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"Okay," Sa what else to say It had cost Caine to admit vulnerability It cost him more to ad Sam’s eyes All this smoke couldn’t be fro to explain "It’s like, like, we’re all here in this world, but there’s some other place, some other connection I can’t see it, but I can kind of see it Like so you see out of the corner of your eye, only when you turn to look at it, it’s not there And the gaiaphage can reach h there"

"What happens when it reaches you?"

"Pain"

"Bad?"

Caine gritted his teeth and had to squeeze the words out With his hand he held an iinary knife and sloisted it into the side of his head "Like someone took a white-hot knife and stabbed it into your head and twisted it back and forth, again and again"

Sam had felt pain He had wept and cried under Drake’s lash He had felt helpless He had lost control of himself He understood what it meant and what pain like that did to you He was about to reach out and put a hand on Caine’s shoulder but caught hiesture would not be appreciated

Instead he juet a better view Fire had definitely taken hold in the trees At least three were burning A year without rain had left the forest dry and vulnerable It would spread, Sa they could do about it

"Any time we throith Gaia she can do this to you?" Sa back to the dry pine-needle floor

Caine shrugged "It’s been a long tirowing more powerful now in this body It’s up out of the mine shaft And Little Pete, well, he’s dead or whatever the hell he is"

"Astrid thinks he’s still alive in sohed bitterly "Sees and burgers Noe’re back deep in the crazy"

Saed brother They’d been born minutes apart to the same mother Sam had never been a hundred percent sure how that had happened Did they share a father? Or was their mother a bit moreadventurous than he wanted to think about?

And why had she kept him and not Caine?

The crazy had started earlier than all of this: that much was clear

"I don’t think I can beat her without you," Sam said after a while "And now I’ weak spot"