the perimeter of Elysium, looking up at the tops of the walls for new height, new names, new graves, and marking the number and the initials. There had been several a day for the past month, sometimes five or six. It seemed like there were always funerals these days, always men up on the walls, building new graves. Never, in her whole life behind these walls, had Lucy seen Dust Sickness kill so many so quickly. There was something very, very wrong in Elysium.
Lucy looked down at her list. Forty-nine. Forty-nine people in one month—including a girl she had had a crush on only a year ago, Maggie McCormick. She’d been seventeen. That funeral Lucy had watched from a distance, placing a flower at the foot of the wall after everyone else had gone.
She turned and looked out into the city. But all she saw was Mother Morevna’s shadow behind the rose window—always alight these days, no matter the hour—pacing back and forth, back and forth like a spider on her web. Watching.
Suddenly, a cough rose in Lucy’s throat. She coughed and hacked into her handkerchief until the urge to cough subsided… but even when she stopped, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She gasped, trying to cough again. Quickly, she pulled a water ration out of her bag and drank from it until her throat was clear. With shaking hands, she wiped her mouth and drew back a thin line of mud.
Lucy closed her eyes and pushed her fear down as far as she could and steeled herself. She, better than anyone, knew what this was. And she knew that it wouldn’t get the best of her before she solved this for everyone, once and for all.
CHAPTER 19
1 WEEK
AND
2 DAYS
REMAIN.
“Again!” said Olivia. “Just one more for today.”
I took a deep breath and wiped the blood from my nose, then turned back to the objects laid out on the ground before me: a rusted gas can, a sun-bleached bone, a piece of glass, an old pocket watch that didn’t work anymore.
I eenie-meeny-miney-moed, then chose the wristwatch. I grasped it and focused. Nausea struck, darkness fell, and immediately, the memory flared into life.
A young man was following his family to a beat-up old car laden with furniture and luggage and threadbare blankets. There were three children in the backseat, and an older man and woman were urging him to get into the car with them. They were headed to California, to find a new life. He stopped and turned toward the horizon, expecting something.
“Come on, Dwayne, we ain’t got all day!” the father was saying.
“I gotta give him this watch,” said the young man. “He’s wanted it forever.”
The young man paused, looked out over the horizon, squinting even beneath the brim of his hat.
“I know he’s your best friend,” said the young man’s mother. “But we can’t wait any longer.”
The young man looked out over the horizon one more time. Andrew was not coming like he said he would. The young man, Dwayne, looked down at the watch. Then, with a pocketknife, he finished the last bit of the inscription “D.B. + A.D. Always,” and left the watch beside the porch. He gave one look back at it, aching with sadness and uncertainty. Then he climbed into the car with his family and they sputtered off out of sight.
I gasped and came back to reality, back to myself.
“What did you see?” asked Olivia.
“Looked like unrequited love,” I said, wiping the blood off my nose.
“Ah, the worst kind,” she said. “Any improvements?”
“It was as clear as day this time. And I came out when I wanted to.”
“Great job!” Olivia said. “You’re getting better. Let’s go get some water.”
I nodded and let her help me up. Over a month had gone by since the incident with the Laredo Boys, and Olivia and I had been practicing every day. Truth dowsing, she called it, which was a good enough name for now. Sometimes Cassandra joined, creating illusions of real things for me to test myself on. “Find the real one,” Olivia would say, pointing to two identical bottles or sacks of sand or corn-husk dolls. “Dowse for the truth.” And gradually, I improved. I even taught Mowse little bits of magic from the Booke, and soon she was out scorching tumbleweeds with her own fire spells.
In only a short time, Olivia and her girls had gone from feeling like strangers to… friends. It was a strange sensation to be part of a group,