Liam called my name in a panic, his feet thundering against the cement. Run, I wanted to scream to him, What are you doing? Run! I turned back to face the man-the skip tracer, in his wrinkled blue Windbreaker-just in time to see the butt of his rifle flying down toward my face, knocking every thought clear out of my skull.

Pain blinded me, flashing white beneath my eyelids. But I was down, not out. When the man tried to haul me up by the front of my shirt, I swung a leg around and caught him by the ankles. He landed on the ground with a grunt, his gun clattering against a nearby patch of rocks. I kicked until I made contact with something solid. I knew it wasn't enough.

I tried pushing myself up to my feet, but the world swung wild and loose under me. My head throbbed, and something hot and wet poured down over my right eye-blood. I could taste it then, just as plainly as I felt the air move as Liam lifted the man clear off the ground with a wave of his hand. He threw him like a rag doll into the sharp edges of the picnic tables, knocking the skip tracer out in a single blow.

Zu, Chubs, Zu, Chubs, my mind was stuck on a loop. I pressed a hand against my forehead, to the place where the gun had burst the skin in a jagged line.

I don't know what happened next. It felt like my head was skipping seconds as we moved. At one point, I think Liam must have tried to help me up, but I pushed him away with clumsy, slow hands.

Run! I tried to say. Get out of here!

"Ruby-Ruby." Liam was trying to get my attention, because he hadn't seen what was up ahead.

Zu and Chubs were sitting on the ground, outside of Betty. Their hands were handcuffed behind their backs, and their feet tied straight out in front of them with a length of bright yellow rope. Standing over them was none other than Lady Jane.

This was the first time I had seen her up close-close enough, at least, that I could make out the beauty mark on her cheek and the sunken quality to her eyes behind the black frames of her glasses. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders and curling with the humidity, but her skin still looked as though it had been pulled taut over the sharp angles of her face. Her black shirt was tucked neatly into her jeans, and a black utility belt was there to keep them both in place. I recognized the countless devices hanging from the belt. The orange identifier, a Taser, handcuffs...

"Hello, Liam Stewart," the woman said, her accent cold and silky.

Next to me, Liam braced his feet and threw his arms up-to knock her back, I think. The woman only tsk-tsked, nodding a head toward her outstretched left arm. My eyes followed its angle downward, to the gun pointed at Zu's head.

"Lee-" Chubs's voice was unnaturally high, but it was the look in Zu's eyes that planted me in place.

"Come here," the woman said. "Slowly, with your hands on top of your head-now, Liam, otherwise I can't be sure that my finger won't slip." She cocked her head to the side.

Panic, I thought. The panic button-where? My backpack was somewhere tucked under the front passenger seat. If I could get to it, if I could reach the door- "Yeah?" Liam spat. "And what's the going rate for me these days? How much did it get cut back when it took you three weeks to finally catch up to us?"

Her smile faltered, but returned with far more teeth than before. "You're still at a healthy two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, love. You should feel proud of that. You barely fetched me ten thousand the first time around."

Liam was vibrating with rage, too choked up to speak. I heard his breath catch in this throat. I suddenly understood how he had known so much about her-this was the same woman who had captured him before.

"You can't imagine my surprise when your name popped back up in the bounty database-and with that kind of reward? It seems that you've gotten yourself in a fair bit of trouble since we last met."

"Yeah, well," Liam said, his voice rough. "I do my best."

"But, darling, how could you be stupid enough to go back to that place? Didn't you think I'd look for you there?" The woman tilted her head again. "Your friends were only too willing to tell me where you were headed and why in exchange for letting them go. Lake Prince, is it?"

My pain gave way again to fear. If she finds East River... God, I couldn't even imagine the consequences.

Liam could, from the look of it. His knuckles were white with the effort it took him to keep his fingers clutched in his hair.

"If I can pull in that much for you, imagine what I'll get for a whole camp full of kids," she said. "Enough to finally buy my way home, I think, so thank you for that. You have no idea what kind of funds it takes to get an official to look the other way and admit someone from a disease-ridden country."

The next second of silence that passed was deafening, only because I knew exactly what he would say next.

"If you let them all go, you can have me," he said, both hands still on his head. "I won't give you any trouble."

"No!" Chubs shouted. "Don't-"

The woman didn't even need a moment to consider it. "You think I'm going to do you any favors? No, Liam Stewart, I'm going to take all of you, even that girl of yours-maybe you should consider her condition before you try to bargain?"

His eyes slid my way, taking in the blood streaking down my face. I tried to keep my vision straight as I took the tiniest step forward.

"I don't know where you came from, little girl, but I can assure you that where you're going won't be nearly as pleasant."

I'm not going back.

None of us were. Not if I could help it.

"Come here," she said, her eyes on me but her gun still trained on Liam. "You first, little girl. I'll take special care of you."

I went one step at a time, ignoring Liam's sharp intake of breath and the buzzing in my ears. My eyes went from Chubs, to Zu, to the woman's all-too-pleased face. Everyone was watching me.

Everyone will know.

And no one would be willing to have me after that.

"Turn around," the woman barked. Her eyes flickered over to where her partner was still hidden behind a tangle of picnic tables. I saw her grip relax ever so slightly on her handgun with her focus torn, and I took my chance.

My knee flew up, nailing her just under her chest. The gun clattered to the ground, and I heard Liam take two running steps in my direction, but somehow I was faster. Blood was alive and warm on my face, dripping from my chin. The woman's eyes widened as my hand closed over her exposed throat, slamming her back against Betty's door. When her gaze met mine, I knew I had her. The pain that exploded behind my eyes told me so.

Slipping into her head was as easy as releasing a sigh. Seeing her pupils shrink and explode back out to their normal size, it felt as though someone had wrapped a line of barbed wire around my brain and was tightening it with every passing second.

Chubs's face appeared at the corner of my vision, eyes wide. When he tried to stand, I knocked him back down with my foot. No. It wasn't safe. Not yet.

The woman looked around, her eyes wide and unfocused. That's when the pounding began in my ears. Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh, da-duh... I couldn't tell if it was my heart or hers.

"Hand him your gun," I said, tilting my head toward the place I knew Liam was standing. When she didn't move, I pushed the image of her doing it through the bubbling black shapes of her mind. I couldn't bring myself to look at his reaction as the black weapon was placed in his outstretched hand.

"Listen to me very carefully," I said. The blood was bitter in my mouth. "You are going to turn and walk back across the highway. You are...going to walk into that forest and keep walking until an hour passes...and you are going to sit down in the middle of it and not move. You're not going to eat...or sleep...or drink, no matter how much you want to. You're not going to move."

Imagining that into her mind, pushing the thought of her doing exactly that, was becoming more difficult. Not because my grip on her was slipping, but because my grip on consciousness was.

You can do this, I told myself. It didn't matter that no one had ever taught me, or that I had never practiced. In the end, it was all instinct. Like I had known all along.

I closed my eyes and went to work sorting through the darkened memories bubbling up behind her eyes. I found myself driving down the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other pointing to the rest stop up ahead. I parked the car a ways back, half hidden by the trees, and began to walk toward the lone black van in the parking lot. I stayed with this memory, taking in the scent of rain and grass, feeling the light breeze, until her partner reached the van, his rifle up and ready to fire.

I forced the memory out of her mind, imagining nothing but air where Black Betty had been in the parking lot. I traced the line of memories back to the boys at Walmart, to the secret they had revealed about East River. The images slipped away in smears of light, like raindrops racing down a car window.

"Now, you're...you won't remember any of this, or any of us."

"I won't remember any of this...." she parroted, as though the thought had just occurred to her.

I let go of her neck, but my pain didn't go away. Her eyes regained some of their focus. The pain didn't go away. She turned sharply on her heel and started to make her way toward the deserted highway.

The pain didn't go away.

No, it got worse. A trickle of sweat began at my temple and worked its way down the length of my spine. I was drenched. My hair clung to my face. My shirt was a second skin. I dropped into a crouch. If I was going to faint, it was better to stay close to the ground.

God, I don't want to faint. Don't faint. Do. Not. Faint....

I heard Liam say something. His foot came into my line of sight, and I leaned away.

"Don't-" I began. Don't touch me. Not right now.

And it was strange, because the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes wasn't the old asphalt, it wasn't the sky, or even my reflection in Betty's panels. It was a glimmering memory of my own. Of a few days before, when Liam had been in the driver's seat, singing along to Derek and the Dominos' "Layla" at the top of his lungs, so off-key that it had even Chubs laughing. Zu had been sitting right behind him, moving in time with the music, her entire body rocking out to the wailing electric guitar. And it had been so easy then, to laugh and pretend, even if just for a second, that we would be okay. That I belonged with them.

Because they hadn't known-none of them had known, and now that they did, it was over. It was all over now, and I would never have that back.

I wished that I had gone for the panic button. I wished that Cate could come and take me away from them, back to the only people who would ever embrace me for the monster I was.

NINETEEN.

WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO TURN ten years old, the most significant thing about that number was that it was double-digits. It didn't really feel much like a birthday, anyway. At dinner, I sat bookended by my parents at the table, moving peas around my plate, trying to ignore the fact that neither of them were speaking-to each other, or to me. Mom's eyes were rimmed with red and glassy because of the argument they'd had a half hour before; she was still valiantly trying to gather up kids for a surprise birthday party for me, but Dad forced her to call and cancel. Said it wasn't the kind of year to be celebrating, and, as the last kid alive on my block, it would be cruel of us to hang the birthday banner and tie up the usual cluster of balloons outside. I heard the whole thing from the top of the stairs.

I didn't really care about the birthday either way. It wasn't like I had anyone left I really wanted to invite. What was more important to me was the fact that, at ten, I was suddenly old-or rather, would be old soon. I'd start to look like the girls in the magazines, be forced to wear dresses and high heels and makeup-go to high school.

"In ten years from tomorrow, I'll be twenty." I don't know why I said it out loud. It was just this profound realization, and it had to be shared.

The silence that followed was actually painful. Mom sat straight up and pressed her napkin to her mouth. For a moment I thought she might stand up and leave, but Dad's hand came down to rest on top of hers, settling her like an anchor.

Dad finished chewing on his barbecued chicken before giving me a smile that quivered at the edges. He leaned down a ways so our identical green eyes met. "That's right, Little Bee. And how old will you be ten years after that?"

"Thirty," I said. "And you'll be...fifty-two!"

He chuckled. "That's right! Halfway to the-"

Grave, my mind whispered. Halfway to the grave. Dad realized his mistake before the word fully left his mouth, but it didn't matter. All three of us knew what he meant.

Grave.

I knew what death was. I knew what happened after you died. At school, they brought in special visitors to talk to the kids that came back. The one assigned to our room, Miss Finch, gave her presentation two weeks before Christmas, wearing a bright pink turtleneck and glasses that covered half of her face. She wrote everything out on the whiteboard, in thick, capital letters. DEATH IS NOT SLEEPING. IT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. IT COULD HAPPEN AT ANY TIME. YOU DO NOT COME BACK.

When people die, she explained, they stop breathing. They do not have to eat, they no longer speak, and they cannot think or miss us like we miss them. They do not, ever, ever wake up. She kept giving us more examples, like we were too stupid or little to understand-like the six of us left hadn't sat there and watched Grace's lights go out. Dead cats cannot purr, and dead dogs cannot play. Dead flowers-Miss Finch pointed to the bundle of dried flowers on my teacher's desk-do not grow or bloom anymore. Hours of this. Hours of being asked, Do you understand? But for all of her answers, she never got around to the one question I had wanted to ask.

"What does it feel like?"

Dad looked up sharply. "What does what feel like?"

I looked down at my plate. "To die. Do you feel it? I know that it's not the same for everyone, and that you stop breathing and your heart stops beating, but what does that feel like?"

"Ruby!" I could hear the horror in Mom's voice.

"It's okay if it hurts," I said, "but are you still in your body after things stop working? Do you know that you've died?"

"Ruby!"

Dad's bushy eyebrows drew together as his shoulders slumped. "Well..."

"Don't you dare," Mom said, using her free hand to try to pry his big one off her other trembling fingers. "Jacob, don't you dare-"

I kept my hands clenched together under the table, trying not to stare at Mom's face as it paled from a deep red to a stark white.

"No one..." Dad began. "No one knows, sweetheart. I can't give you an answer. Everyone finds out when it's their time. I guess it probably depends-"

"Stop it!" Mom said, slapping her other hand down on the table. Our plates jumped in time with her palm. "Ruby, go to your room!"

"Calm down," Dad told her in a stern voice. "This is important to talk about."

"It is not! It absolutely is not! How dare you? First you cancel the party, and when I told you-" She strained against his grip. I watched, my lips parting, as she picked up her water glass and threw it at his head. In ducking, he lifted his hand from the table, just enough for her to wrench away and stand. Her chair clattered to the ground a second after the glass shattered against the wall behind Dad's head.

I screamed-I didn't mean to, but it slipped out. Mom came around to my side of the table and grabbed me by the elbow, hauling me up, nearly taking the tablecloth with me.

"Cut it out," I heard Dad say. "Stop! We have to talk to her about it! The doctors said we needed to prepare her!"

"You're hurting me," I managed to choke out. Mom startled at the sound of my voice, looking down at where her nails were digging into the soft skin of my upper arm.

"Oh my God..." she said, but I was already in the hallway, flying up the stairs, slamming my bedroom door shut and locking it behind me, closing out the sound of my parents screaming at each other.

I dove under my heavy purple bedcovers, knocking the row of carefully arranged stuffed animals to the ground. I didn't bother to change out of the clothes I had worn to school, or turn off the lights, not until I was sure my parents were still in the kitchen, and far away from me.

An hour later, breathing the same hot air under the comforter in and out, listening to the rattle of the air vent, I thought about the other significant thing about turning ten.

Grace had been ten. So had Frankie, and Peter, and Mario, and Ramona. So had half of my class, the half that never came back after Christmas. Ten is the most common age for IAAN to manifest, I had overheard a newscaster saying, but the affliction can claim anyone between the ages of eight and fourteen.

I straightened my legs out and pressed my arms in at my sides. I held my breath and shut my eyes, staying as still as possible. Dead. Miss Finch had described it like a series of stops and nots. Stopped breathing. Not moving. Stopped heart. Not sleeping. It didn't seem like it should have been that simple.

"When a loved one dies, they don't get to wake up," she had said. "There are no comebacks or do-overs. You may wish they could come back, but it's important that you understand they can't, and they won't."

Tears slipped down the side of my face, dripping into my ears and hair. I turned to the side, smashing a pillow over my face, trying to block out the screaming match downstairs. Were they coming up to my room to yell at me? Once or twice I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, but then Dad's voice would float up to me, booming and terrible, yelling words I didn't like or understand. Mom sounded like she was being gutted.

I drew my legs up to my chest and pressed my face against my knees. For every two breaths I was taking in, I was lucky to get one out. Inside my chest, my heart had been racing for what felt like hours, jumping with every shatter or thud from downstairs. I stuck my head over the covers just once, to make sure that I had locked the door. That would make them even angrier if they tried it, but I didn't care.

My head felt light and heavy all at once, but worst of all was the pounding. The dum-dum-dum at the back of my head, like something was inside of me knocking against my skull, trying to break out.

"Stop it," I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain. My hands were shaking so hard I couldn't keep them over my ears. "Please, please stop!"

Hours later, when my feet carried me downstairs, I found them in their dark bedroom, deep into sleep. I stood in the sliver of light coming through their open doorway, waiting to see if they would wake up. I had half a mind to climb into bed between them like I used to do, into that small space between them that I knew was warm and safe. But Dad had told me I was too big to be doing such silly things.

So instead, I walked over to my Mom's side of the bed and kissed her good night. Her cheek was slick with rosemary-scented cream, cool and smooth to the touch. The instant I pressed my lips there, I jumped back, a flash of white burning inside my eyelids. For one strange second, the image of my own face had leaped to the front of a long series of jumbled thoughts, then disappeared, like a photo drifting into dark water. Her blanket must have shocked me-the jolt traveled all the way up to my brain, flashing it white for a second.

She must not have felt it, because she didn't wake up. Neither did Dad, even when the same strange thing happened.