through a message to her father when a sound cut through her thoughts.
Tires. On gravel.
Her head snapped up. The sound had been muffled by the TV and the hiss of the shower, and by the time she got off the couch and looked out the window, the car was pulling to a stop out front. A man climbed out of the driver’s side, young and lean in a black FTF cap. Kate tensed. A member of Flynn’s task force? She tugged the gun from her back, and switched off the safety as the man climbed the steps, and knocked.
Her stomach dropped as she saw the handle. She hadn’t locked the door.
“August Flynn?” called the man, and then, “Are you in there?”
Kate held her breath.
What was he doing here?
She hesitated. Maybe it was safe. Maybe he didn’t mean them any harm. Maybe she could go with August to South City. . . .
The man started knocking again, and she began to creep across the living room, unsure of whether she was going toward the door or the hall. Maybe . . . but how had he found them?
The knocking stopped.
“Katherine Harker?” called the voice.
Her chest tightened.
“I know you’re in there.”
Her eyes were trained on the front door, so she didn’t see the side table, the one she always used to catch her knee on. Her shin caught the wooden leg, and the framed photo on top fell facedown with a hard snap.
The handle began to turn, and Kate took off toward the hall.
She was halfway there when the door burst open.
August heard a sound beyond the shower.
A heavy beat. He thought it could be one of Kate’s songs but there were no words, only the repetitive Thud. Thud. Thud.