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"I’ve been looking for you all night"

"Where’s your girlfriend?" I say, before I can stopabout?"

"Nothing," I say as he turns ot you have a weakness for blondes"

"Oh, her?" he says "Her husband’s father is a contractor I’ve been working with I thought it would benefit ood side"

"Okay," I say, watching as a giant screen on the wall counts down the seconds to ht

Twentynineteen

"Don’t beloves "I didn’t like watching you dance with hiize the moment the music stopped, but you’d disappeared"

Tennine

He tiltsme to look at him Of all the Governors and Housemasters here, he’s the only one I would allow to touch me in this way He’s fa I have to home this far down the coast

"You’re the only blonde I have a weakness for," he prohs too, and takes my face in his hands "I love you," he says

Threetwoone

He kissesin this fake New Year together And it only see that, in this moment of illusion, the words just come out of me "I love you, too"

Chapter 24

We return fro, and ht Across the hall from my bedroo, the rustle of her bodyin the satin blankets Next to her door there’s an empty bedroom, and no sound at all

And somehow that silence is what makes it impossible for me to sleep I toss and turn for a while, and then I cross the hall to Jenna’s bedrooht I can see that her bed has been htstand It’s the only bit of her that lingers Froe she ever read

Even her sht, airy collaboration of perfumes and lotions that made attendants blush

In her final days it was overpowered by the heavy salve Adair rubbed on her chest to help her breathe, but that one as well The vacuuurney marks from when her body was taken away

I wait To be haunted by her, to hear her voice When Rose died, I could still, for roves Even if it was justBut if Jenna’s spirit still exists on earth, it isn’t here There’s not even a shadow in her mirror

I peeled back the blankets, climb into her bed The sheets snize them--white with little purple flowers

This isn’t her satin comforter, either, which had a cherry juice stain in the corner She’s gone Not a trace, aside from the paperback I’ll never knohat happened to her that afternoon when she disappeared into Vaughn’s basement She’ll never run aith ain

I bury my face in the ers are brushing through my hair It takes a lot of effort before I’m able to conjure up a clearout of here, and it’s going to be a

"Okay," I tell her

After a while I fall into a mercifully dreaht After that, Gabriel is always on my mind, alone somewhere in that awful place beneath hts, his breath coin drea on a cot to sleep, with my dead sister wives in a freezer beside hi our plan and har on his antidote the day Linden was born, and even if I don’t believe that he s, I do believe that much I also believe that Linden’s is the only life he cares about saving And Bowen is Vaughn’s backup if he can’t cure his son in tiht Bowen, tall and y like his father, pressing his lips to the mouth of some hesitant bride who lives in as once his mother’s bedroom He tells her that he loves her, and she holds a knife behind her back, spiteful and beautiful, waiting for the right moment to end him There is nobody to warn hihn, who pries Linden’s body apart in the base dead, frozen and perfectly preserved with my sister wives, our eyes open in stunned expressions, our hands not quite touching In a row of four, icicles on our eyelashes

So touches me, and I screa in le to break away frohn’s basement

"Hey," a soft voice whispers "Shh--hey, hey It’s alright You had a bad dream" I roll over, and there’s Linden beside ht He pushes the hair from my face