“You’re blushing,” he said.

Because we just had sex! “Well, you’re annoying me,” I muttered.

He gave me the laugh reserved solely for me. “Note to self. Ali-gator turns into an Ali-cat when she doesn’t get enough rest.”

“And you’re about to have the scratches to prove it.”

“Oh, no,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’d hate to have your nails embedded anywhere on me...again.”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

He rubbed his knuckles into my crown.

“Stop!”

“Eat.”

“Fine.” I ate, showered—alone—and dressed in clean clothes that actually fit—thanks, whoever!—and tried not to think about everything we’d done in each other’s arms. It was as I towel-dried my hair that I realized Cole and I hadn’t yet had a new vision. I tried not to panic. The last time we’d stopped having visions, we’d broken up.

“Cole,” I said, frantically moving in front of him as I fastened a leather cuff around each of my wrists. Anything that made it harder for zombies to bite down became a vital part of my wardrobe. “We didn’t have a vision.”

He frowned but said, “It’ll be all right.” He bent down and pressed a soft kiss into my lips. “We’ll have one—”

—and suddenly we were in a narrow corridor. I was slung over his shoulder, and for the first time, I could actually feel the bone pushing into my stomach, cutting off my air. I could actually smell antiseptic, the tang of old pennies and smoke.

In the distance, gunfire and grunts of pain echoed, making me cringe.

“Let me go!” I snarled.

“Never again.” As I beat at his back and slammed my knees into his torso, he lifted a gun and shot every single man brave enough to approach. Pop. Pop. Pop. Bodies fell.

Human bodies. Not zombies.

“I mean it. Let go,” I demanded.

“Never. Again.”

“You keep saying that. What do you want with me? What do you want from me?”

“What I’ve always wanted. Everything.”

“Well, you can’t have it.”

At the end of the hallway, he could go left or right. To the left, Frosty was shooting his way through a group of men, his arms moving so quickly, from one target to another, I could hardly keep track. Bodies fell around him, too. Boom, boom, boom. Blood sprayed over the walls.

I’d never seen him look quite so fierce. His eyes were wild and glazed with hatred.

To the right, a sea of zombie collars lay on the floor—without zombies.

In both directions, fires crackled.

Cole went right, away from Frosty, surprising me. He—

—a knock at the door jolted us from the vision.

I blinked and found myself back inside the bedroom, the air clean and fresh, sunlight pouring in through the window.

“Rangarajan is here,” Camilla announced. “If you want in on the action, you need to get to the courtyard.”

Cole and I peered at each other, silent. Tense.

“That was more vivid than ever before,” I said.

“I know. Our stronger connection must affect our visions, too.”

“But why the delay in having one?”

“Because we have more control now and actually wanted it to happen? I don’t know.” He tangled a hand through his hair. “We’ll put this on hold for a while.”

All right. Okay. Because it wasn’t life or death.

Was it?

“Hey,” he said, gently chucking me under the chin. “This isn’t a bad thing. The visions are our friend, not our enemy. They’ve helped us in so many ways.”

True. “But they’ve hurt us, too.”

“Only because we didn’t know how to interpret them.”

“This one seemed pretty cut-and-dried.”

“Someone’s a downer today, isn’t she?” he asked with a growing smile.

I patted his cheek. “She is. And don’t you forget it, or you’ll lose something precious.”

“If you’re talking about my penis, I’d like to think it’s precious to you, too.”

Oh, good glory.

He laughed as he escorted me out of the room and to the courtyard. Only a handful of kids remained. River, Camilla and Knuckle Scars—I mean, Chance—plus all of our crew. The sun was high, a warm caress that contrasted nicely with the chilly air.

Someone had dragged a wide wooden circle to the center of the yard. Inside it had to be Dr. Rangarajan; his arms were shackled overhead and his legs shackled below, so that he formed a perfect X. He was a short, thin man, probably in his mid-sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair and tanned, deeply wrinkled skin. Next to him, slayers looked like Vikings of old.

The doctor had been stripped to his underwear, and the cold air had to be chomping on his exposed skin. Tears had chilled in his lashes and on his cheeks, and snot had dried on his nose.

Kat raced across the way to step in front of me. She didn’t say a word, just looked up at me, and I knew what she was thinking. We should protest. I’d been tortured before, and she’d gotten an up-close-and-personal look at the results. If we did this, we would be stooping to Anima’s level, fighting evil with evil.

But just like with Benjamin, I didn’t know another way. And if the doctor knew where Justin was, we had to do something.

“P-please,” Dr. Rangarajan begged. “Just let me go. I have a family.”