She was sick of people telling her what she should or shouldn't do.

"I won't," she said, pulling back. Wish stared at her grimly. He watched her go.

Consuela pushed herself outward so she wouldn't have to look back.

She felt bad about the lie.

CONSUELA went to see Tender feed.

Following him had been easy. Maybe she knew where to look, or maybe she could still taste his scent in the air she was in.

He was shirtless, alone on his knees in the middle of a rich man's deserted hallway, almost as if he were kneeling in prayer. Legs buried in wine-colored carpet, Tender bowed his head while electric sconces flickered coppery light against black-and-white photos in gilded frames. It felt old, musty, and expensive here. Consuela pushed herself around a dark corner and watched him from the shadows. He was buried in the task, oblivious to anything else. Like her.

Tender took long, deep breaths, priming himself for something.

Eyes closed, he shook his head like a dog, slowly, then building speed, and with a quick, wrenching noise, unhinged his jaw. Consuela winced. Tender's mouth lolled open, held on solely by the skin of his face. His tongue flapped like a landed fish.

Tender bent forward, his back undulating as if he were about to vomit, but-like retching in reverse-his long body began to heave, sucking in dark fumes like a giant vacuum.

It curled off of everything: the walls and the floor, the lightbulbs, the doork.n.o.bs, the display shelf and even-or especially-the photographs in their frames. It was as if a film lifted from a lens, an abiding grayness gone.

He drank. His body fought against his thirst, his hands pushed back, arms rigid. Even as his face bent farther forward, his fingers raked against the carpet, trying to resist.

The end came like a rubber band snapped. He stopped, rocking on all fours in recoil.

Staggering, Tender trembled on his hands and knees, breathing hoa.r.s.ely through his gaping maw. His tongue hung loosely in his head. His chest buckled. His pale shoulders shone with sweat.

Blinking hard, he placed both hands firmly against chin and cheek, and, with a grunt, wrenched his jaw back into place with a loud bone crack.

Groaning, Tender struggled to sit. Leaning back on his knees with a look of relief and regret, he swallowed. Tilting his face up to the ceiling, blinking back tears, he couldn't see Consuela staring at him in horror. He bent farther backwards, and Consuela saw the sudden squirming motion like a bag of wet cats where Tender's stomach should be.

There was a loud gurgling. She could hear it from here.

He inhaled sharply and screamed.

REAPPEARING somewhere in the Flow, Consuela realized that she'd flown in a random direction and now she was lost. Being vapor meant she didn't have to gasp for breath, but instinctive fear pummeled her chest like hail.

The look on Tender's face had burned itself on the backs of her eyes. The sound-that inhuman, impossible sound-scrabbled around her brain on sharp, needled claws. That wasn't the brazen, brilliant egomaniac she'd met, that was . . . she didn't know what Tender had been just then. Terrible. Enslaved. Martyred. It was the closest thing she could get to pitying him. She wondered why she still didn't.

Tender eats pain. He hates it. It hurts him. But he can't help himself; he's hungry. The next synapse fired an awful certainty: This is who I am and that was Tender. That is who he is.

It made her sick and sad and sorry and no small part grateful that it was him, and not her, who had the burden of maintaining the Flow. How could he stand it? Could G.o.d be so cruel? Tender's words haunted her. Consuela had often wondered the same thing, reading the paper or listening to the news, things were not so different in the Flow. There were still victims and predators, cruelty and fate.

And still, she couldn't pity him. Or admire him. She was just glad she wasn't him.

Disgusted with herself and what she'd witnessed, Consuela's skin felt like a layer of sewer-soaked clothes or unexpectedly bloodied underwear at that time of month. She tore the lump behind her neck and ripped off the skin, violently pushing it from her. It fell limply in a pile, one empty arm drifting like a swirl of campfire smoke. Consuela hugged her skeletal arms, clacking them against her breastbone and ribs. She ran her hands up and down her radii as if trying to get warm. At least she felt better; at least she was still wholesome and whole.

Her body glowed gently with its muted pink-blue-pearl light and she took comfort that she was still her, inside. She was still Consuela-Bones-and being in the Flow hadn't changed that. It just made her more herself, like Wish said. And the Yad. It made more sense to her now.

Draping her cast-off skin over one arm, Consuela concentrated on finding her way to her room.

Or, at least, the memory of her room.

She closed her eyes against the strain and saw a flash image of Tender's loose jaw. She opened her eyes again-no good. If she thought too much about it, she'd never get anywhere. Go, she urged herself. Just go.

Trusting that her feet knew the way, Consuela stepped sideways through the Flow's tesseract doors and onto the soft carpeting of her own floor. She stumbled and righted herself, almost surprised to have gotten there so easily.

Feeling the air skin against her body, she flinched at its closeness. She never wanted to wear it again.

Never again, she thought, and tossed it aside.

The skin pinp.r.i.c.ked into its own black hole.

Consuela stared after it. Or the place where it wasn't. She stepped forward, reaching out to test the air. Nothing. She spun in place with the disorienting feeling of having had her keys a moment ago and now being unable to remember where she'd put them.

Consuela got down on her hands and knees, her sharp patellas poking into the plush carpet, sweeping the surface as if searching for a lost contact lens. It felt strangely like a dream. Her fingers stippled over the carpet yarn.

Nothing. Her skin of air was gone.

Pushing herself up, she wondered with a thrill of excitement and dread whether she could ever make another one again. Or was it like Wish's tooth wishes? Only one, then gone?

Consuela padded into her bathroom and unbolted the window. Climbing into the tub and stepping onto its edge, she sat upon the windowsill, feet dangling in the air. But the feeling wasn't the same. There was no urgent need to make windswept footie pajamas, and without the internal tug, she didn't feel like testing the theory by falling three stories and crashing to pieces on the back deck if she were wrong.

She crawled back out of the window and into the empty tub, racing back to her closet. She grabbed the water skin off its hanger and marched back into her bathroom. Holding it over the tub, she thought it undone.

The skin fell through her fingers, splashing against the porcelain, spinning and gurgling as it slipped down the drain. Tiny droplets of water clung to her finger bones, threatening to fall like tears.

Were the skins reverting to their original components or did they simply cease to exist? Between her last two skins, only one held the answer.

She scooped up her trailing gown of inky feathers and spread it over her bed. Carefully tucking all the stray ends onto the comforter, Consuela smoothed her hands through its tucks and folds, burying her fingers in its dramatic sheen. Closing her eyes, she willed it unmade.

A soft pluff sound and a great loosening collapsed the skin into a pile of loose feathers. She picked up a few and let them spiral down. Separated, alone, they were nothing like the skin of the dark, winged angel who'd rescued a muddy drunk. She gathered up the corners of her bedspread and, unbolting the double-paned gla.s.s, Consuela pushed the bundle out the window, letting two of the corners fall. A great cloud of feathers exploded, beating at the window, obscuring the view, before pinwheeling out into the fathomless "wherever" that existed beyond her make-believe room. She shook the bedspread with vicious snaps, pulling it back in only after she'd dislodged the last bit of downy fluff. She snapped the window shut and threw the comforter on her bed. It was a violent release, a daring game, playing chicken with the Flow.

Consuela considered her last victim crackling merrily in its garment bag, tongues of yellow-orange flame licking the inside of the clear plastic. She stood in the closet doorway, the gold light playing merrily over her bones. Would undoing this last skin free her from the Flow? Or would it make her powerless, trapped as a living skeleton, forever, without any skins? Would it kill her, making herself "undone"? Would it do none of these things and simply curl into a zip of warm nothingness, leaving only a touch of ash-if that-behind?

Could it free her? Kill her? Bring her closer to the end? A real end, like Nikki's: death in both worlds.

The fire skin hung by a crackling thread.

The real question was: was she willing to risk it?

She rotated that last question around in her mind.

No.

Consuela took her own skin, unfolding it gently like an heirloom quilt, and stepped into herself slowly, welcoming it on like an old friend. She felt her spine slide closed, soft orbs settling into her sockets, the itch of her scalp as it tightened against her skull, and the comforting weight of her fatty curves as they nuzzled over her ribs and hips. Consuela lifted her head, looked at herself in the mirror, and recognized the full-lipped, high school grin.

I know you, she thought at herself. This is me.

chapter ten.

"To us, a realist is always a pessimist. And an ingenious person would not remain so for very long if he truly contemplated life realistically."

-OCTAVIO PAZ.

WISH whimpered as he stumbled on a stretch of nothing, slipping through the infinite s.p.a.ce of the Flow. Dodging between islands of other people's pasts, he cursed for the millionth time the fact that he couldn't be selfish if he tried.

He ran wildly, tripping over his long shoelaces. He could sense murder coming like a storm.

Perhaps he imagined it-not the killer, that was real-but the echo of footsteps, sharp and sure like marching soldiers. d.a.m.n boots should make a sound outside his head! He couldn't have been seen, not yet anyway, or the footfalls would've gotten faster, right? Anyone human would start running him down. Then again, Wish wondered if there was anything human in there anymore.

Wish bounced off of something solid, the edge of familiar territory, but whatever it was retreated before he could get a grip on it and yank himself into freedom. No trespa.s.sing. Doomed in the empty. Probably Joseph Crow's trickster-coyote trapdoor.

"s.h.i.t!" he swore, spun to his feet, and kept on running, fast.

The somewhat-sounds were coming closer, and Wish felt a desperate clawing-bile-panic need to escape. He was good at wishful thinking, but he was much better at hiding.

Wish sat down, curling into a fetal ball on the nothingness floor. He rolled up-whimpering-and ground fists in his hair. The un-noise kept ticking like a grandfather clock.

Wish teetered on his seat, pulling his jacket full of novelty pins like an umbrella over his head. He shook, back turned toward the imaginary echo, feeling the cold on his crack where his shirt lifted from his briefs. Ducking his face into the hot hollow between his chest and legs, he squeezed his eyes shut, openmouthed-breathing, hiding the animal sounds coming out of his throat.

It wasn't my wish, so this should work . . . Wish clenched his hands tighter. No, no, no-it HAS to work! It wasn't mine. It HAS to work . . . !

He kept his weird prayer spinning in his head, forming a sort of convincing coc.o.o.n, winding a thread of hope to cover him whole.

The marching came closer.

He has to have seen me . . .

The sounds were steady and even.

Inhuman robot p.r.i.c.k!

The footsteps never faltered, driven like a steady hammer to nail, gunshots at a firing range. It was almost upon him-the press of hot, dampened Flow pushing everything out of its wake. Wish cowered, waiting. He didn't want to die, but couldn't help wondering what it'd feel like if he did. He wondered if it'd take long. He wondered if it was happening now. Was the sword hanging over his head? He couldn't stand not knowing. He looked.

Wish peeked over his collar under the cover of his hair at the bright black boots stalking by. The young psychopath's strides ate up the Flow and spat it back like some parasitic worm. He didn't see Wish, didn't even pause to sneer; the Angel of Death kept walking, storming toward somewhere else in s.p.a.ce. Wish watched him go, refusing to breathe.

It was an old, familiar terror: too scared to speak, too scared to tell, and no one ever believed him, anyway.

The boots walked into the nothing as Wish sat unnoticed, sculpted in fear.

He unwound only when his muscles began to burn, when his knuckles shook with strain and sharp spasms bit the base of his spine. Uncurling like a hedgehog, meek and cautious, Wish kept expecting the inevitable predator-pain.

He couldn't believe it-it worked! He'd pa.s.sed within inches, if that.

Relief crashed through him with the promise of a major migraine. Paranoid, am I? Wish smirked. Then what the h.e.l.l was that?!

He wiped his hands on his pants and headed elsewhere. His laughter, when it escaped, bubbled out in spurts of maniacal soda-can froth. Piece of cake; he giggled. Should he try to warn the others? Sissy was a goner, for sure. Bones, too, probably. He couldn't risk it. There wasn't time. Maybe he could find Abacus or Maddy and hide out with them. Wish might not be the only one left, after all.

Smarter than the average bear, Wish congratulated himself.

It was tough to hide in a world where nothing really existed, so he'd tucked himself behind somebody else's wish, and waited for the threat to walk right on by.

THIS time, there was no knock, no warning, Tender walked right through her bedroom wall with a secret smile on his face. Consuela jumped up from her desk, cold with fear. Had he known that she'd been spying on him? Had Wish said anything? Tender's going to kill me!

He was as confident and cool as ever, as if he'd never once cracked open his mouth and swallowed layers of black pain from the Flow.

"h.e.l.lo, Bones," he said. "Sorry to intrude, but I knew this couldn't wait." He flicked his head to move his bangs from his eyes. "I figured out your problem and-as promised-I'm here to help!"

The creepy, numbing buzz hadn't left her limbs, which tingled awake without having fallen asleep first. She remembered the ants. And Tender's screaming. She was proud that her voice sounded calmer than she felt.

"Help?" she asked warily. "With what?"

Tender grinned as if they shared a joke. "Oh, come now. V wanted to do it all by himself-right past wrongs, that sort of thing. Make it up to you," he said. "And we all gave him his s.p.a.ce and ample time, but I think you've had enough and would rather just get out, right?"

Consuela stammered, "Get out?"

"Get. Out." Tender overenunciated. "Go home. Go back to your life. That is what you want, isn't it?"

Her head spun, thoughts twisting one-eighty. "What?"

"I asked," Tender said smoothly, stepping forward and looking pleased with himself, "if you wanted to go home?"

She blinked up at him.

"Home." She repeated the word, visions of her parents and Allison and her car swam to the surface; school and pizza and walking out of her room and away and away and away . . .

Consuela was hopeful enough to ask.

"How?"

Tender clapped his hands as if he'd been waiting for that question. "Well," he said theatrically, "let's see what our lucky contestant can find behind Door Number One." He grabbed her bedroom door handle and cranked it down, pulling it open with a flourish. Consuela stared.

There were hardwood floors, cream-colored walls, the worn, Indonesian runner, and the framed family portrait at the end of the hall.

Home. Her mouth felt dry. She forgot to breathe.

Tender stepped aside.

"How about here and now?" he said.

She was afraid to move, afraid to blink, afraid to believe it. Her feet were glued to the floor.