A FOG SET IN. ITS MURKY WHITE FINGERTIPS REACHED OUT TO ME, enveloping my body in a careful embrace. Stiff grass bristled against my bare feet, contrasting the fluid movement of silk across my legs. I was wearing a couture gown, green brighter than the grass, so heavy it weighed on me, a train trailing behind me as I crossed the field.
The haze thickened quickly, its grasp tightening around my body until I was consumed by it. Grayness and nothingness filled my senses until I was utterly trapped by the clouds, swept under them as if they were solid. But I remained on my feet. The fog propelled me forward, toward an ominous mystery. Somehow, I knew I wasn't alone.
A huddled mass appeared at my feet, and my heart leapt as my mind processed what my eyes had seen.
It was Noah.
His eyes rolled back in his head as his hand twitched. His body was wrenched backward, and twisted in a way it shouldn't. He was dying.
Then Andrew. His hand appeared at my feet, breaking through the murky air. Blood ran down his milky skin, obscuring most of a crimson symbol on his wrist. As I stepped closer, the fog ebbed and flowed around him, forming a cavern over him. His body was in a frozen half-crawled position, his arms reaching out for help from me. But his eyes were closed, and he was stiff. He was already dead.
Then it was Cassie, a young Survivor with burning red eyes and veins so blue-black on her face they looked like cracks in marble. Then Hannah. Then Sarah. Then Lizzie. Sweet, pained, fair-haired Lizzie. Her eyes were open and glassy, perpetually staring into the hopeless oblivion of the scene around her.
Then, one by one, all the Survivors I cared about lay dead at my feet as I walked across the blood-stained plain. I bowed to none of them, though I couldn't say why.
I walked farther and farther across the green landscape, littered with the dead and dying members of my family, trying desperately to escape the clouds and the death and the weight it put in my gut. Ahead of me, the fog parted, as if anticipating my arrival, until I reached the final, wispy edges of the air where I could see beyond the clouds. Once in the open clearing of the field, the mangled bodies of every member of my family surrounded me. Bloodied and twisted, some writhing, some still. They went on for rows and rows this way, until they covered the ground as far as my eyes could see.
Then, laid out in a line, arms crossed over their chests, were the six bodies of the Gaulets, the human family we'd seen in the house in the hidden city where we'd met Ava Bientrut —Tituba. I thought about them a lot, especially the little girls, tucked into bed with their stuffed animals, the infant alone in the crib, and the mother who looked as if the baby had been violently ripped from her arms. The massacre of the Gaulets was the strongest, most jarring memory and the purest evidence I could attach to Alexander Raven's evil, and so they haunted me.
I stepped past their bodies, quieted by death, and walked farther into the unending sea of my dead family. The scene was set in such a way that it seemed real — so real that I could taste the blood in the air, could feel the summer wind in the Montana mountains.
Then in front of me stood sweet, soft Cole Hardwick. "It's all right, Sadie," he said in his faint Southern drawl. "Don't be afraid."
"What are you doing here?" I asked him, excited by a living face.
He smiled softly, but as if confused. "I belong here, Sadie. I'm a Survivor, just like you." His eyes were deeper. More purple. His face harder.
"But how?" I asked him.
"In him, all things are possible," he said.
I thought he was referring to God, the parable common. But behind him, Alexander Raven appeared, his menacing eyes and wax-cut face, black walnut hair, and hunching statue. They were the embodiments of evil to me now.
"In Raven, all things are possible," Cole repeated.
Raven smiled, one malicious muscle movement at a time. "She knows," he said, his voice the same melodic, misanthropic sound I'd heard in Oaxaca. "Trust me, my son," he eased, placing a bony, ivory hand on Cole's shoulder. "She knows."
Raven kept his eyes on me, that same sick grin on his face, as he produced a dagger and raised it over his head and in one driving force, brought it crashing down into the side of Cole's neck.
"No! Cole!" I yelled.
He fell to the ground. Dead like the rest of them. Dead like them all.
I JOLTED AWAKE, SCREAMING HIS NAME. THE BED SHOOK VIOLENTLY AS COLE'S substantial body jumped beside me.
I saw on his face that he couldn't tell if he were dreaming. I hadn't exactly told him that I sometimes came to lie next to him while he slept in some insane attempt to get to sleep myself, and he had never caught me. In the weeks that I'd been in New York, I'd managed to get maybe a couple of dozen hours of sleep, none of which happened when I was in his guest room, staring at the ceiling, alone with my thoughts.
"Sadie?" he asked, when he finally gained understanding. "Are . . . are you okay?" His eyes were half open and his hair was disheveled.
I put my hands on his neck to feel his warmth, his pulse, and his skin intact. This made him question the reality of it even more — me, in his bed, my hands on him. It was something he'd dreamt before.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Was it a nightmare?" he asked tentatively, afraid of what would have made me scream out his name in terror.
"Yes," I nodded, looking at my feet. I was dazed by what I'd seen. The images of my family, dead and mangled, more real than anything I'd ever seen in Anthony's visions, gave me my first real understanding of what was at stake in this war.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, his eyes searching my face for what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to react.
He held my gaze just too long. Long enough for me to remember why I wasn't supposed to sleep next to him. Long enough to remember that I had run from Everett Winter to get here. Long enough for me to remember who I was.
"No," I said hurriedly, scrambling to my feet.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Go back to sleep," I said, from the foot of his bed.
"No, I'll get up with you," he said, sitting up.
"You don't have to. Please. Just rest," I said, turning to leave his room.
"Sadie, I know I don't have to. I want to," he said tenderly, rising to his feet. "You know I worry about you," he said, but he thought, You know I love you.
His eyes were so sincere. They carried emotion like no eyes I'd ever seen. They made promises to you—like he'd love you forever, like he'd make it all go away—and for one second, you believed those eyes. I did, anyway. I suppose I wanted to.
But then, as always, I'd remember it all. The truth. What had become of my reality. What had become of me.
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, his movements as gentle and tentative as they were the day of Corrina's wedding. "Let me be here for you," he said. "I can call out of work. We can just hide out or go out or . . . whatever you want."
"No. No, Cole, I'm really fine. Just shaken. You and I both know that you can't just miss work. Don't worry about me. Today's the same as any other day. My life is still in shambles, but I'm still intact enough for you to go," I tried to persuade him. "Okay?"
He still had his arms wrapped around me. We realized it at the exact same moment, and he dropped them. "Okay," he relented. He looked at the clock. "Ah, it's too late to go back to bed. I'll go work out instead. I'm never up early enough to. Might as well take advantage," he said. I nodded softly, and I left him in his room to change, and then he was out the door.
I busied my hands as soon as he left. I didn't want to think about what I'd seen. I needed new sights and sounds to drown out the mind-movie that was currently doing me in. I turned on the TV and watched old Saved by the Bell reruns that came on this time of the morning. Corrina used to watch them when she was sleepless, either from drunkenness or missing Felix or both, and so in some weird way it comforted me. Then I pulled out my iPad, flipped to my Epicurious app, and found a suitable recipe for a breakfast I thought Cole might like. I dug through his kitchen and found the necessary ingredients and tools to make a frittata. I'd never cooked in my life before these last few weeks, but Cole loved to cook, and it had become a nice way to spend time together. I liked it because it allowed me to occupy my mind fully with something new and nonthreatening. Cole liked it because once my mind was busy, he was more likely to get me to give him honest answers. When I was cooking, I didn't have enough mental power to think about lying, so I just told him the truth.
To be fair, he was running out of questions. I'd answered most of them that night I'd arrived here, disheveled and dirty and exhausted and in fragments after watching Valentin die and feeling Narcisa mourn him and realizing what my life had become.
I'd said, "I'm ready to answer your questions now."
And he took a long breath and didn't say anything for a while. Then finally he'd said, "Let's let this song finish first," which was somehow the perfect thing to say. I would, of course, never forget that song. "Fire" by Augustana. We'd danced a few times, barefoot in his living room since then. I'd worn a black dress, like in the song. I wondered if he got the reference. But the song, like so much about Cole, had taken hold of me in its perfection. In that moment, he was able to tell me that nothing was more important than the two of us just being there. Happy. Together.
And then, when the song ended, he'd put on more music, a soothing soundtrack to the horror story I was about to tell him. He sat on the couch and I told him everything. At first I paced while I spoke. And then I had to sit down with the weight of it. And then finally, I crumpled against his couch cushions, losing my carefully crafted exterior, and he pulled me toward him, holding me as I hiccupped out the rest of it.
He hadn't said a word the whole time, but I'd had the strength to keep going because I could feel that he believed me. That he knew it made too much sense to be an elaborate lie I had woven. That in some ways, he was relieved. Who could be normal when they were dealing with this? he'd asked himself. Of course, he'd thought when I'd told him some things. I wish I could have been there for you, he'd thought at other things.
"And then I came here," I'd said. "Because I'm afraid. Because I don't want to go back. Because I can't live that life anymore."
He'd bent forward in his seat, hands folded together, pressed against his lips. And for the first time in God knows how many hours, Cole had spoken.
"How do we find a way to free you?"
That was all he'd said. I didn't tell have to tell him I wanted to be free. He'd heard the story, and he knew that what anyone would want was freedom.
And he'd wanted to know how he could help me find it.
I was replaying this moment in my head when he came back from his workout, all sweaty and human and pink, his pulse working to re-acclimate to its usual pace. He was just so alive, and that never got old.
He laughed when he saw the frittata. "I cannot believe you'd never so much as boiled water in a modern kitchen until three weeks ago, and here you are now. A regular Martha Stewart," he smiled as he opened the fridge to get a fresh bottle of water.
"Not Martha," I corrected. "She can craft too. I can only cook."
This time he laughed out loud, water trickling from the corners of his mouth. "And I really cannot believe you've only lived in this world for going on four years and you can already correct me on the nuances of my pop culture references."
I shrugged, but I was amused. It was kind of fun having a human know my secrets. He appreciated the skill set I'd amassed to be able to live my life on the outside, considering my original circumstances. And who doesn't like to be appreciated?
"Is that going to be ready before my shower?" he asked.
"Well, on average, it takes you seventeen minutes between the time you walk in there and the time you walk out clean, with your suit pants and undershirt on, ready to eat your breakfast. This should be ready in fourteen minutes, if you stop talking to me, and should take me at least ninety seconds to plate and . . ."
He cut me off. "Got it. Superbrain has already calculated, and now I must go shower quickly to effectively play the part of cog in the machine."
"Something like that," I called as he closed the door to his room. I neglected to tell him that Superbrain had made two frittatas as practice while he worked out, and I was hoping this "real" one would actually come out right. If you've only been cooking for three weeks, you lack the proper amount of practice. So I built in my own.
And sure enough, the timing worked out perfectly. I was just finishing the French press when he emerged.
Cole flipped the channel to Good Morning America like he did every morning, ate his breakfast, and said, like he did every morning, as he tied his tie in the kitchen and shrugged into his suit jacket, that he could get used to this. He poured himself the last of the coffee into a travel mug, kissed my forehead, and left for work.