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My best friend? I shakeand scared of ill happen to her just the sa out hshe’s done, the ins to move side to side "No…you tried to kill me You tried to kill Alex and you--" I look a few feet away froround, her eyes still open peering at me, lifeless and cold and e to say the words I had started to say about Phoebe

When Zia sees that nothing she can say will save her, her fake pleading face becoins to move in a frenzy above her, like snakes on the head of Medusa, and she brings her arms back behind her, fists clenched She opens her s, sending all of us scraainst our ears All except for Minna, who ree chant The trap barrier absorbing the ins to fade in and out like a dull fluorescent light constantly licked by a short in its wires

Zia falls to the ground, gripping her head in her tightly-clenched fists "Cras es Noster!" she says to Minna, pushing the foreign words through her teeth "You’ll never harvest us all!"

My eyes groider as Zia’s form becomes wispy and transparent Three, five, six duplicates of her appear and disappear like wind blowing through intricate swaths of s out into the infinite night

I feel ainst both sides of reat and loud whooshing sound, Zia’s smoke-like body is sucked into the jar in Minna’s hand and all sounds cease to exist except the shtened

The barrier blinks out indefinitely and all that is left inside the trap is the stirred dirt falling down softly against the ground and around Phoebe’s body

No one can speak Or , silent moments

Isaac breaks the quiet

"How did you know?"

Minna carefully slides the jar swirling with reddish smoke, down into the bottom of her flowery purse For a brief second, even a, I think about how tacky that purse is

She tucks the purse back under her ar people amaze me," she says "Why don’t you ask that deliciousbehind you?"

Everybody looks at Nathan, who still looks sick and depressed When he realizes everyone is staring at him he shakes off the stun of the moment and holds up his hands, palms up, "What?" The creases between his eyebrows deepen

Minna rolls her eyes and whips out a cigarette, placing it between her cracked, leathery lips and it dangles there precariously until she lights it with a Bic Inhaling deeply, Minna closes her eyes and savors theshe’s ever experienced She drops her head and opens her eyes as she exhales; smoke filters up and around her lips and creeps into her eyes

"Ahhh," she breathes with a s that I can smoke forever and it’ll never kill me makes each one taste better than the last--I smoke three packs a day now!" She says this triumphantly

"You look like you s

I findto the spot where Zia last stood and back and forth to Minna’s purse where she is now and it makesher lips haughtily "I save your asses froet" She takes another toke of her cigarette, leaving bright pink iht?" Isaac says "Tell me how you knehere to find us"

Minna smirks "The Bond, of course--how is it that I know ue

"I closed my mind off to you," Nathan says and he looks truly appalled "Believe h I had to bond you to me Y’think I’d leave the link open?"

"Of course not," Minna says with sht air, "but when you’re asleep and drea, you seem to have no control over your mind wall"

Nathan breathes in deeply and his eyes shut softly with regret