All the while I cursed the decision to create this back-burn, to climb Skeleton Ridge, to leave Camp Liberty in the first place. If only we had stayed put. What were we thinking?

I have no idea how long we lay there, only that it seemed an eternity. I passed out . . . and was confronted with a familiar image.

The woman with long black hair.

She appeared through a fog of white, beckoning me forward. It occurred to me I might be dead and she was welcoming me to some hazy afterlife.

"You will do what's right," she said, her face creased with lines of worry.

I gave her a blank look.

She smiled a brittle smile and repeated it. "You will do what's right." Then, she disappeared as abruptly as ever.

"But I don't know what it means!" I screamed after her.

I felt moisture on my cheek and blinked open my eyes. Argos was licking me to consciousness. I wasn't dead. Raising my head, I saw a distant fire . . . and a series of still, dark mounds: bodies blackened by fire. Less Thans and Sisters.

I lifted myself from the scorched earth and shook the ashes from my clothes. When I ran a hand through my hair, a plume of black ash erupted. I was covered in the stuff. Argos had fared only slightly better. Although he was turned ebony from ash, I had managed to protect him from the burning embers.

I was turned around and couldn't tell who was who. All the still, dark mounds looked exactly the same. As Argos and I walked toward them, our footsteps exploded in clouds of ash and embers. Twitch's body was the first one we came to. I stuck out a hand and searched for a pulse. I couldn't find one. When he suddenly blinked and raised his head, I nearly fell back.

"We made it?" Twitch asked, his voice hoarse.

"Looks that way."

"And the others?"

"Don't know yet."

I helped him to his feet and we began walking from hole to hole. Some of them had managed deeper holes than others and their backs were badly scalded-Red's shirt was still on fire, so was Scylla's-but miraculously, everyone we discovered was still very much alive.

Except for Hope. We hadn't yet found her.

"Where is she?" I asked, pivoting in place, aware of the panic in my voice. "Where's Hope?"

Argos barked and I followed his gaze-to a motionless mound in the charred landscape. I inhaled sharply at the sight of her. My feet were two-ton weights as I slowly approached.

It wasn't just the drifting smoke that made me feel as if I was walking in a fog; it was the fear of what I was about to find. And as I made my way toward her-feet kicking up a cloud of embers and ash-it occurred to me that if she didn't survive, I wouldn't either. All my life I'd been searching for someone who understood me, someone who made me better, someone who believed in me.

Hope was that person. And without her . . . well, I couldn't bear to think about it.

I crouched down by her side, laying my outstretched hand on her shoulder. As my fingers rested on her warm skin, willing her to be alive, I remembered her body curved into me in the darkened tunnel; the grip of our fingers as we stumbled from the inferno. Things my body couldn't let go of. Wouldn't let go of.

But not just memories from the past-it's like my body could sense the future also. Sharing stories and laughter and tears. My hands running down her arms. The tips of my fingers exploring the hollow of her neck. Her milk-scented breath warming my cheek as we lay next to each other, counting the infinite stars above us.

A future that could only happen if she was still alive.

I shook her lightly. "Hope?"

She didn't stir.

"Hope?" I said again, my voice thick with desperation.

Still nothing. I turned away.

Then, I heard it.

"Book?" she asked groggily.

Her eyes blinked open.

A surge of relief shot through me and for a second I thought my knees would buckle. "Yes," I said. "It's me."

Her eyes batted away the smoke. "I'm okay?"

I was suddenly incapable of speech. Before I answered her, before I even uttered a single word, I hoisted her to her feet and pulled her into me, throwing my arms around her, hugging her like I'd never hugged anyone in my entire life. We stood there, embracing, our chests pressed against each other, our beating hearts mingling into one.

"You're okay," I said, whispering in her ear. "You're okay you're okay you're okay!"

She nodded fiercely, and I could feel her tears staining both our cheeks.

When I finally drew away, I looked into her face. Those eyes-those liquid brown pools that had drawn me in since we'd first met-called to me. Beckoned me.

So I kissed her. I leaned forward and slid my hands on either side of her face and brought it gently forward and kissed her-our lips pressing against each other in a kind of quiet desperation. We had kissed once before, but that was clumsy and hurried and maybe even accidental. This time, it was no accident . . . and we were in no hurry.

When we finally pulled away, my body radiated warmth.

"'Bout time," Diana said, and some of the others laughed.

For the first time I noticed them. We all stood in a clumsy circle, not knowing what to say. Somehow, against odds far greater than who we were, we were still alive, surviving Hunters and fire. It seemed nothing less than a miracle.

"What now?" Flush asked.

"First we get this crud from our lungs," I said.

"And then?"

"Then we wait for those flames to burn through that next section of forest."

"And then?"

I looked the others in the eyes. I looked at Hope. "Then we head east."

The water from our canteens was warm-in some cases downright hot-but it helped cut through the smoky grime that coated our throats. I looked around at my friends, at this motley collection, this band of brothers-and Sisters. I burst into laughter.

"What's so funny?" Flush asked, thinking he'd done something foolish.

"It's not you," I said. "Look at us. We're a mess."

It was true. Our clothes were blackened, red sores dotted our bodies where smoldering embers had branded us, and our skin was covered in soot. We suddenly began to laugh.

Red raised his canteen and offered a toast. "To Sisters."

"To Less Thans," Diana said.

"To prey," I added, and we all took long swallows of tepid water.

We stood there laughing and coughing, seven Less Thans and nineteen Sisters in a blackened wilderness of fire. I had never felt such relief, such gratitude, such friendship. Yes, it was freedom we were after-that's why we'd escaped from our camps-but at that moment, fire-tested and ash-coated, I realized what K2 had been trying to teach me all along: there was something else lacking in my life. Friends. Companionship. A bond. For once, I belonged.

And how much sweeter life was because of it.

We few, we happy few . . .

THEY MARCH OVER SCORCHED earth. The underbrush is burned away, exposing bare, blackened rock. Hot embers glow like devil's eyes. When they come to a river, they lower their ash-covered bodies into the eddies. The water cleanses and cools them, leaving a sooty trail that snakes into the winding current. For Hope, it's like shedding a layer of skin. A former life is past; a new one set to begin.

The kiss was proof of that.

A drizzle wakes them in the morning: the hiss and sizzle of raindrops landing atop smoldering earth. The river is deep, but they're able to ford it by hopping from rocks to logs to get across.

Although no one says as much, they feel like explorers on the verge of a new continent. What they'll find in this other world-the Heartland-they can't say. All they hope is that it'll be less dangerous than where they came from-a life of being hunted, of being tortured for someone else's purpose, of being treated like animals.

That next night, sitting around the campfire, Sisters and Less Thans together, Twitch begins a ghost story and Book gets up and drifts away. Hope is compelled to follow him.

She finds him sitting on a boulder and takes a seat nearby. For the longest time neither speaks. Every so often the laughter of others drifts their way, but other than that the night is utterly silent.

"What do you think it's like?" Book finally says.

"What's what like?"

"Heaven. Hell."

So that's what he's been thinking about, she realizes, wondering what this has to do with his secrets-the part of him she doesn't know.

"I don't believe in heaven or hell," she says.

"Then the afterlife, whatever you want to call it. How do you imagine it?"

"I don't."

"Not a bit?"

"Well, it's not angels with wings on big, puffy clouds, if that's what you're getting at."

For the longest time Book doesn't respond.

"You know how I picture it?" he asks. "I see it like a road. A long, dusty road in the middle of nowhere. And on this road are the people who've died before you. Like Frank and June Bug. And when you die, you walk awhile and eventually you catch up, and from that time on you walk with them, side by side."

Hope isn't sure what to make of this. "So everyone who's dead is walking on this road?"

"That's right."

"People you like, people you don't?"

"I suppose."

"What if you don't want to walk with certain people?" She can think of any number of people she'd just as soon avoid.

"You don't have to. It's the afterlife; you get to choose who you walk with."

"Hmm." Then she asks, "Is there someone you want to walk with on that road?" Book grunts but says nothing.

Hope thinks of her mom and her dad-and Faith-and the memory prompts her to reach out and put her hand on Book's. He doesn't move away. His fingers are warm beneath hers, and a rush of contentment surges through her. She could stay here all night.

"I know, you know," she murmurs. Her voice is quiet, subdued.

"Know what?"

"What you tried to do."

Book pulls his hand away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's okay," she says.

"I have no idea what-"

"You tried to off yourself."

From the look on Book's face, it seems this is the last thing he wants to talk about. Hope can only imagine the nightmare images floating through his mind.

"How did you know?" he finally asks.

"The scars."

Book gets up and tugs at his sleeves.

"Is that why you go off by yourself sometimes?" Hope asks. "Because it's something you can't talk about?"

"Of course not. . . ."

"Because if you talk about it, it might help it go away."