The heavy door slams, jolting me out of a restless sleep.

Drew steps back into the room behind the door, face stretched into a silent yawn. His eyes are puffy with sleep and his blond hair is a tangled mess.

"What are you doing?" I murmur, reaching a hand towards my head to try to flatten my own overgrown hair, which is similarly disheveled.

"Just going to the bathroom," he says, slumping down onto the floor next to me. "I think that asshole's probably sleeping off a hangover."

I nod. He's right—the building is eerily quiet. Donovan was awake late into the night. I remember being jerked out of a dream to the sounds of yelling and shattering glasses, before sleep pulled me back into its clutches.

I can't picture the dream. It's slipping away, and my head tries to wrap around what fleeting shards are left of it, but nothing stays long enough for me to grasp it. It's gone.

I think I saw Drew's face in it, though. And I remember the feeling, the silent bliss, the comfort. 

Dreams contain only the realest versions of emotions, the stripped-down, true thrills and ecstasy, and sometimes those clear jolts of fear that come with nightmares. 

I remember too many times waking up gasping, tears wetting my cheeks, my stomach twinging with panic from a dream that had already withdrawn from my mind. It leaves me wondering what it was that pulled me out of sleep and left me there, shuddering, unable to shake the feeling that something was horribly, awfully wrong.

I wonder how many dreams I've had that I can't remember. I wonder how many times I startled awake screaming from terrors my own mind created.

Drew looks at me through tired, hooded eyes, absentmindedly rubbing at his chin, where the shadow of a beard has begun to show itself. His pool-green gaze is calm, quiet, and slightly inquisitive.

I can feel his eyes burning into me. They trace a path across my face, down my chest, and finally back up to my own eyes.

"This is all for you? You're who they're looking for?" he asks suddenly. I nod, trying to force myself to hold his gaze, but feeling my eyes drifting away almost on their own accord.

His eyes flick up to the molding ceiling, where they stay for a moment as he lets out a tiny sigh. 

"Do you know why? Do you have any idea?" He leans against the wall, and his voice is strained, as if he's struggling to hold back what he really wants to say.

It's obvious he thinks all of this, everything that happened yesterday, is my fault—and it is my fault, in a way. His face is enveloped in pain, and it sends guilt stabbing through me like an electric shock, but my resolve is firm enough that I won't tell him what I've been thinking. 

I clench a fist, digging my fingernails into my palm, and exhale through my teeth.

It's almost glaring, what they want me for. My immortality. It's the sort of thing that everyone is convinced they want. A curse, hellish and lonely, disguised as a blessing. They know about it, that much is clear. Angella's face when I told her my name revealed everything she didn't say. And she was desperate not to be found with me. I can only guess what lengths they'd be willing to go to get to me, to obtain what I wish I never had.

Drew stares at me pointedly, and I realize I've allowed the silence to go on for too long.

I raise a shoulder halfheartedly and look away, as I try to convince myself that no answer is better than letting another lie leave my lips, because I could never bring myself to tell him the truth.

But if I'd lied, maybe Drew wouldn't be looking at me like that. Exasperated. Disappointed. He sees right through me.

He lets out a little sigh and pushes off the floor with his elbow, turning on his heel and leaving the tiny room.

The slamming of the door reverberates off the filthy walls, and Maya stirs from her spot in the back.

She raises her head, blinking sleep out of her eyes.

"Hey, Rowan," she says, her words punctured by a yawn.

Her eyes scan the room. "Where's Drew?"

"He left," I say indignantly.

She sits up, running her fingers through her hair to try to get the knots out. "Fair enough."

The words hit me. No one was forcing him to stay here with us. He's not hiding, like me, or trapped by an injury, like Maya. Someone who barely says a word probably doesn't make for very good company, and I could tell he was worried sick about his sister this whole time. Of course he'd leave.

That doesn't change the look he gave me, right before he stalked out of the room. Eyes narrowed, full of resentment. 

What did I do to make him leave? one voice in my head whispers. But the other one knows. It's the secrets, bottled up and sealed behind my lips, that stop anyone from getting too close. 

Abby's the only one who's ever managed to break down that wall. And no set of pool-green eyes I could drown in would ever push me to trust before it was due. Drew barely knows me. Why should I tell him my worst secret, my demon, my curse? Just to keep the bitterness out of his eyes?

Part of me would do it, though, and that's what scares me. Part of me cares nothing for the consequences, would lay out everything I've been through if it meant seeing his eyes soften.

Maya senses my conflict. "He'll be back," she says, her voice sure.

"How do you know?" I say, and my words bite more than I meant them to.

"He's going to meet with Wiley. He and Abby have their meeting spot, remember? And he was probably sick of this room." She gestures around us. "I'd leave if I could. I can't really walk at the moment, though."

"How's your leg?" I ask quickly, and she lets out a sigh through clenched teeth.

"Hurts. I've never been stabbed before. I don't know what I expected." She laughs humorlessly, but something is written on her face. She's not used to being powerless, trapped in her own body, and she hates herself for it.

"Never?" I blurt, surprised, and then wince. That was the wrong thing to say.

Maya laughs again, shooting me a wry smile. "Funnily enough, I'm pretty good at making sure I don't get hurt, Rowan. Just don't tell anyone it was a blind girl who managed to pull a knife on me for the first time."

"Don't underestimate her," I say quietly, thinking back to two nights ago, under the flickering streetlight. Angella cried in a pool of blood she drew with a single deft stroke of her silver knife.

"I would never," Maya replies, and her voice is speculative, as if she's lost in thought.

"Where do you think she learned to fight like that?" she muses, her eyes trained on the ceiling. A patch of mold creeps across the far wall, and small dark-red spatters that look suspiciously like blood are splashed throughout.

"I don't know," I say truthfully. "Wherever she's running from, I assume."

"So, your Hunters, then," says Maya, raising an eyebrow.

I start, remembering. 

All they ever do is hurt people.

We knew this was going to happen. We knew they would come for us eventually.

They'll kill anyone who rubs them the wrong way.

They don't give a shit about us.

They can't even see that what they're doing is evil.

He's just as corrupted as the rest of them.

I thought he was still the same Micah. But no. He just shot right at James.

I can't go back.

I can't go back.

I can't go back.

"I think," I say, my voice breathless with the horrific revelation, "that Angella and James were being trained to become Hunters. That's how they learned to fight. That's what they were running from."

It fits, all of it. How they knew so much about the Hunters, and what they were capable of. Why Angella was so terrified, so desperate to get away. She doesn't want to become like them, wicked and ruthless, cruel without a real reason to be.

I sink back against the wall, half-stunned. 

"My question is, who the hell are they?" Maya mutters under her breath.

"The Hunters? I know as much as you do," I say. Silently, I'm wracking my brain for everything I ever learned about them. I know the hidden weapons, the navy pins, the fondness for unnecessary violence, but I learned nothing about who they are. 

"They seem like hired muscle to me," she suggests, chewing on her lower lip. Normally I'd take her word for it—Maya knows plenty about hired muscle. People who have a bone to pick with Maya tend not to want to face her themselves.

Not now. I've never met a Hunter, not alive, anyway, and there's no way to be sure, but something tells me no one's paying them to do the dirty work. They like it. They relish the violence. Why else would Micah have shot James?

Just then, someone pounds on the door. Three times, then a pause, then two more.

"Drew?" I call, hating the hope that creeps into my head, pulling color to my cheeks.

But Donovan shoves the door open roughly, flinging two packages of dry cereal into our laps. "Breakfast," he grunts, staring at us through bloodshot eyes.

"Get out, Donovan," Maya snaps, and he stumbles out of the room, hand grappling at the handle for a few seconds before he finally pulls it closed. He's too hungover to try to challenge her.

The cereal is horribly stale and doesn't smell great, either, but we both know more food won't be coming, so we choke it down. It's not terrible. I've had worse.

I was always somewhat picky growing up, but that was before I ran. On the streets, you can find the means to stomach anything. Rotting food is better than no food, and after this many years, I barely have taste buds anymore.

I toss the empty cereal container across the room, and it lands neatly next to the one Maya already discarded.

Her eyes are glazed over and her fingernails absently pick at the edge of the bandage wrapped around her leg. She's lost in a daydream. These four walls are as tight and unchanging as ever, and rather than let myself dwell on how trapped and bored we are, I follow her lead and let myself sink back into my own thoughts again.

This time, my mind lands on Jeremy—not the grey-haired, stooped Jeremy that I can't bring myself to think about, but the one I knew. He was a head taller than me, strands of dark hair always mussed over his forehead, with a gleam in his brown eyes and a low, husky voice. He was so full of life, never sad for too long, always knowing how to pull a smile to my lips. 

I fell hard for him, the way you do when you have no idea how much you're setting yourself up to lose. I could tell him all of my secrets. I could kiss him for hours, pouring every piece of me into him, the mental and the physical. There was a time where I think all of me was him.

Did it break him when I left? Like it broke me?

I'll never know. I don't want to know. I could never bear to think of Jeremy broken, his smile twisted into a tortured cry, tears streaming down the face I saw so many days of my life happy. Because he was in love and we were together, even though we had to sneak around, stealing glances in public and letting the heat creep up our cheeks, discreetly brushing our hands against each other, feeling them spark.

But the other option is almost worse. Jeremy, knowing I was gone and wouldn't come back, forgetting it. All of it, meeting in sophomore year math class, kissing after graduation, sharing cigarettes and bottles of cheap wine, driving to parties with Lily Grace, sneaking me into his room late at night on days I couldn't stand to be at home. Moving on from me fast, indifferent to all of our years together. Finding some other guy to kiss and tell his secrets to.

It hurts to think about after. But that's all there is, only the after, because even if I try to remember our good years, the memories are tainted. Tainted by the cold, cruel fact that it's over now, and I can't go back.

A faint pounding, somewhere outside the room, lifts me out of my past and back into the present.

Maya's eyes focus as she's pulled out of her daydream.

"Who are you?" yells Donovan, a hostile, suspicious note in his raspy voice.

"I'm Drew!" he screams back, from the other side of the door, and his pounding grows faster. More desperate.

"I don't know any Drew," Donovan replies, and I remember what Maya said about him. He won't let anyone in—anyone—unless they know his code. 

I know it's three knocks, then wait, and then add two more, but I'd bet Drew doesn't remember.

"I'm Maya's friend," he yells. The room rattles, and I realize he just slammed his entire body against that iron slab of a door.

"Can't let you in," Donovan grunts.

Maya sighs heavily. "Donovan, he's okay," she calls. 

But Donovan doesn't budge, and it makes me wonder how much power Maya truly holds over him.

"Just let me in, you filthy asshole," Drew spits, pounding on the door with a new, desperate ferocity.

"Won't let anyone in who talks to me like that," Donovan shoots back, his words threaded with a lilting taunt, and Drew lets out a shout of frustration.

"Please," he tries again, and Donovan chuckles viciously. "I need to talk to them. Maya and Rowan. I need to see them now."

"No means no," jeers Donovan, but my mind is already made up. I push off the wall to stand, striding over to Maya and offering an arm to help her up.

"We'll go out to him," I say, when she doesn't move, face contorted in confusion.

"I thought you weren't supposed to go outside," she says, but Drew's pounding grows more panicked behind me, like a racing heartbeat, and I shake my head.

"I don't care," I say. 

She nods, impressed, and ignores my extended hand, limping across the tiny room and out the door. I follow.

We brush past Donovan, who's leaning against the opposite wall, staring at the door through narrowed, bloodshot eyes. 

He starts to protest, but Maya throws him her middle finger, which silences him immediately. I make sure to slam the door extra hard behind us.

Drew looks up, evidently shocked to see our faces instead of Donovan's sweaty, beady-eyed one, but what I would have expected to be relief quickly turns to fear.

"Come with me," he says quietly, his voice shaking. "It's Angella and Abby. They were found."