65

Kemple always thought that dying would feel like . . . nothing at all. Like spiraling down into that monstrous void, never to come up again. But right now, his world is . . . anything but empty.

The air smells of grease and motor oil. Everything is warm and sticky. And the wind is stuffed with noise: metal clanking, fabric rustling, and the gruff sound of a pair of . . . men singing?

He tries to open his eyes, but his eyelids merely flutter, like he’s too weak to use them. Like his body is still struggling to repair itself from . . . from what?

From something. He knows he went through something.

Then he hears it: a noise so faint that it almost sounds like breathing. Like a cat’s tail swishing gently across the floor. Like . . . a pair of feet that have spent a lifetime sneaking around.

And though her name sounds so out of place, so unlikely, so distant, he finds himself croaking it out anyway. “. . . Josephyn?”

For a moment, all he hears is the sound of gentle breathing, and the thrum of propellers in the distance. Then a voice echoes in the dusty space around him—a voice that’s straight from the past. “Hey there, Belt Boy. Long time no see.”