Nathan left after dark.
He’d spent the last of the daylight setting Kira up in the safest corner the ruined house had to offer. It was a small back room with one way in, and a loose board over the window gap that could be wedged shut from the inside.
He’d left her the rest of the bread, the second apple, the cheese he’d been saving, and a small stack of coins from Perrin’s purse, counted out onto the crate where she could see them.
"That’s yours," he said. "If I’m not back by tomorrow night, take it with you and go all the way to the soup line by the chapel. You don’t talk to anyone else. Understood?"
Kira’s gaze fell on the coins, then at him, and her brows creased. It was the closest she’d come yet to arguing, Nathan knew.
"I’ll be back," Nathan said with a sigh, shaking his head. "I keep coming back, after all. It’s the one thing I’m good at."
Kira didn’t laugh, because she never laughed, she just wedged the board shut behind him.
Nathan stood in the dark lane for a moment, listening until he heard the board shut properly. And then he pulled the stolen cloak tighter over his head and moved.
Nighttime in the low district was something he knew in his bones.
He’d grown up in these lanes. He knew which corners the watch bothered with and which they didn’t, he knew which dogs barked and which just watched you pass.
And so, Nathan kept off the main ways, moving fence-line to fence-line. He was just one more shadow in a quarter that had never been able to afford lamps.
Although he motioned covertly, it still hit him, coming up the hill into his old neighborhood. The streets hadn’t changed at all.
Four days. That was all it had been.
The same washing lines. The same crooked gutters.
Somewhere down that lane to the left was a house with a hallway in it, and he pointedly did not look down that lane.
Instead, he affixed his eyes to the rooftops and kept walking. Past the well, past the baker’s, to the small house at the row’s end with the sagging fence he’d hopped a thousand times.
Jerry’s window was on the side, second from the back.
It didn’t latch. And thinking about it, it had never once latched all these years, and they’d been climbing through it in both directions ever since they were eight.
Nathan went over the fence without a sound. He got his fingers under the frame, and eased it up.
Jerry was asleep on his back with one arm hanging off the bed and his mouth wide open.
Nathan slid in through the window, lowered it behind him, and stood in the dark of the little room.
For a moment he just looked.
At the familiar clutter. The wooden field-charm hanging over the bed. New, Demeter’s mark, his friend’s whole future on a string.
He looked at Jerry’s sleeping face, which even unconscious, managed to look pleased about something.
Something in Nathan’s chest pulled tight.
’He mourned me. He’s been walking around for four days thinking I’m dead.’
He crouched by the bed and put a hand over Jerry’s mouth.
And at that moment, Jerry’s eyes flew open.
For one heartbeat, there was nothing in his eyes but sleep. But then they focused on the face above him.
Brows furrowed.
"Huh?"
Jerry was sure of it, it was the face of his dead best friend. That hooded, pale face, with a scar sitting across his throat, leaning over him in the black of midnight.
Jerry immediately screamed into Nathan’s palm, the sound muffled.
His entire body tried to go four directions at once. His legs kicked, one hand flailed for the wall, and the other hand blindly grabbed for the charm above the bed, yanking it down like it was a weapon.
"Jerry—"
"MMPH! MMMMPH—"
"Jerry, it’s me—"
Jerry wrenched his mouth free from Nathan’s hand, and he scrambled back against the headboard, brandishing the little wooden charm in a shaking fist, eyes enormously wide.
"STAY BACK!" he hissed. "Stay back, spirit! I am– I’m an awakened of Demeter, I am protected by the... by the harvest—"
"You’re waving a lump of wood at me."
"IT’S BLESSED WOOD."
"Jerry."
"You’re dead!" Jerry’s voice cracked in the middle of the word. With his back flat against the wall, his chest heaved. "You’re dead. They told everyone, you’re– there was– and now you’re in my room... You’re a ghost! You’re an actual– oh gods, mum was right," he paled. "She said if I didn’t pray—"
Nathan reached out, took Jerry’s flailing wrist, and pressed his friend’s hand flat against his own forearm.
It was warm, solid, and, strangest of all, alive.
Jerry went completely still.
His fingers slowly closed around Nathan’s arm. He squeezed it, testing. And his facial expression contorted, Nathan could see it. A mixture of disbelief, terror... hope.
"You’re warm," Jerry whispered.
"I know."
"Ghosts aren’t supposed to be warm."
Nathan shrugged.
"They aren’t."
Jerry’s grip tightened around Nathan’s arm until it hurt.
"You’re..." His eyes filled up. "Nathan." He squeezed even tighter. "Nathan, you absolute– they said you were dead! They... they told us! There was a whole– People brought my mum bread, we... I—"
His voice quit on him.
And suddenly, Jerry lunged off the bed and grabbed Nathan with both arms, crushing him as he buried his face in Nathan’s shoulder.
His sobs echoed loudly. And he held nothing back, letting the tears flow completely.
And Nathan just knelt there on the floor of the little room, letting the boy cry. And after a moment, he brought his arms up and held his friend back.
"Quietly," Nathan murmured, smiling. "Your mum."
"You don’t get to tell me quietly," Jerry sobbed into his shoulder, voice quieter. "You died. I get to cry however loud I want. You died, Nathan!"
Nathan’s smile grew wider.
"I know."
"Then how—" Jerry suddenly pulled back, gripping Nathan by both shoulders at arm’s length, searching his face. His eyes snagged on the scar across Nathan’s throat and stopped there. The last of the color drained out of him. "Nathan. What is that? What the hell happened to you?"
Nathan looked at his best friend in the dark. He was the only one left alive who’d known him before. The one person in the world he could come back to tell the truth, because Jerry had earned it, and he wasn’t going to let the last honest thing between them be a lie told over an empty grave.
"That... that’s why I’m here," Nathan said quietly. "I... you deserve to hear the complete truth, Jerry." He gritted his teeth. "All if it."
He settled back on his heels.
"But first, I need you to tell me something," his voice grew serious. "What exactly did they say happened? Whatever it was, whoever told you." He leaned forward. "I need to hear exactly what this city thinks it knows about me."
Jerry wiped his face with the heel of his hand, and the look that crossed it then was no longer grief. It was fear.
"Nathan," he said. "You’re not going to like it."