Melissa sat at Desidonna's cramped kitchen, watching the world tremble beneath a marvelously colorful sky. The cloud that touched down over Elliott Way was a kaleidoscope of luminescent shades, and if Zander and Jake hadn't gasped in shock when the cloud had first touched down, she would have thought the cloud was a phantasm because of her exhaustion, pain, and grief sent her into a numb state of existence that made her fear she was delusional. 

Behind her, Desidonna and the nurse were working on Kaitlynn, who was lying on the sofa in the next room over. Zander, Jake, and Wyx had abandoned their place at the living room window to watch Desidonna work, all sitting very still. 

"Can I sit here? I'll be quiet." 

Melissa tore her gaze from the window to see Jake standing behind the chair to her left. He had slipped up on her, so quiet, so still, a watercolor smudge in a world full of oil-painted shapes. She gestured and said, "Of course. I could use the company." 

Jake slid into the chair and drew his legs up so that he was sitting criss-cross in it. A moment passed, and Melissa could see the earnest glitter in his eyes as he stared at her with desperate hope. 

"You don't have to be quiet," Melissa said. 

"I have so many questions." 

"Oh, Jake. I'm so sorry." 

Jake's eyebrows drew up into an almost-touching triangle. Tears swelled in his eyes. His lips parted. "Why did Dad—what—how did it happen?" 

His voice hitched on happen. 

Melissa exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. It was a practice she had become very good at. Through all the panic attacks in the years since she moved to Earthens, the practice of in and out, in and out rose up within her whenever she felt the anxiety building in her chest and head. Finally, she said, "I broke someone's heart. That someone wanted to kill me. Your dad pushed me out of the way." 

Jake rubbed his neck and sniffed. "I wish it was you instead of him." 

Ordinarily, Melissa's pulse would have sped up, but she was so tired and worried and scared and Jake's comment was so understandable that all Melissa could murmur was, "I know, I know," and everything felt so cold and wretched and she just wanted this all to be over and she didn't want to wish anymore because wishes were useless, absolutely useless, and—

There came a sudden clatter from the living room. Wyx yelped, "Hey mourners, help us out!" Melissa and Jake rose from their chairs at the same time and turned. Desidonna had knocked over the coffee table in an attempt to catch herself from falling. She was doubled over, her slip clinging to her very large body, hugging every curve and roll; sweat shimmered on her arms and dripped off her face. 

Melissa rushed to help the nurse and Zander steady her to the floor. She looked like she did when they walked in and found her: sitting on the ground, wheezing, eyes rolled in the back of her head, tonguing her teeth like a lewd version of herself. 

Then the psychic wheezed, "I see Lilly—on the lawn—southern side of Elliott Way—dying—" 

"Where's Storm?" Melissa and Zander asked at the same time. They glanced at each other before turning back to Desidonna. 

"Gone," she choked. A tendon in her neck popped out, straining, and her hands were clenched tight tight tight. Thin trails of blood worked out of the cracks of her fingers, down her wrists. "Explosive—butterflies." 

" Nurse Aliy'i, Jake, can you please stay with Desidonna and Kaitlynn?" Melissa rose to her feet. "I need Wyx and Zander to come with me." 

"And you know how to ride a Jeep?" Wyx asked dubiously. 

"No clue," Melissa replied, crossing the room to grab her jacket off the kitchen table. "I was planning to wing it." 

Wyx snorted. "I like you." 

Then Desidonna screamed. 

Everyone in the living room jerked back as Desidonna fell backwards. Her head cracked against the floor; she arched her back and screamed, screamed, screamed, a high-pitched wretched sound that sent everyone else in the room except for Jake shivering because the magical current ripped through their bodies like it wanted to scream, too. 

As abruptly as the scream started, it stopped. Desidonna was flat on her back, hands wide open at her sides, gasping, "The world is going to end, the world is going to end, the world is going to end. You have to—save—her—or Shifters will go extinct—" 

"How can we save her?" asked Nurse Aliy'i, pressing a hand to Desidonna's forehead. 

"Take—heart—top shelf—" gulped Desidonna. Her eyes had come back, the dark pupils dilated and glistening with tears of exertion. "Was planning to use it for a man, but—I don't think—that girl will live—without it." 

Zander reached up on the crooked bookshelf and took the jar with a slimy thumb-sized something. "This?"

Desidonna nodded. 

Melissa knelt down, ran a gentle hand down Desidonna's face. "Thank you for this." This being finding Lilly. This being using something she was planning to use for someone else to save Lilly. 

"My imps—will put it in—for you." 

Shifters will go extinct. 

As the sky screamed colors and a nebula murdered beasts, Melissa, Zander, Wyx, and three obese imps loaded into the Jeep outside of Desidonna's house. Melissa had never seen the need to learn how to drive because Belle Village was so compact; still, she didn't let her ignorance slow her down. Aliy'i had left the keys in the ignition, and Melissa had a generous sense that one of the pedals on the floor was a brake and one was to make the vehicle move. Once she figured out which was which (and the Jeep jolted in response a few times), Melissa shoved the Jeep through the path leading up to Elliott Way. 

Fast fast fast. 

Faster, faster. 

The Jeep jumped and shuddered at it crashed through Elliott Way's southern side. Zander exclaimed, "There!" and pointed. Melissa followed his finger to a black circle drawn in the grass. Everything in the circle was blackened, rotting, dead, ashes—save for the small shape sprawled in the middle of it. 

"We're going to make a deal," Melissa started breathlessly, driving closer to the circle, "to never tell Lilly that if she dies Shifters will go extinct." 

"Good idea," Zander half-whispered. 

Melissa slammed on the breaks, ignored the sharp ache in both her legs, and got out of the car. "Don't be dead," she muttered, and couldn't think of a way to end the sentence as she dropped to Lilly's side, an ugly broken doll with an ugly broken arm and a face caked in blood and ash. She moved a hand down Lilly's face—was she breathing?—as Zander dumped the cap to the jar and poured the thumb-sized piece of heart into his hand. 

Wyx, who had crawled on top of Lilly's shoulder, said, "Don't be dead or I'll kill you." 

Her right forearm was thrust to the side of her elbow at an aggressive angle. 

The imps took the heart from Zander, who whispered, "Please please please." 

Her eyes were closed. Melissa pulled her up so that Lilly's head was in Melissa's lap. 

The imps scuttled up the sides of Lilly's body and shoved the heart piece into her chest. 

If she dies all the Shifters go extinct. 

If she dies, thought Melissa, I'll die, too. 

Lilly's body spasmed the moment the imps pulled their hands out of her chest. She spluttered, chest heaving, eyes batting open. Melissa tightened her embrace and kissed the top of Lilly's forehead. 

"Ow," Lilly mumbled. 

Melissa would never wish again. 

***

Sixty miles away, in the Teskenash Regional Hospital, Desidonna's husband died. 

It happened like this: 

Desidonna wrote a letter to his doctor, simply saying Pull the plug. 

Then she went to get a biscuit to eat while she showered—her excuse to cry without her being heard by the others. 

He was in a magically induced coma, and if the doctor pulled the plug, that was it. His heart would fail. He'd die. The only way to save him was to use a piece of a child's heart—and that child had to willingly give it up. It was the natural law of hearts; children's hearts had healing properties, but those properties were lost when that heart is ripped from a child forcefully. 

Before the Board Members came to her doorstep begging for her help, she had never smelled the possibility of a child willing to give up their heart. Children were scared of her. Desidonna could understand why. She threatened to eat children, after all. 

Lilly needed that piece of her heart and Desidonna needed her husband, but her husband wouldn't exist anyway if what she saw in her vision was true, if Lilly didn't get her heart back: eruptions, fire, magma swallowing the world whole, Storm standing on top of a mountain looking over it all, underground Acid complexes filling, filling to its maximum capacity. Everyone dying. 

If she dies, we all go extinct. 

And it wasn't just Lilly. It was Zander and Kaitlynn and Max, too. It was Wyx and Melissa. It was the people that were going to keep Shifters from going extinct by Storm's hands. 

But any of them dying before then was a very real possibility.