Chapter 17 Soraya

Soraya lifted her head out of her shirt a bit. She didn't want to; she didn't want to see anything or smell anything or hear anything more. As it was, the noises were too loud, and the colors were too bright, and the smells—it was the smells she worried might kill her. She'd have stayed curled in on herself, but no matter the terror, it was a human reaction to raise one's head when one's name is called.

"You'll keep an eye on Soraya?" the new girl said, and then she disappeared around a corner. Faye, her name was Faye. Soraya's memory wasn't impacted, just her sense of what was happening. Faye had worked at the library for how long now, a month? Two? She crept around like a little mouse and kept to the basement, but Davey had reminded Soraya over and over to stop calling her the "new girl" and to use her name on the night in the library.

"We need a seventh and she's harmless," Davey had said, as though harm had crossed their minds at all. She wasn't a crocodile, the new girl, just wallpaper. "She's helping us by being there, and you'll scare her off by being unkind."

How would they categorize her now that she had stabbed Umu's friend in the throat? Still harmless? Soraya wasn't upset Faye had done it. Whatever the boy had or hadn't done to Kip, she didn't like being down there with strangers, not feeling the way she was feeling right now, and he had been a stranger. Soraya reached down and pressed the blister on her bare right foot. It hurt, but that was what she was looking for—a sensation she recognized.

She was happy the new girl had run off to wherever she'd gone. Soraya didn't think she'd ever heard her speak, not before tonight, and she was startled every time the new girl opened her mouth. Davey and Mary were bickering about chanting at the moment, but Davey and Mary were familiar. There was nothing terrifying about the familiar.

***

"You've set yourself back three years." That's what her father had said to her when she'd come home and told him she'd be working at the library during grad school, instead of interning with a management consultancy or tech company. She read Greek and Latin because her father insisted she study them in high school when he still thought she was going to medical school, but she still felt like an outsider those first months at the library. Because her father told her she didn't belong there, because she had no illusions about making a career in rare books, because she took the job for the impressive hourly rate rather than what it could promise for her future. An internship at a management consultancy would pay nothing, and the library paid enough for her to get her own apartment, and if she wasn't enamored of the idea of the world of books and libraries the same way the others were in those first weeks and months, she made up for it fast. It's what the new girl didn't understand. You couldn't just work at this place. You had to give yourself to it.

Soraya met Kip after she'd been working at the library for two weeks. She was good at it—working at the library, that is—as she'd known she would be. The bibliographical functions of her job were precise and exacting, just like she was. Once Ronald had patiently run through something with her—how to measure a book's height to determine its shelf placement, the necessity to go through every single page of a book so she could describe if there were any plates or maps missing—she didn't have to be told twice. She liked to watch the minutes tick by while she worked and calculate how much money she'd made: $100 by lunch. Ten more times that and she'd have a month's rent that she hadn't taken from her father. It was a whole new world.

Her second week, she was assigned to work in the reading room on a day Kip came in as a reader. He was tall. She liked tall men. Soraya's father was short, and she liked to imagine bringing a tall man home and her father being the one who was made to feel inadequate.

"I have some materials that should be waiting for me," Kip said. "At least I think I do." He nodded at the shelving behind her where reader requests waited to be taken to one of the oak tables that lined the room. It was concerningly bare.

"I'm sure I can help," she'd said, with the bright positivity of someone who'd been on the job for less than a month. "You have to fill out one of these little slips, and we go up to the stacks and get what you've requested." She helpfully produced one of the printed slips. "Use one slip per book, if you're requesting more than one. Now, in the future, you can do this online and the books will be waiting for you when you arrive. There's a two-hour turnaround on book pickup, so you might have to wait a little bit today," she said. "Unfortunately."

He was smirking. She could feel her dress sticking to the sweat on her lower back, though she hadn't done anything wrong. The library was well air-conditioned, but Soraya was prone to sweat when she was anxious. They were alone in the reading room until that moment when Davey wheeled a groaning book truck through the creaky door.

"I should have known it was you," Davey said, and he abandoned the truck to come around and shake Kip's hand.

"You know each other?" Soraya said.

Kip was still smirking. "Yeah. I've been here once or twice before. But thanks for the run-through on the workings of the library. It was…" He cast his eyes down her from top to toe. "Educational."

"Kip is Kip Pickens," Davey said. "Like the Pickens collection?" Soraya braced when he said "Pickens" for him to say the next bit, but he didn't. Her well-paying job was the Pickens Fellowship. She was relieved that Davey had the tact to avoid saying that this man or some relative of his was paying for her to be there, was paying her rent. She fought back for some composure.

"So, this is all to say you know your way around a request slip?" she said.

"No, you were right that he doesn't," Davey said. He was piling the books from the truck onto one of the reading tables. Not exactly protocol. They were meant to sit on the shelf behind her and be doled out to the reader one book at a time so she could keep count of them. "Kip called in his list half an hour ago. Being the library's most important family has to have some perks, right, Kip?"

"For you, I can start using request slips," Kip said with a wink, and then he sat at his desk, surrounded by his pile of books.

They didn't say anything else to one another until Kip was ready to leave that day. Over the next couple of hours, as he sat reading and making notes on a yellow legal pad with an expensive-looking mechanical pencil and she helped readers claim their books, she caught him looking at her a few times, but she always averted her eyes. Holding his gaze would be too forward.

When he was ready to leave that day, he was again the only reader in the room. Maybe he'd timed it out that way, waited for everyone to leave so he could get her alone or maybe he didn't care, maybe one didn't care at all about being overheard when they had the type of cachet he did.

The reading room got its best light in the morning, and in late afternoon it had a gloomy grayness, like it was lit as the setting for a horror movie. Kip and Soraya dated for two years after that day, after he came and sat on her desk and told her he was taking her for a drink, and she'd always associate him with that grayness. She was surprised when he asked her out, but she could hardly refuse. "The library's most important family." It had to come with some perks.

He left the library with a promise to pick her up a couple of hours later when she had finished her shift. The pile of books he'd been using was still stacked up on his reading table.

***

"If you're going to let Davey fuck you, you should probably move down to the floor," Kip said. Soraya opened her eyes and there he was, sitting cross-legged on the concrete in front of her, the crimson blood that stained his chin, his neck, his shirt, shining in the meager light of someone's flashlight. It hurt her neck to crane and look at him. Even sitting, he was so tall.

"You woke up?" Soraya said, trying to lift her head and see. Her hand was still by her foot, so she pressed harder on the blister. Not ten feet away from her, Davey and Mary and Umu were bent over Ro's body, talking about wreaths or coffins or something. Strange that they wouldn't have told her that Kip woke up.

"Stand up so I can look at you," he said.

She swung one leg off the shelf, and then the other. She had to bend her neck at an unnatural angle to keep from bashing her head on the shelf above. Kip's breath came out in cold weather clouds when he spoke, though she didn't feel cold in the basement at all.

"Are you mad at me?" she said. She reached to touch his arm, but he pulled back from her.

"I told you why he invited you, but then you knew better. You always know better, huh?" Kip said. "Who's going to bring you flowers at graduation now?"

This Kip-like thing in front of her was tall like Kip, wore the button-down shirt she'd ironed for Kip that morning, sounded like Kip, was even mean like Kip, but she understood that it couldn't be Kip.

"If you weren't such a little slut, you'd still have someone to bring you flowers at graduation," Kip said.

It was her imagination, it was the drugs, it was her imagination and the drugs in concert with each other. Soraya was a smart girl, she knew that. Even if this figment of her imagination bore an uncanny resemblance to the real thing, it was her own invention. If it was her own mind that made him, then her mind should be able to make him go away, but no matter how hard she willed it, this eerie vision of Kip blocked her path to the others.

"You guys," Soraya called, trying to see around Kip to the others. "Can you come help me?"

When she was little, really through to when she was a teenager, Soraya would have terrible, violent nightmares. In movies when children had nightmares, they called out for their parents, and then someone always came running to soothe them and smooth their blankets and help them fall asleep. No one ever came to Soraya's room. For a long time she resented her mother for that, but in her late teens she learned that she suffered from sleep paralysis and that all those times, through her whole childhood, when she thought she was calling for someone to come and help, her body wasn't doing the thing she asked it to do. Her mother didn't come to Soraya's bedside because when Soraya screamed, it didn't make any noise.

Now, trying to see around Kip, trying to get attention from Davey or Mary, she felt paralyzed again.

"You want me to leave so you can be alone with him?" Kip said, blocking Soraya's path to the others. "You slut, my blood hasn't even dried."

"Soraya!" It was Mary who was calling her name. Mary could see her, Mary would help her. "Welcome back to the land of the living! Did you enjoy your little snooze?"

"You should lie back down," Kip said. "Right here on the floor with your legs spread until he notices you. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"No." Soraya managed to take a few steps toward the others. Kip stepped back as she moved forward, but he didn't step out of the way to clear her path. "Can you help me?" she said again. She hovered over their scene, over Ro's body. They had taken his clothes off. He had a tattoo that had been hidden beneath his shirt or that they'd just given him. Impossible to know.

"You coming to chant, babe?" Mary asked. "It'll make you feel better. It's catharsis." The lights from their upturned flashlights were bright and brought spots to Soraya's eyes.

Umu was seated with Ro's head in her lap and she was saying nothing. In her, Soraya could see the same type of unsteadiness she felt in herself. Mary was working through her trip more easily, it seemed. But then, things always seemed to come easily to Mary.

Soraya was so afraid. Why weren't the others more afraid? She thought of what they might have whispered while she was out of earshot. She'd seen that at work, too, Davey and Mary whispering sometimes. Soraya didn't look at Davey to see how he was coping. She didn't want Kip to see her look.

"A funerary ritual can get us back on the right path." Davey came right up to Soraya and whispered it in her ear. His right eye was swollen, and she could swear it was pulsing in time with her own heartbeat. "If we start here it means the night won't be wasted. There's still hours to do away with our fear."

His breath was hot against her neck. She didn't move toward him or away from him. She was too frozen in fear. Kip glared at him, at how close he was standing.

"I'm having a bad trip," Soraya said. "I can't tell what's real and what isn't, and I need to get out of the library." This time she said it out loud. She was certain she did.

"Come here," Davey said. He put his hands on her wrist. Kip wouldn't like that. "You're only frightened because you're over there alone."

"He can see you," Soraya said, but Davey had already turned his attention back to the body. His hand on her wrist, he pulled her over to Ro, and while he succeeded in getting her past Kip, his specter stayed behind her. Not gone, but out of her immediate field of vision.

Ro had a tattoo, and Soraya would have asked Umu about it if not for the smell. From somewhere down in their cage, there was a faint waft of smoke.

"Do you smell that?" she asked.

"If you start on about the smell of blood again, I'll have you tied up," Umu said.

Soraya looked behind her, to where she thought the smell was coming from. Kip was still there, looking at her in the disapproving way he had when she used the wrong tense of a Greek verb. She couldn't see any smoke, but then, she couldn't see much of anything. Was it real?

"It's really faint," Soraya said. "But it's smoke. Can you smell it?"

Then it wasn't faint. Almost as soon as she smelled the smoke, it was all she could smell, and while it was a relief to be spared the metallic and meaty odor of blood, the smoke quickly overtook her. When she looked back at Kip, he was bathed in a gray cloud.

"You're all crazy. We're going to burn," she said. When she ran past Kip, she was scared he would grab her arm and stop her, but he let her go.

It was the running that finally got them paying attention to her, but by then it was too late. She wasn't going to stop for anyone.

"Soraya! Stop running and I'll come get you!" Davey's voice cut through the dark. There was murmuring, too. They were murmuring about her. They'd all talked about it like it was so tidy. Ro killed Kip and then Faye killed Ro so there was no more danger, but now she could smell the smoke and they pretended they couldn't and she knew for certain there was someone down there who was trying to kill her.

"I'm not going to burn down here!" she yelled to Davey, and she kept going forward. It was so dark, almost fully black. She touched her pockets but came back empty. Where was her phone? Had someone taken her phone?

"She's not being a baby; she's having a bad trip," she heard Umu say. "Go talk to her about clouds or whatever until she's seeing straight and can sit here without whining about what she smells."

That they wanted her to come there, there where she had smelled the smoke, was proof that they didn't care about her safety. Maybe they weren't trapped down there with her. Maybe they were in on it.

Without her light she couldn't run, but if she wasn't running she could move quietly and keep them from finding her. She ran her hands along the edge of a shelf until she hit the wood and then she wound her way around and continued that way in the dark—fingertips against book spines until she felt resistance. Could she smell the smoke anymore? It didn't matter, it was there, somewhere, and coming for her.

"Soraya, you're going to hurt yourself." Davey's voice was somewhere in the distance. She moved more quickly, fingertips on book spines, waiting to meet resistance until she knew where to turn when she ran into the hard metal security grating with her whole body.

The force of it was enough to knock her off her feet, the sound of it, of her body hitting the metal, reverberated through the basement. She didn't know if she was hurt and she didn't care. If she was at the grating, then she was close to a way out. In some places, not everywhere, but in some places, the grate didn't go all the way up to the ceiling. There was plumbing and electrical wiring that prevented it. She couldn't see where she was, she couldn't know if it was worth climbing, but a failed attempt was better than dying in here without trying. She was little; she'd subsisted mostly on green juice since she was sixteen. She only needed a bit of space to pass through. Finally, her deprivation would pay off.

She tried to wedge her toe into the grating, but the weave was too narrow. She kicked off her left shoe. With her fingers laced through the metal, she stuck her bare toes into the grate, but her first attempt to hoist herself up failed. It wasn't enough to hold on to, she couldn't carry the weight of her whole body with her toes.

She rolled the shelving stack closer to her and tried it that way. Fingers laced through the grate, bare foot on the second shelf, and up she went. She was climbing!

"I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home," she whispered as she prepared to swing her right foot to a higher shelf. "I'm going home!"

She had to support the full weight of her body—a body made of green juice but still an adult body—with her fingers through the grate for a moment as she swung her leg out and she was doing it. She was going to reach the top, until she felt a strong pair of arms wrap around her waist and yank her down.

"Soraya, what the hell are you doing?" Davey said, and as he pulled her, the incomplete grasp she'd had on the grating dissolved, and the upward progress she'd made disappeared.

"I'm getting out," she said. She tried to twist away, to kick, to pull, but his grasp was firm.

"Soraya?" He held her tight by the waist as she thrashed against him. Her right foot was still propped up on the third shelf of the bookstack, that last little bit of proof that she'd been on the way up when he'd pulled her. "You're going to hurt yourself. Do you understand that?"

She wasn't wearing any shoes, and now that she was no longer climbing, she wished that weren't the case. Shoes would make her steadier. She gave a last thrash but succeeded only in kicking the bookshelf into a threatening sway and knocking Davey off-balance while he continued to hold her. They both fell to the ground in a strange slow-motion tumble that ended with her on her back and his fleshy palm supporting her head so she wouldn't hit it on the concrete.

"Where were you going?" he whispered. The hand that wasn't holding her head held his phone, the flashlight shining. In a subtle show that he didn't trust her not to run off again, he kept that arm crossed over her chest. It was all terribly confusing. His hand on her head made her feel safer, like when someone strokes your hair, and when she tried to, she couldn't smell the smoke anymore.

"Come back with me. Back to the others. We should have listened when you said you were scared. We weren't doing a good job of taking care of each other."

Had she dreamed the smoke in the first place? Or was it only imagination that the smell was now gone? She didn't know what was real and what wasn't, didn't know who was a threat and who wasn't.

"What about the fire?" Soraya said.

"The fire?" He shifted his weight and she could feel his ribs against hers. "We can go get the candles from where we left them. It's still six hours at least before someone comes down here. We can do a little bit of the ritual or even the whole thing, and none of us will have to worry about being afraid anymore. No matter what we saw down here, we'll leave here without any of our fear. How does that sound?"

"What do you want me to do?"

He was shining his light at her so he could see her, but the side effect was that the brilliant white light shone right in her eyes. She tried, but she couldn't keep them open. It seemed, thought Soraya, that lying flat on the floor, with her head supported and her eyes closed, was just about as far from harm as she was going to feel until the gates opened and she could go home to her sage-green linen sheets. Davey had said something about candles, but she'd already forgotten it.

"Try not to fall asleep," his voice said through the dark, but she was heavy and tired and comfortable, and Soraya thought it rude that he wouldn't let her drift off, that he didn't want to drift off with her when they were both so comfortable.

"I don't smell smoke anymore," she said.

"There was never any," he said. There had been smoke, she'd smelled it, but she forgot all about it because when she blinked her sleepy eyes to correct him, it was Kip's face looking back at her, it was Kip's arms she was wrapped in, not Davey's.

She knew better than to ask where Davey had gone. Kip wouldn't like that. And besides, he was here now, the mechanics of how didn't matter.

"Are you going to keep me safe?" she asked. It was the right question. Kip could sometimes have angry eyes, but he didn't right then and he liked being reminded of his promises. The hand on the back of her head, Kip had never done that, but he had always said that it was his job to take care of her. When they ate at restaurants and she suggested splitting the bill, when she suggested spending a night out with just her girlfriends, he wouldn't hear of it. It was his job to take care of her. She hadn't believed him most of the time, but just now the hand on the back of her head made her feel taken care of, and she was overtaken by a wave of tenderness that she hadn't felt for Kip in a long, long time. If she was being honest, she wasn't sure she ever had.

"I'm so happy you're here," she said, and it was true. If nothing else, Kip was a devil she knew. She lifted her head and kissed him.

"Are you sure?" he started to say, but she wouldn't let him. She didn't want to talk. His hands weren't free but hers were and she held the back of his neck and pulled him to her. He pulled back at first. She wasn't surprised. She so rarely initiated that he had to be wondering what she was doing, but she was insistent, and it didn't take long for him to respond, to kiss back with the same desperate ravenousness she had.

"I don't want to talk. I want to feel better," she said.

It felt good, kissing him. Better than it usually did. When he bit at her lower lip, he didn't hurt her. She closed her eyes. Soraya wasn't tired anymore, the feeling of being kissed this way, on these drugs, was so overwhelming she didn't think she'd ever sleep again. She didn't often close her eyes when Kip was kissing her.

The first time she'd slept with Kip was at his off-campus apartment after their third date. They'd gone for drinks with a group of other graduate students. He drank too much, she sipped a single beer all night, but he'd driven them and didn't like anyone else driving his car, so they walked to his nearby apartment. He started taking her clothes off as soon as they got inside, and the whole time he talked about the way his high school girlfriend used to like it best when he was on top. It was never dangerous or scary and he fell asleep quickly after, but Soraya's body knew something she didn't, and she always kept her eyes open after that. For what, she didn't know, but her body did and it kept her eyes open.

Kip's phone clattered to the ground and the hand that held it was on her skin. She remembered being afraid. She remembered that she'd wanted out of the basement, but her head was flooded with too much of everything and she couldn't remember why.

Did he unbutton her shirt? Did she? She didn't remember that, either, but it was open and his lips moved down her neck, over her skin.

She gasped at how good it felt. Kip had always told her she was lucky to be with him, but she'd never felt that way until this very moment, when his lips reached her belly. In the bliss of the moment, she turned her head and moaned and opened her eyes. Davey's phone was on the floor beside them, the flashlight faced up and pointed at the ceiling.

She saw the curve of the nose first. That nose that was always pointed up in the air, she saw it in silhouette, at eye level with her, so on the floor. She saw the shoes, brown leather, that she'd helped to pick out. The trousers, the ones that had been hanging on the back of the chair in the bedroom that morning. The bloodstained shirtfront and the fullness of that familiar face. She saw the whole of him, of Kip, illuminated by the light of the phone, lying dead not ten feet from her. She began to tremble, and it wasn't from pleasure. Because if Kip was lying dead on the floor, then who was lying on top of her?

"Why are you touching me?" Soraya said, and she leaped to her feet, pushing the man, pushing Davey, all the way off her. She stood with her back against the grate, fingers laced through it, and Davey lay on the floor, bracing himself on his arms and trying to meet her eyes.

A little giggle came from the right of them. It was a reedy sound like a poorly tuned flute. Kip, who had been lying dead on the floor a moment ago, was now standing to the right of them, giggling at her in his strange pitch.

"I thought we were on the same page," Davey said. His phone was still on the ground, between them and Kip, its light faced up to illuminate the strange interaction. "I'm so sorry. I know Kip just…" He looked to the right to where Kip was standing. "It's on me; I should have known better."

"I can see your tits; cover yourself up," Kip said, and Soraya was horrified that he was right, that her shirt was hanging open. She pulled it closed, crossed her arms over herself.

"Here, let me help you," Davey said. He got to his feet and reached toward her to help with her buttons.

"Was I right or was I right?" Kip said, and then there was that sickening giggle again. "The only reason he wanted you here was to fuck you."

***

Weeks ago, when he'd begun to plan the event, Davey told Soraya that she was the first person he invited.

"Am I flattered, or do I take this to mean that you don't have enough friends?" she asked.

"Neither, not exactly," he'd said. They'd been in the basement together, this very basement, where he was helping her unpack a recent donation. Two hundred boxes of books from the personal library of a prominent midcentury philosopher. "I'm determined to convert you," he said.

"Convert me?" She put her hand to her mouth, feigning a gasp. "It's just as my grandpa feared when my parents got on that plane to America."

"We've worked here for two years together now," Davey said, tearing into the next carton with a box cutter. "In a few weeks, you'll be wearing a Patagonia vest and sipping a free cortado in the break room of whatever giant tech conglomerate or mercenary management consultancy is lucky enough to land you. Give me one last chance to get you hooked on the stuff we have down here."

She was elbow deep in the stuff, but she couldn't argue. She'd never been romantic about the place the way the rest of them were. Taking the job in the first place, that was her great act, the way she showcased her poetic soul. Beyond that, she'd been too immersed in trying to be effective and efficient to spend her time swooning over every decorative drop cap. It wasn't that she didn't love the stuff as much as the rest of them, but she was a serious person brought up to always appear serious, and all that seriousness had paid off.

One night, she'd told herself. Go and be a fool and give yourself over to Davey's little ritual. Do some drugs and stay up until dawn for one night and then you can be serious for the rest of your life. She'd been so excited about it until Kip announced he was coming, too.

***

"Think he'll still get it up for you once you tell him the news?" Kip said.

She slammed against the grating, pulling back from Davey and his offer of help. "What is happening?" she said. Kip was right there, talking to her, but he was also there, dead on the floor, and Davey kept trying to touch her, and none of it made any sense.

"The drugs, the stress of everything that's gone on," Davey put his hands up and backed away from her. "We were over our heads. I was over my head."

"He was seizing the moment; he's always wanted a chance at your body," Kip said.

Davey looked where Soraya was looking, over at Kip.

"We'll find a way to honor him, to remember him, that you can feel really good about. When our heads are clear I can help you do that. For tonight though, we have to focus on getting out of here safely."

"Why are you being so nice to me?" she asked.

"I'm the one who trapped you down here," Davey said. He took a cautious step toward her. "I was excited when you agreed to come. I never could have imagined…"

"Why were you excited?" she asked.

"Here we go!" Kip clapped his hands together triumphantly. "We get some honesty!"

"You know that I've always been crazy about you," Davey said.

"That he's always wanted to fuck you," Kip chimed in. "I'll bet he killed me to get at you."

Was Kip right? Had Davey been the one to poison him? How? When? She wished her head were clearer.

"I didn't know you felt that way," she said, wrapping her arms more tightly around her own body. Was that true? That she hadn't known? Down in the basement with the philosopher's boxes, breaking down cardboard for each other, reaching for the box cutter at the same time and touching hands, staying down there longer than was needed. Didn't she know?

"You weren't supposed to know," Davey said. "You've been with Kip almost the entire time I've known you. But we were going to have this great last night together, I was going to emerge free from fear, and I was finally going to have the nerve to tell you. And if you rejected me, it wouldn't matter because it would be morning and you wouldn't work here anymore."

Kip came right over to Soraya to whisper in her ear, hissing hot breath at her.

"Now it's your turn to tell him. Let's see what some honesty does for his feelings."

"I'm still going to work here in the morning," she said, feeling, as always, that she had to do as she was told. "I'm going to work here tomorrow and the next day and for the foreseeable future."

Davey didn't look upset yet. He didn't understand.

"You're the one who's not going to work here," Soraya said. "I got the job. Not you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Davey said. His hands were clenched into fists.

"The permanent job here. Ronald made us all apply. He offered me the job last week. The reason he hasn't said anything to you was that I only signed to accept the position today. I only decided today."

"He gave you my job?" Davey said. Now he was the one trembling. Not with fear, but with rage.

"Happy now, slut?" Kip whispered in her ear. "Now you have neither of us."

She reared back to get away from Kip's hot breath, to get away from Davey's clenched fists, and she stumbled on her Bambi legs. It happened in slow motion—one missed step, a failed recovery, a hand on the bookshelf that swayed again, threatened to spill over, and then she slammed onto the ground. Right onto Kip's cold body. She looked behind her and Kip's specter was gone. There was only his corpse, frigid in death, and Davey standing behind her, hot with rage. She had to get out of there. So she did the only thing her body would let her do. She ran.