In the dark, Caine could still pretend that she was her old self. Beautiful Diana. But he knew that her luscious dark hair was brittle and tinged with rust. Her skin was sallow and rough. Her arms sticks. Her legs unstable pins. She didn’t look fourteen anymore. She looked forty.

“We have to give it a try,” Caine said without preamble.

“You know he’s lying, Caine,” Diana whispered. “He’s never been to the island.”

“He read about it in some magazine.”

Diana managed an echo of her old snarky laugh. “Bug read a magazine? Yeah. Bug’s a big reader.”

Caine said nothing. He sat still, trying not to think, trying not to remember. Trying not to wish there had been more to eat.

“We have to go to Sam,” Diana said. “Give ourselves up. They won’t kill us. So they’ll have to feed us.”

“They will kill us if we give ourselves up. Not Sam, maybe, but the others. We’re the ones responsible for turning out the lights. Sam won’t be able to stop them. If not freaks like Dekka or Orc or Brianna, then Zil’s punks.”

The one thing they still had at Coates was a pretty good idea of what was going on in town. Bug had the ability to walk unseen. He was in and out of Perdido Beach every few days, sneaking food for himself, mostly. But also overhearing what kids were saying. And supposedly reading torn magazines he didn’t bother to sneak back to Coates.

Diana let it go. Sat quietly. Caine listened to her breathing.

Had she done it? Had she committed the sin herself? Or was she smelling it on him now and despising him for it?

Did he want to know? Would he be able to forget later that her lips had eaten that meat?

“Why do we go on, Caine?” Diana asked. “Why not just lie down and die. Or you…you could…”

The way she looked at him made him sick. “No, Diana. No. I’m not going to do that.”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Diana whispered.

“You can’t. We’re not beat yet.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to miss this party,” Diana said.

“You can’t leave me.”

“We’re all leaving, Caine. All of us. Into town to be taken out one by one. Or stay here and starve. Or step outside as soon as we get our chance.”

“I saved your life,” he added, and hated himself for begging. “I…”

“You have a plan,” Diana said dryly. Mocking. One of the things he loved about her, that mean streak of mockery.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I have a plan.”

“Based on some stupid story from Bug.”

“It’s all I’ve got, Diana. That, and you.”

Sam walked the silent streets.

He felt unsettled by his encounter with Orsay. And unsettled, too, by his encounter with Astrid in his bedroom.

Why hadn’t he told her about Orsay? Because Orsay was saying the same thing Astrid was saying?

Let it go, Sam. Stop trying to be all things to all people. Stop playing the hero, Sam. We’re past all that.

He had to tell Astrid. If only to have her walk him through it, make sense of this thing with Orsay. Astrid would analyze it clearly.

But it wasn’t that simple, was it? Astrid wasn’t just his girlfriend. She was the head of the town council. He had to officially report on what he had learned. He was still getting used to that. Astrid wanted laws and systems and logical order. For months Sam had been in charge. He hadn’t wanted to be, but then he was, and he’d accepted it.

And now he was no longer in charge. It was liberating. He told himself that: it was liberating.

But frustrating, too. While Astrid and the rest of the council were busy playing Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers, Zil was running around unopposed.

The thing with Orsay at the beach had shaken him. Was it possible? Was it even slightly possible that Orsay was in contact with the outside world?

Her power—the ability to inhabit other’s dreams—was not in doubt. Sam had once seen her walking through his own dreams. And he had used her to spy on the great enemy, the gaiaphage, back before that monstrous entity had been destroyed.

But this? This claim that she could see the dreams of those outside the FAYZ?

Sam paused in the middle of the plaza and looked around him. He didn’t need the pearly light to know that weeds now choked the formerly neat little green spaces. Glass was everywhere. Windows not broken in battle had been shattered by vandals. Garbage filled the fountain. On this site the coyotes had attacked. On this site Zil had tried to hang Hunter because Hunter was a freak.

The church was half destroyed. The apartment building had burned down. The storefronts and town hall steps were covered with graffiti, some just random, some romantic, most of it messages of hate or rage.

Every window was dark. Every doorway was in shadow. The McDonald’s, once a sort of club run by Albert, was closed up. There was no electricity to play music anymore.

Could it be true? Had Orsay dreamed his mother’s dreams? Had she spoken to Sam? Had she seen something about him that he had failed to see in himself?

Why did that thought cause him such pain?

It was dangerous, Sam realized. If other kids heard Orsay talking that way, what would happen? If it was bothering him this much…

He was going to have to have a talk with Orsay. Tell her to knock it off. Her and that helper of hers. But if he told Astrid, it would all get too big. Right now he could just put a little pressure on Orsay, get her to stop.