a large sewing needle between two clumsy fingers as she tried to stitch a man’s leg back on above the knee. As Sloane watched, she dropped the needle and swore.
Mox swore, too, charging down the aisle of body parts to Ziva’s side. Sloane forced her eyes away from a jagged white bone protruding from an undead knee and ran after him.
“What happened?” he said, and she hadn’t realized how controlled he had been during their journey back to Chicago until he was the Resurrectionist again, all chaos and fury. Ziva glared over Mox’s shoulder at Sloane.
“Her.” Ziva abandoned the one-legged soldier and heaved herself to her feet with a grunt. “She happened. Her people came looking for her. He came looking for her.”
“Nero was here?” Sloane said.
“He wasn’t our primary concern, but yes, he fucking did. Skittered in right at the end like an insect after his minions had blown us to pieces,” Ziva said. “He left something for you.”
Her braid swung back and forth as she stomped away. Sloane noticed a gash in one of Ziva’s shoulders and a dark patch of—whatever that undead body fluid was—as the lieutenant bent to pick up a bundle from the corner. She carried it over and dropped it at Sloane’s feet.
Sloane tasted something sour and sharp, like the bite of carbonation. She crouched in front of the bundle. Everything within her screamed at her not to open it, but her fingers were already searching out the edge of the folded fabric and pulling it back.
Nero had brought her a pair of boots. Black and caked with dried mud and grass. One of them had black laces and the other had red, the ends frayed from where a dog had chewed through them. They were Sloane’s boots from years ago.
The Dark One had taken them.
Sloane felt Albie’s weight at her side, the burn in her shoulder from carrying him. His skin was slippery with blood, and he smelled like sweat.
She felt his whimpers against her ear, but the only thing she could hear was her heartbeat, even once they made it through the dew-damp grass to the road.
Something stung her foot, and when she looked to see what she had stepped on, she saw a piece of glass buried in her heel.
“Gotta go,” Albie said, and it was like he was speaking underwater. She could only just make out the words.
Shoes meant the present. Bare feet meant the past. But now the present and the past were folding together. The Dark One was alive.
The Dark One was Nero.
“Sloane.” Something warm against her cheek. “In. Hold. Out.”
She recognized the pattern and followed it instinctively. Breathing in, holding, and releasing. Dr. Thomas had coached her in their sessions to keep her from hyperventilating. Counting breaths, counting holds, counting releases. Sequences of five.
She wasn’t with Albie. Albie was dead. Her head knew it but also didn’t know it. I feel like I’ve got one foot in the past all the time, she had told Matt once, and that was when he had grabbed the toe of her shoe and wiggled it. In the past, you were barefoot, he had said to her. And in the present, look! You’ve got shoes on. So you know both feet are here.
It was Mox’s rough palm against her cheek and his voice, low and clear, that told her how to breathe. But she sat down, hard, and stuck her feet out in front of her anyway so she could stare at the matte suede of her new boots, the ones she had worn to Albie’s funeral. Salt had stained the toes gray in an uneven line.
Bare feet meant the past. Shoes meant the present.
Mox took his hand away when he saw that she was no longer panicking, but he stayed crouched in front of her, his riot of tangled hair pulled back into a knot, so his ears stuck out like a little boy’s.
“I take it those are your boots?” he said.
Sloane nodded. “The Dark One took them,” she said, sounding strangled. Feeling strangled. “I never understood why he took my shoes.”
“Your Dark One?” he said, even though there was only one answer to that question, only one Dark One to speak of.
She nodded.
“And Nero had them,” Mox said.
“But how . . . how could Nero be him?” Sloane said. “They look so different—”
“There are ways to produce that effect by magic,” Ziva said.
“So, then . . . the Dark One survived somehow. He’s Nero.” I would know, she had