“You don’t need to take care of me,” he protests as I pull back the covers and sit him down on the mattress. “I was stupid. I just wanted to escape for a minute. I thought—”

“Shut up,” I say gently. I pull his shirt over his head and toss it in the corner, then go to the minifridge and find him a bottle of water. “Drink.” He shakes his head. “Drink.”

He downs almost the entire bottle, then hands it back to me.

“Lie down,” I tell him. He stretches out on the mattress, and I go to work removing his shoes and socks. He stares up at the ceiling for a minute, then groans.

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a real headache. I feel like—”

“Shh.” I cast a glance at Charlie over my shoulder. He’s faced away from us, his fingers punching the buttons on the Xbox controller passionately. I turn back to Christian.

“You should sleep,” I tell him. I stroke his hair away from his face, my fingers lingering near his temple. He closes his eyes. I move my hand to his forehead, and peek again at Charlie, who’s as oblivious as ever.

Then I call the glory to my fingers and send the tiniest bit of it into Christian.

His eyes open. “What did you just do?”

“Does your head feel better?”

He blinks a few times. “The pain’s gone,” he whispers. “Completely gone.”

“Good. Now go to sleep,” I tell him.

“You know, Clara,” he sighs sleepily as I get up to leave. “You should be a doctor.”

I close the door behind me, then take a minute to lean against the wall and catch my breath.

It’s funny. Here I’ve been seeing this dark room for months, and I know something bad has happened right before Christian and I end up there, hiding, and I know it’s not going to do any good for us to hide, and I know that this whole vision could be life or death. Those people, whoever they are, want to kill us. I’ve sensed that from the beginning.

But I don’t think I ever truly considered that I might die.

Okay, God, I cast upward at breakfast Sunday morning, nibbling at a dry piece of toast while the bells of Memorial Church chime in the background. Give me a break. I’m eighteen years old. Why put me through all of this, the forest fire and the visions and the training, if I’m going to kick the bucket, anyway?

Or maybe this is a punishment. For not fulfilling my purpose the first time.

Or maybe it’s some kind of ultimate test.

Dear God, I write in my notebook as I’m sitting in chemistry class on Monday morning listening to a lecture on the laws of thermodynamics. I don’t want to die. Not now. Sincerely, Clara Gardner.

Please, God, I plead when I’m up at three a.m. on Tuesday morning trying to dash off my Waste Land paper. Please. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready. I’m scared.

“Oh yeah?” says T. S. Eliot. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Angela doesn’t show up for the Poet Re-making the World. Doesn’t turn in the paper. Which means, according to the rules in the syllabus, that she can’t pass the class.

The idea sends a chill through me. Angela Zerbino: straight-A student, high school valedictorian, school-geek extraordinaire, lover of all things poetical, is going to fail her first college poetry course.

I’ve got to find her. Talk to her. Right freaking now. I’ll do whatever it takes.

The minute class is over, I call Amy. “Do you know where Angela is?” I ask.

“She was in the room, last time I saw her,” she tells me. “Why? Is something going on?”

Oh, something’s going on.

I sprint all the way back to Roble, but stop short when I reach the building. Because a crow is perched on the bike rack again.

“Don’t you have somewhere better to be?” I ask it.

No reply, except it hops from the rack to one of the bikes. My bike, as a matter of fact.

I don’t want bird poo on my bike, broken or not. I take a few steps forward, waving my arms at it. “Go away. Get out of here.”

It cocks its head at me, but doesn’t otherwise move.

“Go on.”

I’m directly in front of it now. I could touch it if I wanted to, and it doesn’t budge. It stares at me calmly and holds its ground. Which is when I know—or maybe I’ve always known, and haven’t wanted to admit to myself—that this is not a regular old crow.

It’s not a bird at all.

I open my mind then, like cracking open a door, ready to push it closed again at any moment. I can feel him, that particular flavor of sorrow I know so well. I can hear that sad music, the way I used to hear it calling me last year from the field behind the school grounds, a melody of this is all that I am, when I was so much more; I’m alone, alone now for good, and I can never go back, never go back, never go back.

I wasn’t being paranoid. It’s Samjeeza.

I take a step back, slam the door in my mind so hard it gives me an instant headache, but a headache’s better than the sorrow by a long shot.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “What do you want?”

I know I felt sorry for him last year, I did; I knew how much he’d cared about my mom, even in his twisted-up way, and I’d taken pity on him that day in the cemetery. Even now I don’t fully understand what came over me. I just walked over there and gave him my mother’s bracelet, and he took it, and he didn’t try to hurt us and we all got home safe and sound. But that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. He’s a fallen angel, aligned with the powers of dark. He’s almost done me in on two separate occasions.

I force myself to stand up straight, look him in his wide yellow eyes.

“If you’re here to kill me, then do it already,” I say. “Otherwise I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do.”

The bird shifts and then, without warning, takes off, straight at me. I yelp and duck and prepare to, I don’t know, have my head separated from my shoulders or something, but he breezes past me over my shoulder, so close he brushes my cheek with his feathers, up and away, into the cloud-darkened sky.

Standing outside her dorm room in A wing, I try to call Angela again, and I can hear her phone ringing from inside. She’s home. It’s a miracle.

I pound on the door.

“Come on, Ange. I know you’re there.”

She opens the door. I push my way inside before she can protest. A quick glance around reveals that the roommates aren’t here. Which is good, because it’s about to get ugly.