Noah placed his hand in hers, and she squeezed him back. They were in this together. All of them.
Karmen’s arm was still looped with hers, and she reached out to take Crash’s hand.
Crash, in turn, reached out toward Noah, a gesture of commitment and friendship that ran deeper than anything the four of them had ever known before.
But it was so much more than that, because the moment their hands touched and the circle of connection was made, a bright light burst from the stone in the center.
For a brief moment, a vision flashed through Parrish’s mind.
A boy with dark skin reaching toward them. The moment she saw his face, Parrish knew him.
He couldn’t have been more than ten years old in this lifetime, but she had known him for centuries. He had once been her greatest friend. Her mentor and teacher.
And she had seen him recently in a dream, standing on a sun-drenched beach, urging her toward the center of a small island.
This boy was the fifth, and as the vision expanded, she could see that he had not been reaching for her. He’d been reaching for a young girl with a violin cradled between her chin and shoulder.
He’d been reaching for Zoe, and she was very much still alive.
Two
The Boy
Having his feet on solid ground again felt strange after an evening of flying across rooftops, but the boy was so happy to have the girl with him now as he landed on the roof of his own building. Being alone for so long had been hard.
He led her into his small apartment while the sky was still dark. Luckily, they had made it home before the sun.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” the girl—Zoe—said.
She looked around, her eyes wide as she took in the small, bare apartment. He had a feeling she must have grown up somewhere very different from this, but the boy had never known anything else.
It didn’t matter that they’d come from different worlds. All that mattered now was that they were together. Only, Zoe didn’t look happy to be there. She looked like she was about to cry.
He reached for her hand, and she let her tears fall.
“I kept thinking that maybe when we got here, your parents would be here, too. Or your friends. But it’s just us now, isn’t it?”
He nodded, gripping her hand tighter.
“You must have been alone for a while, too, huh?” she asked.
When he nodded, she took a deep breath and smiled as she wiped the tears from her cheek.
“I’m sorry I’m crying. I don’t mean to seem like I’m not grateful, because I am,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I would have made it there by myself. I think I was going crazy. I kept hoping my sister would come for me, but she never did.”
The boy pointed to the necklace Zoe wore around her neck. An infinity symbol with two different colored stones.
She looked down and touched a hand to the pendant, shaking her head. “What?” she asked. “Oh, my sister? How did you know she gave me this?”
His eyes widened. Her sister. That was why he’d sensed the guardian. This girl was related to her.
He pulled his notebook from his backpack and drew an infinity sign.
Your sister’s symbol, he wrote.
Zoe looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“I don’t understand. Parrish doesn’t have a symbol,” she said. “She just said when she saw this, it made her think of me. See, I was going away on a big trip and Parrish couldn’t come. She gave me this before I left. I talked to her once when all this first started, and she said she’d figure out a way to come for me, but that’s crazy now. There’s no way she could make it all the way here, even if she was still alive.”
The boy shook his head in frustration. She didn’t understand.
How could he explain what he knew when he had no voice to tell her?
What could he write to make her understand?
Parrish has been my friend for many lifetimes. She’s alive.
He carefully wrote the words, and then pushed the notebook toward her, wondering if she would believe him or not.
Her lips parted, and she shook her head.
“A few weeks ago, I would have said you were crazy. There’s no way you could have known my sister in another lifetime, but now?” She looked at him, her eyes wide with wonder. “We just flew over a city filled with zombies. I guess anything is possible.”
She laughed, and the sound was contagious. He laughed with her, so happy for the sound of her voice in this quiet place that he nearly cried from joy.
“Is she really still alive?” she asked.
The boy took her hand and made sure her eyes were locked on his before he nodded. He placed a finger on the infinity sign she wore around her neck and nodded again, hoping that she understood.
Parrish was alive, and soon, she would come for them both.
It took a few hours for his heart to stop racing and for both of them to settle down in the small apartment. He kept checking the windows to make sure they hadn’t been followed, and after a while, once he was sure they were safe, his eyelids began to close on their own.
He’d been awake for such a long time.
The boy pointed to the couch in the living room, put his palms together, and brought them to his face in a gesture that universally meant sleep. Zoe understood right away.
“I’m sure you have to be tired after all that travel,” she said. “I’m going to stay up for a while, if that’s okay. I feel like all I did back in that hotel was sleep all the time. For some reason, I feel wide awake right now.”
The boy pointed to the bedroom and then to the
