Neve took a breath and kept going.
Now that she had started, she couldn’t stop until Nana knew everything.
Most of the Sinclair guards lived at the family estate on the other side of the city.
When the rain came, it was Silas who gathered every survivor there and led them across town to Neve’s house near campus.
The roads were already choked with abandoned cars and the first staggering dead, and he lost people along the way.
But he got there.
By then, Nana was already gone.
Neve didn’t say that part out loud.
She couldn’t.
Nana was sitting right beside her, warm and alive, and the words stuck in her throat.
Inside the house, Silas found Neve with Lana and Shane Hughes, and with Sylvie.
Lana and Shane were twins, Walter’s niece and nephew, both third-year students at Neve’s university, a year ahead of her.
They had grown up in the Sinclair household, and Neve had always thought of them as cousins.
Sylvie had been at every school Neve attended since kindergarten, so of course she had been there too.
Not long after, Declan arrived with his younger brother Callum.
Callum went to a different university across town, and Declan had fought his way to his brother’s campus first before coming to find Neve.
Both of them had trained in martial arts since they were boys, so the slow, clumsy zombies of those first days hadn’t posed much of a threat.
They barricaded themselves inside the house for a week.
One by one, the fevers came.
People burned up for a day or two, delirious and shaking, and when the fevers broke, some of them woke up changed.
Neve awakened ice.
Silas awakened lightning.
Declan awakened metal, and Callum awakened water.
Lana, unusually, awakened two abilities at once, space and wind.
Shane awakened earth.
Among the rest of the guards, sixty-seven awakened abilities of various kinds.
Fifty-nine did not.
Eleven days after the first rain, a second one fell, just as gray and oily as the first, and more of the guards awakened.
Sylvie did too.
Hers was wind.
“After that,” Neve said quietly, “Sylvie convinced me we’d be safer with the Ashfords.
They had a compound, walls, food.
So I took everyone, more than a hundred of our people, and we moved in with her family.”
She stared at the blanket.
“The first two or three years were chaos.
Everyone was fighting over territory and supplies and people with good abilities.
And every month there were fewer of us.
I started with over a hundred people, Nana.
By the end, there were only ten left.”
She counted them off in her head.
Silas, Declan, and Lana.
Eli, Wyatt, Lucas, and Jude, four of the orphans Nana had raised who had never once left her side.
Caleb Hunt, Finn Lane, and Miles Marsh.
That was all.
Ten people out of more than a hundred.
Margaret said nothing for a long time.
When she finally moved, it was only to press her hand over her eyes.
All she had ever wanted was to surround her granddaughter with good people, loyal people with honest hearts.
The Sinclair ancestors had left behind enough wealth that, as long as Neve had people to protect her, she could have lived comfortably for the rest of her life without lifting a finger.
Margaret had built everything around that belief.
She had never imagined it would all be worthless if Neve herself couldn’t tell friend from enemy.
In the end, everything Margaret had prepared, every guard she had raised and every dollar she had set aside, had simply been handed to someone else.
It had all been served up to the Ashfords on a silver platter.
And the jade pendant, a treasure beyond price, Neve had told people about it.
Margaret’s chest ached.
Her granddaughter had never learned how dark people could be.
She had never learned that holding a treasure made you a target.
Margaret had shielded her so completely from the ugliness of the world that Neve had walked straight into it with her eyes closed.
That was Margaret’s fault, not Neve’s.
She let out a long sigh and reached over to stroke Neve’s hair, her face lined with pain.
“Now that you know what the Ashfords are, you’re not to have anything more to do with them.
Not with Sylvie, and not with any of them.
Leave everything else to me.”
Her hand stilled, and her voice turned firm.
“But listen to me, sweetheart.
Don’t trust anyone too much.
Do you understand?
No matter who it is, no matter how close you are, always leave yourself a way out.
Always keep a little of yourself back.
Being careful is never wrong.”
“I understand, Nana.” Neve nodded, then bit her lip.
“But if I was reborn, what if Sylvie was too?”
That was what frightened her most.
Sylvie had died in the same fall, in the same moment.
If Neve had been given a second chance, who was to say Sylvie hadn’t been given one too?
And if she had, she would know everything Neve knew.
She would know about the rain, the drought, and the jade pendant.
“It’s possible,” Margaret said slowly, and a deep crease formed between her brows.
“And if she was, we’re in trouble.
The way things stand now, the Sinclairs can’t compete with the Ashfords.
Not in money, not in connections, and not in manpower.”
If that little viper had come back too, her granddaughter was still in danger.
But Margaret hadn’t run a company for fifty years by panicking.
She made herself think it through.
“The apocalypse hasn’t come yet,” she said.
“The law still exists.
Society still works.
Even if she has come back, the Ashfords can’t touch us openly right now.” She patted Neve’s hand.
“First, I’ll find someone I trust to handle the sale of the company.
You’ve had a terrible shock.
Get some rest.”
She rose from the bed and smoothed down her skirt.
Neve sat up, restless.
She wanted to help, but she had no idea how.
She knew nothing about running Sinclair Holdings.
Whenever she’d gone to the office in the past, it had mostly been to raid the snack cupboard in Nana’s office and spin around in the chairs.
But there had to be something she could do.
“Then I’ll go buy supplies,” she said, swinging her legs out of bed.
“Food, water, medicine.
I can at least do that.”
“Absolutely not.” Margaret turned back and pushed her gently but firmly down onto the pillows.
“You’re not setting foot outside right now.
If the Ashfords notice you buying in bulk, they’ll start asking questions.
And if Sylvie really has come back, she’ll know exactly what you’re doing and exactly where the supplies are going.
I won’t have her taking everything from you a second time.”
Neve opened her mouth to argue, then froze.
“Nana!
The space!”
Margaret, halfway to the door, stopped.
“I haven’t activated it yet!” Neve’s eyes were wide.
“If I can open it now, I don’t have to hide anything in warehouses.
Everything can go straight inside, and no one will ever find it.”
She scrambled off the bed and began rummaging through her nightstand, then the drawers of her vanity, pulling things out and tossing them aside.
Margaret turned all the way around and watched in silence as her granddaughter searched for something.