"Consumed?" I said. "His Storyteller then..."

"Held by the Delons, but not for long. The Flish will find him and consume him as well. When he does, every human, every Destroyer, every warrior, every Storyteller... even the Keepers will be infected by the Flish."

"How? He's stuck in this house as far as I can tell."

"For now, but he will chip away at your resolve day after day until the weakest of you will succumb to the urges of the infection and eat the others. Then the Flish will no longer be bound to this house."

I rubbed my rumbling stomach. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Leave. Now."

"If we leave now the infection will go away?"

He paused. "No."

"No? So, I'll always feel this..." I got another glimpse of Nate. "Hunger?"

Tarek couldn't bring himself to look me in my eyes. "You will."

"And the others?"

"None of you can purge yourself of the need to feed. The only way is to survive the nine days, and there is no way to survive the nine days. Not even you, Oz Griffin.

"But," he said, "you can't spread the infection if you leave now. It is only spread by the Flish through his surviving host."

I was confused. "How do you expect us to work together out there if we're always trying to eat each other?"

He looked away without answering.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Are you saying we have to split up? Forever?"

"That is not what I'm saying."

I felt momentarily relieved.

"The others cannot be allowed to leave," he said.

I processed his statement in my head. "But you just said the longer they stay..." I practically swallowed my tongue when I realized what he wanted me to do. "No. I won't. I can't. They are my family."

"You don't have a choice. They cannot be allowed to leave."

"But I can?"

"Apparently your work is not yet done. You have more to do."

"Forget it," I said angrily "It's not an option. There has to be another way."

He looked away again, and I thought I detected something in his face.

"What?"

He didn't answer.

"If you know something... anything... another way..."

"I don't know enough," he yelled.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I know only enough to give you hope and hope is your enemy. Hope will make you do foolish things. Hope will be your undoing."

"Tell me what you know!"

He growled, and it rattled my bones.

I shook it off and said, "You're wrong, Tarek. It's not my undoing. It's what keeps me going. I am nothing without it, so you might as well tell me what you know."

He mumbled something about useless humans and then said, "If you can bind him to this story's Keeper, he will be powerless, and it is said that the infection will disappear. That's all I know."

"Who's the Keeper?"

"As I said, that is all I know."

I nodded. "How do I bind him to his keeper?"

He groaned. "As I said..."

I stopped. "That is all you know. It's something. I can use it."

Tarek slipped back into the darkness. "You will use it to your detriment," he said. "Good-bye, Oz Griffin."

THIRTEEN.

Staring Tyrone in the face, I suddenly didn't object to killing him and the others as much as I did before. Cutting him up, and making a stew out of him actually seemed like the best idea I had ever had.

Tyrone was thinking the same thing about me. That's how this infection worked. People eat delicious people. It doesn't matter if you're friends, or fighting a war together, or if it's some kid you saved from a Taker, and he did the same for you. You just wanted to eat him... needed to eat him.

Lou was safe. Or at least I thought she was. I didn't see her, but Ajax had positioned himself between Tyrone and the back area of the Winter Gardens. He was clearly protecting something. I suspected he was protecting Lou from Tyrone and the other way around, too.

"Come to save your girlfriend, Oz?" Tyrone's voice was hurried and desperate.

"Came to save you," I said. "And she's not my girlfriend."

"Whatever," he answered. "She's breakfast as far I'm concerned. I'll have April for lunch, and if you don't get out of here, I'll have you for dinner."

I looked up at the towering glass dome ceiling. The dim morning light hovered overhead. I had not realized a whole night had passed. That meant we had eight more days.

I heard a whimpering over my left shoulder and slowly turned toward it. Through the dying branches of a potted tree, I saw a set of eyes looking back at me. Blonde hair fell across a sweat drenched forehead. I stepped closer to get a better look. It was... "Valerie?"

Tyrone groaned. "A cheap knock off."

A Throwaway version of her, of course. I strained to get a good look at her through the dead branches. It had been so long since I had seen Valerie. This version of her was so much taller than what I remembered. She was made as Tyrone imagined her. I felt a sadness for him that I hadn't allowed myself to feel until now. He loved her. They seemed too young to even know what love was, but looking at the Throwaway version of Valerie, it was obvious that she was pieced together by blissfully happy memories. In the middle of the destruction that was our lives, Tyrone found and fell in love with the girl of his dreams. It seemed absurdly impossible.

I heard the shuffling of feet following the rapid patter of shoes on the hard floor. Something or someone struck me from behind and shoved me to the floor before I could react. Whoever or whatever it was snarled like an animal. I felt the feathery touch of hair float across the back of my neck.

I jerked hard enough to knock the attacker off my back, and wasn't totally surprised to see that it was April who crashed to the floor. I jumped up and prepared for another attack. It didn't come. She snapped and growled like she was possessed, and she was. We all were.

"This is crazy," I said desperately trying to control my breathing. "We can't do this to each other."

Lou's voice came out of the darkness. "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them."

Throwaway Valerie stepped out of her hiding place. "I want to leave this house."

"We can't," I said.

"Why?" Tyrone asked. To his credit, he was showing as much restraint as I was. He wanted to attack me, but he was using every bit of his willpower to stay put.

"I wish I could answer that," I said. "But we were brought here for a reason. I can't leave until I figure out what that reason is."

"You can't," April said sounding as if she might hyperventilate. "But we can."

"We need each other," Lou said.

"She's right," I said "We're going to kill each other," April barked.

I shook my head. "Beyond this place." I pointed toward the front door. "Out there. We fight together. We can't let this place drive us apart."

"That would sound a lot better if I could stop picturing myself stringing you up by your feet and gutting you like a deer," Tyrone said. "No offense."

"None taken," I said. "I feel the same way..." I stopped mid-sentence when I saw myself approaching from the back of the gardens. "What the...?"

Lou stepped out from behind... me or a version of me. "We have to make a pact."

"What's going on?" I asked.

Tyrone giggled. "Looks like your girlfriend replaced you."

I looked closer. He was right. Lou's Throwaway had become me, a slightly distorted version of me, but it was still a passable rendition of me.

"I didn't do it," Lou insisted. "It just happened."

"That's the way it works," Tyrone said. "They become what you want. Pretty clear what you want."

Lou gave him a vicious glare. "What I want is for you to shut the hell up..."

"You said something about a pact," I said trying to avoid an attack by... anyone in the room on anyone else in the room.

She hesitated and then addressed the bigger issue at hand. "The dead brought us here for a reason. I agree with you. There's something here that will help us get home."

"So," April said.

"So we can't leave until we find it."

"But your boyfriend says we got nine days," Tyrone said.

"I didn't say it," I corrected. "Grace did. The girl. The ghost... and stop calling me her boyfriend."

Lou looked hurt by my last statement. She shook it off and carried on. "Then we have nine days..."

"Eight now," I said.

"Eight days," she said. "We have to agree not to..." She should have ended the sentence with *eat each other,' but she didn't. She searched desperately for an ending that wasn't so gruesome. "... stay out of each other's way."

I chuckled absentmindedly. "That's easier said than done."

"Yeah," April piped in. "It's taking everything I have to not jump on Oz right now and rip open his throat." She licked her lips.

"Do you want to go home?" Lou asked.

We all waited for the others to reply. Finally, we just tentatively nodded our heads in unison.

"Then we have got to make this pact. We get away from each other... far away, and we look for whatever it is the dead brought us here to find."

"If we don't know what is we're looking for, how will we know when we find it?" April asked.

"You'll know," I said. "Pretty sure of that."

"If one of us breaks the pact?" Tyrone asked.

"One of us won't," Lou said. "We can't."

"But if we do?" he asked.

"Stop asking..." Lou started but I cut her off.

"He's right. There have to be consequences for breaking the pact."

"Not making it back home isn't good enough?" she asked.

We didn't answer.