Every nerve in her body was screaming—and then it wasn’t. The pain didn’t just fade; it disappeared so surely that it could have been a dream. She might have been dreaming for a while, her self somewhere else while the rest of her figured out what to do about a body.

Alex came back to herself like waking up, like opening her eyes—the world was gone, and then it wasn’t. Making sense of it took slightly longer. It began with the feel of gravel digging into her side, the weight of her body against the asphalt. Next came heat against her back, out of place in the cool November air. Finally, the sounds of disaster: the cacophony of screaming and sirens.

Now that she’d taken stock of her surroundings, it was time to look closer to home. Alex eased her way, slowly, so slowly, into a sitting position. Heavy curls slid over her shoulders, familiar and comforting.

Her body looked just as she remembered it should, not a single limb out of place, no cuts or broken bones. The brown skin of her arms and legs was smooth and unmarked, save for the expected scattering of freckles. Though it felt like she shouldn’t be, she was whole.

Alex remembered, belatedly, that she’d skinned her knee last week, running late to an audition downtown. The scrapes on her palms had been superficial and were already healed, but she’d come down hard enough on one leg to draw blood. There should still be a scab there.

The moment she thought it, there was.

Alex stared. I’m in shock, she thought, and then, It’s too loud.

Immediately, the noise lowered, as muffled as if she’d closed a door between herself and the rest of the world.

Alex swallowed.

There were people nearby. The ones who were screaming, or the ones who hadn’t gotten up. There was a fire raging. And all she could focus on was the way the world dimmed when she wanted it to, the way bile climbed her throat when she spotted a man holding up a charred skull, or the unavoidable fact that not too long ago, she'd been inside that husk of a vehicle, sitting right behind the driver.

She could hear her mother scolding, Alexandra Denali, never take one thing in this life for granted, and her father saying, gently, Alex, don’t just look for the helpers; follow them. And still, she couldn’t make herself move. Jericho would say she was in shock; Ravi would say it was her underused sense of self-preservation kicking in.

Her grandma would say she was being self-absorbed, and that was probably closest to the truth.

Chasing the voices from her head, Alex took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the way the air filled her lungs. (Clean air, because she coughed once on smoke and willed it to go away.) She exhaled just as carefully, feeling a little more at home in her body as she did so.

In a moment. She’d deal with it all in a moment.

Mandy took a breath. She was familiar with all of the aspects of grief: the sound of it, screamingly loud or soft and subdued; the look of it, all wasting sickness or puffy eyes; the shape of it inside her own chest—something separate and foreign, but impossible to remove.

But the worst part was the smell.

The thick, heavy scent of tears had permeated the rooms in an old, oddball orphanage full of children who didn’t want anyone to know when they cried in the dark. It soaked into the sheets and clotted in the air. If you were the sort of child who could sense such things, you ignored them out of courtesy. But there was no hiding Cat’s tears—not her noisy sniffles or her red-rimmed eyes, or the way she wore her grief like her sweatshirt: something heavy and too large, hanging limply from her shoulders.

Almost as soon as Emmaline started speaking, Mandy got to her feet—not because she wasn’t interested in what the woman had to say, but because it was most likely to hold everyone’s attention. Emmaline’s elegantly clipped accent made her sound calm and capable, its edges softened, but still distinct. It was a very reassuring voice, and Mandy liked that about her.

She slipped unobtrusively from the room and ghosted back in a few moments later, pausing behind Cat’s chair to set something at the woman’s elbow.

A glass of water wasn’t much, as gifts went, but Mandy didn’t know the woman well enough to do more. And she did know this much: it was nearly impossible to drink something and cry at the same time.

She resumed her seat just as Emmaline finished, flitting a glance around the table before dropping her eyes, waiting for the next person to speak.