Rachel sat on the stone bench inside one of the side halls, holding a gently flickering candlelight in her palm. The room had once been a sturdy tower, encircled by gargantuan bookshelves with a single entrance set into the lower shelves. The cases were long-since emptied, and the wooden panels were covered in years of dust. A hole in the ceiling—opened by either Alpha or Omega, Rachel had no idea which—was letting a thin coating of ash drift in from the cloud of smoke dissipating into the sky.

  The library always used to unsettle her. Rachel didn't believe in spirits or ghosts, even with what she'd been through, but she'd always felt an air of spite and malevolence hanging throughout the wrecked building. Today, it was gone. Rachel didn't see it as the site of impossible battles or eldritch secrets, but as the lone standing bastion against the horrors they'd all witnessed. She wondered—if it hadn't been destroyed, could it have protected them all from the massacre?

  Ridiculous, she reminded herself. It's an old stone building that was emptied out way before they ever fought. It couldn't have protected a fly.

  "This is where we found it," said Beverly. She faded in next to Rachel, sitting on the bench and staring at the octagonal rug on the floor. It was the only piece of furniture remaining in the entire structure not made of blackened wood or hard stone. "Right there on the floor."

  "The book?"

  "Yeah." She tilted her head down as if she were embarrassed. "Hailey dragged me to some stupid party. I didn't want to go, but that's where I met Jackson. Then Jackie came to break it up. We ran, and we ended up here. They were both scared of it. I wasn't. So I sat down, turned to a random page, and everything went wrong." Rachel looked up at her. Beverly's eyes were red and streaked with tears, but she'd finally calmed down.

  "Would you take it all back?" Rachel asked.

  Beverly took a long time to answer. She kept folding and unfolding her hands in her lap. "I don't like thinking about that. If I decide yes, then what if I spend years trying to find a way to do it? Hindsight's a lot different when there might actually be a way to change things."

  "You really think magic can do that?"

  "It's magic. I don't care what anyone else says. I don't think we can ever completely understand it."

  Rachel nodded. "I think he was right about that."

  "Who?"

  "Jackson. He was right about magic being too dangerous. Even with the safeguards I tried to put in place, it wasn't enough." Rachel let out a deep breath. "It's too late to stop it now."

  "I could stop it," Beverly suggested, though she looked sickened by her own suggestion.

  She shook her head. "We have no idea how many Scraps might be out there that we never found, or copies that Cinza managed to hide away, or anything else. People are going to find them, and they're going to die if you don't help them."

  "So you're telling me to keep awakening them?"

  Rachel sighed. She felt like she was at the end of a marathon and being asked to start running another one. "I'm done giving orders. It's not my place anymore."

  Beverly eyed her with a mixture of contempt and pity. "You're giving up?"

  Rachel nodded. "I thought you'd be happy."

  She frowned. "I think you're awful, but I still think you were the best chance everyone has for this to actually work. Everyone trusts you."

  "They trust you too. Why don't you lead them?"

  "I'm not a leader."

  Rachel coughed out a bitter laugh. "What makes me a leader any more than you?"

  "You're decisive. You get stuff done."

  "And look where that got us."

  Rachel stretched out her limbs, feeling the aches and pains of the whole week slowly filtering through her body. She could hear people approaching through the library, the occasional scuffle and stumble over debris giving them away. She'd have to face the crowd one last time before it was all over. Rachel stood up and braced herself. She'd get it over with quick and painless. She was done.

  Natalie Hendricks walked through the archway.

  The girl was still dressed in her battered and torn black funeral dress, though she'd added pants and her forest-green windbreaker to the getup. She had a few streaks of blood dotting her skin and a blackened and burned spot on her coat. Everything about her appearance was a perfect summary of what they'd all been through.

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  It made Rachel sick. She remembered her promise to her, and to everyone else who followed, and she felt even colder.

  She wasn't qualified to lead anyone. Rachel DuValle was just an airhead freak college student from Vancouver, with nothing special about her at all. She couldn't save the world. This crowd of people, who'd relied upon her and believed in her to save them, had put their trust in the wrong person.

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  Alden was the last one through the door, finishing off the odd semi-circle of people facing Rachel and Grey-eyes on their bench. He wanted to look around the library a bit more, but at the same time he certainly didn't want to wander off alone. Never again, as far as he was concerned. Going off alone had only gone terribly for him in Rallsburg.

  Rachel hadn't spoken since Natalie had walked in. The girl insisted on being the first one through the door, though she'd been persuaded to leave Gwen waiting outside. Natalie proceeded immediately to Rachel and sat down in front of her expectantly, like a kid in class waiting for the teacher. Alden suddenly remembered that, despite all her accomplishments and her fearsome capabilities, Natalie was still so young. Out of the entire crowd of people, she was the only one who couldn't be considered an adult, or even a teenager.

  Rachel was staring into empty space, while Grey-eyes watched her carefully. The rest of the group was dead silent. Alden felt a collective sense that to speak up in this place, waiting for Rachel to start the meeting, was somehow disrespectful. The group silently agreed they would wait for their leader to talk first. Thus it became a waiting game stretching on for minutes, as Rachel continued to stare and the group slowly became more restless.

  Natalie finally broke the silence, though tension still hung thick in the room. "Rachel?"

  Rachel's eyes fell to the girl sitting cross-legged in front of her. "Yes, Natalie."

  "Are you okay?"

  She took a deep breath. "No, not really."

  "...I'm sorry I couldn't save more people." She wiped her face on the sleeve of her windbreaker, then looked back up at Rachel expectantly. "What should we do now?"

  Rachel took a very long time to answer her. Her eyes drifted out of focus. Natalie fidgeted in place watching her, picking at one of her nails nervously. Finally, Rachel spoke up, in the same tired voice she'd been stuck in for days. "I don't know."

  "C'mon, Rachel," started Julian. "We won, so what's next?"

  She laughed, in a disturbing and disheartening way. "We didn't win."

  "He is dead, right?" asked Jackie.

  "Yeah," Alden confirmed.

  "So we won," Josh concluded.

  "Twenty two people survived," Rachel said quietly. "Twenty two out of hundreds. No one won."

  "We're still here," said Hailey, standing next to Jessica and her parents.

  "So go live your lives."

  "We don't have lives left to live," Jessica's dad replied angrily. "Our home's gone, our town is gone. What are we supposed to do now?"

  "Hey, lay off," Josh cut in.

  "I think she still has a lot to answer for," added Jessica's mother. "Why did all this happen? Why didn't she stop it sooner? And why hasn't my daughter said a word since we got here? What did you do to her?" Jessica was watching each of them in turn as they spoke, but she seemed to hover equally between Hailey and her family, without quite committing to either one.

  "Rachel is not responsible for what transpired with your daughter," Kendra replied, lending some real weight to the voices backing Rachel.

  "What would you know about it, Miss Laushire?"

  "I've worked closely with Rachel for over a year now, and neither of us were aware your daughter was acquainted with magic until the last few days. Whatever occurred was beyond our knowledge."

  "You, then!" she railed on, spinning to face Hailey. "You've been living with her, this is your fault!"

  Hailey opened her mouth—about to retort in equal measure—but Jessica grabbed her by the arm. Hailey faltered, looking at her friend, and Jessica shook her head. Alden wondered how much she actually understood, but it was clear from her expression that she just wanted them both to shut up. Hailey fell silent, but Jessica's mother wasn't so quick to back down.

  "I heard all about that town hall, and everything after! You knew about this monster way before he came after us. Why didn't you do anything to stop him?"

  "Lady, you try fighting a god," said Julian.

  "But—"

  "Can you shut up?" interrupted Natalie. "Please?" she added, after the looks of surprise at her outburst. "Who cares whose fault it is?"

  "...How did it happen?" asked Boris, when no one else spoke up in the wake of Natalie's question. "How did he die?" Alden expected he was as much asking Grey-eyes as he was Rachel, but Grey-eyes was totally silent, and looking very uncomfortable to be so close to the center of attention.

  "He attacked us at our home—" Ruby started, but Rachel spoke only a moment after she did.

  "I shot him."

  She spoke with such finality that the room was stunned into silence yet again. Rachel simply didn't want to engage with anyone. It seemed painfully unlike her from what Alden had seen and heard. Rachel was someone who loved to be at the front of a crowd, and now where she should have been completely in her element, she just wanted them all to leave.

  Cinza took a half-step forward, Ruby keeping her upright, placing them in front of the semicircle facing Rachel. "You called us all together, Rachel," she prompted. "This is everyone. What did you want to tell us?"

  "Why her?" Jessica's father asked. "Why're we listening to her?"

  Dan coughed. "Mal, she was elected, by more than half of the people here. She's in charge."

  "So what? Jackie was elected."

  "So was Josh," Joe put in. "How d'you feel about listening to him?"

  "That's enough," Jackie interrupted. "I wasn't elected to lead. And as for Josh, no 'ffense, but Rachel should definitely be in charge."

  "None taken," said Josh. "I agree with you."

  "Which brings us back to the point," said Neffie. "What did you want to say, Rachel?"

  They watched expectantly. Rachel took a deep breath, and finally, her eyes seemed to refocus on the people standing around her. She still didn't look any less miserable than when they'd first walked in, but she at least seemed to be properly lucid.

  "We have to hide."