“What about Lys?”
His eyes flick to hers in the rearview. “Parker, will youpleasesit?”
“Not until you tell me where he is.”
As if in answer to her question, the shuttered entrance to the back bedroom rattles with the full force of a body slammed against fiberglass. She sees now that the bifold doors have been bound with the same chains that held him in Egor van Haut’s sunless basement.
“He’s alive,” says Asher.
“Will that hold him?”
“Let’s hope. Now, sit. We’ve got a lot of miles to eat up before morning.”
The ride in the camper’s back bedroom is the worst Lysander has ever endured in his life.
Not because the suspension rattles his teeth. Not because sunlight pokes in pestilent pinpricks through the blinds. Not because everything smells wet and sweet, like mildew.
Because the last time he was in this camper, it was with his mother.
He thinks of Viola in the dead of summer, heat wrapping everything in an infernal sweat. He can still hear her voice, imbued with a false cheeriness that made him want to shout:We’re going to go north and see a friend of mine. Would you like that? It’ll be fun. A road trip, just the two of us. He has a little boy about your age. I think you’ll like him.
There’s a shallow laceration in his side. He lifts his shirt and jabs a finger at it, watching as his skin knits itself slowly back together. Distantly, he is aware of the trill of chains coming loose. The door opens a crack and a thin strip of yellow appears, broken by the broad-shouldered frame of a boy in an orange cap.
Lysander can’t remember his name.
He pokes around in his head, irritable, and discovers he can’t remember much of anything. His head is full of synapses, misfiring in sparks. Words and words and words and words. None of them his. None of them sane. All of them meaningless drivel, forced into his brain by his mother’s ceaseless recitation.Again, Oliver. Again, the sun isn’t up yet.
“All things burn with it,” he says. “As with a flame.”
The watchdog’s scowl is so stark, Lysander mimics it without even trying.
“What did you say to me?”
“?‘Nameless,’?” says Lysander. “By William Montgomerie.”
The answering quiet knocks at his chest. Or maybe that’s his heart. Maybe it’s moments away from exploding. Maybe he’ll take the whole place with him when it does. He blinks and sees a girl. Straw-colored hair and a knife in her hands. Blood under her boots.Lys, look at me.
He can’t remember her name, either. It makes him feel like something vital has been torn out of him. Something black and blue and beating. Everything hurts.
“I don’t know who William Montgomerie is,” says the watchdog. He sounds annoyed.
“Unsurprising. You strike me as illiterate.”
The watchdog’s mouth quirks. “If you’re cracking jokes, you must be feeling better.”
“It wasn’t a joke,” he mutters, and crooks his elbow over his eyes. “Close the door. The light hurts.”
The soldier obliges, slamming the door shut. The light snuffs out. Lysander feels the mattress sag as the watchdog collapses onto the bed beside him. He peers out from under his elbow and watches the soldier pluck his ball cap off his head and drop it over his face.Asher, he thinks.Thorley.His name flits back into Lysander’s awareness like a moth.
“Don’t even think about feeding,” he says. “If you come anywhere near me, I’ll open the blinds.”
Lysander replaces his elbow without a word. He imagines ants are crawling through his brain—digging at the cavities of his face. He wants to claw his skin clean off. Wants to howl and thrash and tear.
Instead, he says, “You shot me.”
“You’ll be fine,” comes Asher’s mumbled response. “You’re not dead.”
“It is easy to be dead,” mutters Lysander. “None wears the face you knew.”
