When Jason put me on the bus at the Sanctuary, he pressed this journal and this pen into my hands. “Write about it,” he said.

He stepped back, and I was lost in the goodbye hugs of Lia and the others, rushed onto the bus – but it was him my eyes found as the bus pulled away, face calm, one hand raised in salute and farewell. Write about what, Jason?

I know about his project. I know that Donna ni’Tarak has a book like this, her and a few others; I know the instructions. “Tell your story in your own words.”

But, Jason… I don’t have a story.

Not like theirs.

I’ve been in Shayara for a month now, and I’ve filled this book with random little observations. Stuff about my favorite coffeehouse, about the narrow little excuse for a beach, about the view from my apartment. But nothing coherent, nothing linear. Nothing that I think Jason wants. Because I don’t think I have what he wants.

Not like they do.

There’s a shadow in this city, beneath every joy. I see it in Halloran’s eyes more than anyone else’s, and understandably so. I see it in the vigilance of the Kirayth – the city’s police force. I see it in the tension that fills the city when the sun sets, when the fog rolls in.

The memory of the Purges. Of that night five years ago when sunset and fog brought forth murderous Hounds, brought the wholesale slaughter of two Houses.

And gods, Jason – I can’t write that. It isn’t mine. I don’t have the right. I was thousands of miles away, safe in the Utah desert, when Halloran was fighting his way through the city, the death of his family roaring in his mind. I have no right.

But there is something that’s… not mine, but more mine than the Purges. My own private nightmare. Something I don’t think even you know about. That’s what you want, isn’t it? The things only we know…

In my own words…

Her.

Not sunset, but full night, and I was outside with Lia. Making out with Lia, if you must know. When it happened.

The pain was… brilliant. A dagger, an icepick, through my brain. I can’t remember if I screamed. I remember cold, then searing heat, then Lia’s hands on my wrists, Lia’s voice as if from far away. She’d felt it, too.

I remember needing to get to you. You have always been a father figure to me, Jason – ever since you and Mom found me when I was eleven. I’ve always trusted you to know what’s going on, to handle things. And so when I passed kids in the hall – hearing that everyone had felt it – I reassured them that you’d know what happened, that you’d fix everything.

I heard your voice before I got to your office. A one-sided conversation.

“Yes – yes, love, I felt it. We all felt it.”
“I am… afraid that that was your sister.”
“No. Your youngest sister.”
“We thought she was stillborn as well. Your mother was – is, I suppose – incredibly powerful. She must have – gods, Tessa, I don’t know, and I don’t have time for this. We need to find her. Please. Open your mind to me. Let’s see if we can try to triangulate her position.”

And, being so close… I got some overflow.

Everyone got the sudden, piercing headache, it seems. Very few people knew what it meant. Just you and Tessa and a few others.

Did you know that I was one of the others, Jason?

Tessa opened to you and you to her, and in the rush, the shields were imperfect, and I saw. Only vaguely, but enough. Flickers of terror and confusion. Flickers of a house no longer a home. Violated. By him. Stepping over his body. Seeing the rest of them… and blind panic kicking in, pulse pounding…

And I ran, myself. Didn’t want to know…

That should have been all.

Everyone else eventually gave up on trying to figure out what had happened that night, simply accepting your reassurances that things had been dealt with, that everything would be fine… but the scant images I’d picked up were haunting me. I was obsessed.

Benefits of being on your staff and being nosy as hell: I knew when you called the psychometrists in to examine the crime scene. And I listened on the phone when they called in to report.

I’m sorry. I’d never done anything like that before – and I certainly never did it since…

I don’t so much remember the words. And I can’t piece together a picture of any of the rooms. Just fragments. Too intense to see all at once.

Blood everywhere. Heavy coppery stench of it.

So quiet. A house that was usually so noisy – four kids, two of them teenage boys – the house shouldn’t be so quiet.

Could see the leg of one of the boys from behind the couch. Could see the mother’s arm outstretched toward the coffee table. Incongruously, I marveled at the fact that nothing had been broken.

Four people dead in the living room, bleeding from every orifice, and I was surprised that nothing was broken?

Shock?

Shock, like the girl who tiptoed among them, shaking. She hadn’t meant to do it. She just wanted to keep the man in the bedroom from hurting her. So she pushed…

But this…

I felt her panic take over. Had to get out. Didn’t know what happened. Didn’t know how. What am I? But had to get out. She stuffed clothes into a beat-up backpack with trembling hands, laced up dirty Keds, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror before slamming out the front door and out of the psychometrists’ range…

And threw me out of shock and into a visceral reaction, body-memory, past-life memory – dark-gold curls framing that cold, determined face –

My Lishaya.

The first Lishaya. Exactly her expression on the battleground, after the Fall, her spear covered in gore. Our Lishaya, our downfall.

She killed them all.

And I thanked the gods for the mute button and the nearby trash can as I threw up…

It was her. The Lishaya born again.

A monster.

That night, I had the nightmare the first time. Reliving it. Her discovery of what she’d done. The image of her on the battlefield, face pale and resolute, corpses behind her where there used to be a forest…

I had it on the bus on my way to Shayara.

I know that there have been plenty of Lishayas in between that have been wonderful, Jason. But what this girl did, and that memory-flash…

The Talthar Kithrayna has voted to find her. And I’m afraid.

And there’s a little piece of my story.