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Her face was blank and bloodied Her lips were full She was deep brown and sht, too wide open, and the whites so very white Her are, head tilted back as ie flowed from her bloodied mouth

It took the mind a uages, loud and at cross-purposes The ht the woman here and was keen to ditch her The other was a hotel e none of it

"You can’t just du?"

"How should I know? So for her soon Let them worry"

"Fine, and in thewith her?"

"I don’t know" The driver was surly Afraid "She’s not my responsibility"

"And she’s mine?"

They went on in this vein while the wo and devouring and fast and huge, and hunting," she said--cried, in Seraphic--and her voice was mournful and sweet and drenched in pain, like an otherworldly fado A soul-deep, life-shaping lament for what is lost and can never return "The beasts, the beasts, the Cataclys could hold them They were peeled apart and it wasn’t our fault We were the openers of doors, the lights in the darkness It was never supposed to happen! I was chosen one of twelve, but I fell all alone There are maps in me but I am lost, and there are skies in odstars!"

Hairs raised on Karou’s neck Akiva was beside her "What’s happening to her?" she asked hi about?"

"No"

"Is she a seraph?"

He hesitated before again saying no "She’s hu…"

Karou felt it, too, and couldn’t na Seraphic?

"Meliz is lost!" she keened, and the hairs stood up on Karou’s arms "Even Meliz, first and last, Meliz eternal, Meliz is devoured"

"Do you knoho that is?" Karou asked Akiva "Meliz?"

"No"

"What is going on here?"

Karou snapped around at the sound of Zuzana’s voice and beheld her,to the chase She ht up to theto reconcile her steely tone to the tiny girl before theot a healthy dose of her neek-neek look They broke off arguing

"She’s bleeding," Zuzana said--in French, which, due to Morocco’s colonial past, was the European language lish "Did you do this to her?"

Her voice held a glint of outrage, like a knife not yet fully unsheathed, and both men hastily proclai with you, just standing here? Can’t you see she needs help?"

They had no good answer for that, and no time to make one anyway, because Zuzana--with Mik’s assistance--was already taking charge of the young woman Each at an elbow, they eased her up to a stand, and the men only watched, silenced and chastened, as they led her away between them There was no break in her flood of Seraphic--"I am Fallen, all alone, I break ain be whole…"--and no flicker of focus in her striking eyes, but her feet moved and she made no protest, and neither did the men, so Zuzana and Mik just took her

And a couple of hours later, when the Americans in dark suits came to claim her, the hotel clerk led the it emptied of both person and possessions--to the rooirl and her boyfriend who had, between them, ordered half the food in the kitchen They knocked on the door but got no answer, and heard no movement within, and when they let themselves in, it wasn’t really a surprise to find the occupants gone

No one had seen the in the courtyard that was the only way to reach the road

Come to think of it… no one had see behind but thoroughly empty dishes and--this would be one for the conspiracy theorists--several long blue hairs in the shohere an angel’s hand had stroked a devil’s head, locked in a long--and so very long-awaited--ean,

that would stitch all the worlds together with light

ARRIVAL + 60 HOURS

52

GUNPOWDER AND DECAY

It was like Christreed-and-presents sense of the holiday, not the birth-of-Christ sense, of course Because really

The textcrazier and more desperate by the hour It was soht to him, and he wished, almost, for a partner in crime--someone to marvel, with him, that there were such people in the world! But there was no one he could think of who, if he told thehteous horror and probably call the police

Morons

He needed a groupie, he thought Or a girlfriend Wide eyes and awe "Morgan, you’re so bad," she would coo But bad in a good way Bad in a very, very good way

The phone buzzed It was Pavlovian at this point: Eliza’s phone buzzed and Morgan virtually salivated in anticipation of not-to-be-believed, soe did not disappoint