The League’s “village” was lively and thriving, despite the feeling that, at any minute, they might have to pick up and leave. The tents were staked on muddy ground, with wood plank floors and waist-high siding applied to keep the rats out. Cooking fires were carefully arranged among the living areas. Several magicked wells had been drawn up through the ground, probably with the same water-drafting spell Uncle and Walker had used when they’d been traveling through the Arizona desert. Children ran through the muddy corridor, chasing stray chickens or playing at Blackthorn Rogues, though they didn’t seem to realize what that name meant these days. A few of the kids tossed glow stones that shifted color as they changed hands.

Jemma had said Walker was down here, but she hadn’t said which tent. Hettie scanned the bodies and faces, searching for those familiar broad shoulders, that crooked smile, those ice-blue eyes. Soon, returned stares and whispers told her the refugees recognized her. Knots of people parted hastily before her. A few women clutched their children closer. Several men took off their hats as she passed, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“That’s her,” she heard them whispering. “Elias Blackthorn’s legacy. Hettie Alabama, the wielder of the Devil’s Revolver.” Her name raced through the camp like a snake with its tail on fire.

“They say she faced the zombie hordes and lived.”

“I heard she killed ten Division sorcerers with one bullet.”

“Stay away from her! She’s a ghost now, a bride of the devil who walks in and out of life and death…”

She kept her shoulders squared, her look mean. If they were going to be afraid of her, she might as well look the part. She supposed she could’ve dropped into her time bubble to avoid the gossip, but then she’d only be feeding the rumors.

“What’re you doin’ here?”

Hettie froze. She knew that voice, and a surge of wary joy filled her as she faced the woman. “Daisy.”

Daisy put her hands on her hips. The hem of her gown was caked with mud, but she looked otherwise hale and hardy. “Every time you and yours darken my doorstep, something else happens. You’re a curse, Hettie Alabama.”

“I’m here to see Walker,” she said.

“I don’t know any Walker.” Daisy blocked her path, arms akimbo. “Now you go back to whatever hell you walked out of.”

“Aw, let the po’ girl in, Daze,” Daisy’s brother, Bear Brown, called from inside the tent, his voice as creaky as Hettie remembered it. “She’s come a long way an’ deserves a drink.”

Daisy’s glare cut through Hettie like a knife, but she threw back the tent flap and gestured her in.

The interior was cozier than she thought it would be, with a fine rug on the wood-slat floor, a large bed, and a small table with two chairs. Bear sat upright in an armchair, a blanket draped over his legs. He’d lost weight, though he wasn’t as gaunt as he’d been when they’d first met.

“I promise I ain’t no ghost,” he said, beckoning her closer. “Not yet. Now you come give ol’ Bear a hug.”

Hettie did so. “I don’t understand… How… Why are you here? I thought you were staying at Sophie’s safehouse.”

“We were there a good while,” Bear said, “but them zombies found us just under a year ago, and the Division was right behind them. Jemma left us a remote Zoom beacon for a fast escape. We been here with the League ever since.”

Daisy set a cup of coffee and a plate of biscuits on the table for Hettie with a glare. For all that Hettie had been unwelcome, it seemed Daisy couldn’t help playing hostess. “I was told… That is…”

“Miss Hettie?” A dark face appeared between the tent flaps.

“Horace!” She leaped to her feet, and they hugged. Daisy complained loudly that people were tracking mud onto her nice clean floors, but only harrumphed when Horace apologized and offered to sweep up after himself.

“We thought you were dead.” Horace held her back, inspecting her as a father might look over his child. “Why’d you leave us like that, huh?”

“I’m sorry, I really am. It’s a long story.” She glanced around hopefully.

“You want to see him.” He knew. He led her out of the tent and farther along the main throughway.

A tremor began low in Hettie’s belly. “How…how is he?” she asked tentatively, partly to stall the meeting.

“He’s not angry with you,” he said. “Sad, maybe. But not angry. Not really.” He bowed his head. “Miss Lena took care of us. Got us safely out of Junesfield and away from the Division and the zombies.”

Horace pointed at the ramshackle structure with an anti-Eye charm hung outside. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

She hesitated, thinking of all the horrible things Walker could say or do. She imagined angrily thrown boots. It almost made her turn back.

Instead she took a deep breath and knocked.

“It’s open.” His deep voice sent tears to her eyes. Gods, she’d missed him. She entered.

Walker stood facing the rear of the tent. His broad shoulders stretched his white shirt across his back. His gun belt and black hat hung from one corner of the bed.

“You cut your hair,” she said finally, her voice harsh and small, making scraping sounds like a worn key fumbling through a rusted lock.

Walker didn’t turn. “Daisy insisted. Said I looked like an ugly woman.”

Hettie couldn’t help but chuckle, her stomach aquiver. By gods, she was nervous. “Walker…”

“Did you find her?”

Her heart squeezed tight, and a bubble of air went to her head so she lost focus a moment. “No. Not yet. But I’m close. Really close. That’s why I’m here. Sophie brought me to see the League. They’re helping me find this pocket realm…” She was babbling. She schooled the words threatening to spill from her. “I came here for you.” She stepped forward.

“For me? Or for my help?”

Hettie halted, opened her mouth to protest, but no words came.

“They’re not the same thing, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He turned to face her then.

Everything inside her wanted to rush toward him, to have him hold her the way he used to. But the intensity in his ice-blue eyes wavered with pain—hurt she’d caused with every rejection, every moment she’d stepped back as he’d stepped forward.

She was forced then to admit that what she wanted more than Walker himself was his stability. His strength. She wanted him by her side again to help bring Abby home. She wanted him to be there for her, to pull her out of that hole just like that first time, when she’d collapsed the cave over Zavi’s head and had been trapped at the bottom of a cavern with no way out. She wanted someone she could lean on, talk to, argue with. She’d wanted Walker for all the things he’d provided for her endlessly, thanklessly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For leaving you and Lena and the others when you needed me. For putting you all in danger in the first place.” She huffed. “I left because…it was my fault. Junesfield was a bad bet. I got the Rogues killed because of something that should’ve always been mine and mine alone to fight for.”

“Like hell.” He glowered. “You don’t get to decide what’s too dangerous for me. You don’t get to set me aside because you think I can’t handle it.”

She watched his darting pupils. “You still can’t see.”

“I can see fine.” He turned his face. “Better than I could four months ago, at any rate.”

“But not perfectly.”

His jaw worked.

Not well enough to shoot, she concluded at his silence. Hettie’s heart sank, though she hated her selfishness. She should be happy he was alive.

“It’ll get better. Lena’s been helping me,” he said. Lena had some healing powers, though they were nowhere near as powerful as Ling’s.

“Where is she?”

“She comes every couple of weeks. She and Duke have been running what’s left of the Rogues, doing what they can alongside the League to stop the zombie attacks. They check in with Sophie now and again.”

So Duke had survived. Hettie was surprised they were all working together now. Duke wasn’t much of a do-gooder, and she had a hard time imagining him sharing leadership with Lena. Frankly, she was surprised he’d even made it out of Junesfield alive, being mundane. But then, he was a survivor, like all of them. Things must have gotten pretty bad for Duke and the rest of the gang to turn to zombie hunting…unless, of course, it paid well.

“Is Ling with you?” Walker asked warily.

“No. We got separated in Newhaven. It’s a long story.”

“Is there any point in you telling it to me if you’re just going to leave again?”

A pang went through her. “Walker…”

“I know why you came, Hettie. You wanted me and the rest of us back to help you save your sister. It’s always about Abby.”

“You want me to make it about you?” she asked, outrage rising in her.

“I want you to make it about family. Do you think you’re the only one who cares for her? Dammit, Hettie! I left my mother behind in Mexico for you. I abandoned my people to go looking for you. And when I found you…” He forked his fingers through his hair. “You were catatonic for weeks. I took care of you. I kept you alive. I brought you back from the brink. And I didn’t even get a thank-you.” A tear dripped heavily from his watering eyes, and he swiped it away hastily.

Hettie pressed her palms together, trying to hold her own emotions in check. Anger was too strong a description. No, this was more like disappointment, but in whom? Herself for being so weak when traumatized? In Walker, for not accepting her choices? For being useless in her current crisis? That was a cold, unfeeling thought, and she hated herself, and Walker, for bringing the worst of her into the light.

And yet she desperately wanted to go to him. To have him forgive her again. She knew she didn’t deserve it, had done nothing to earn his love. But she craved his arms around her like a dope fiend after the pipe.

“Walker, I didn’t come here to fight. But you’re right. I have chosen Abby again and again over everyone and everything else that matters to other people.” She stiffened her shoulders. “I won’t apologize for that. My sister means the world to me.”

He flinched. He hadn’t expected the truth. “You chose Ling over me,” he said in a petulant rationalization to preserve his ego.

“I chose Abby over you. Ling had a lead. A good one, it turns out, even though it didn’t pan out the way I thought it would.” She sat down heavily in the tent’s only chair, suddenly drained. “The place I ended up… The man I met… He broke me down, stripped away my memories until there was nothing left except who I was at that moment. And I didn’t like her.” The admission left her raw. That dual memory overlapped in her mind—seeing her own scarred face, feeling frightened of the woman she’d become…laid over the memory of the outlaw, staring hard back at Ophelia, trying to come up with the fastest way to get what she wanted, even if it was at the point of a gun. “The only thing that made her—me—someone I could live with was Abby.”

She rubbed at the cuts carved into her arm. She’d used a wire from her corset to etch the words in, retracing the letters each time she rediscovered them and rubbing soot from the fireplace in to make sure the welt didn’t heal over and disappear. “When I finally remembered her… it was like all the world made sense again. And then it was taken away from me, and all I had left were scars I didn’t remember getting.”

Walker’s furious expression eased. He sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him. “If you’re willing to stay… If you want to tell your story, I’ll listen.”

So she did. In some ways, she hated how easily he’d capitulated. Would she have been as forgiving had their roles been reversed? Probably not, but Hettie had never been the forgiving sort. Not even of herself.

The story came out haltingly at first. It had been easier to tell Sophie and Jemma, for some reason, but then she realized she’d been holding back her feelings from them, protecting them from the hurt and fear swirling inside her after that prolonged captivity.

She told Walker about waking up every morning, feeling less and less a part of the world, not recalling much about the past or the place she came from until all she knew were the days behind her, in the study, talking with Berkeley, her life narrowed to the eccentric man and his lavish house and his fantastic collection of magical artifacts.

“The worst part,” she said slowly, “was that at the height of it…I felt…like suddenly, everything was so much easier. If all I did was sit and do as he asked, be quiet and obedient and hardworking, I…I might have been happy.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t. I knew something was wrong. It clawed at me from the inside. In some ways, I think I owe that to Uncle…” she said faintly. “I don’t think I would’ve stayed sane for long, not knowing anything about my past…my childhood…who I was or who I’d been. Except that when Jeremiah traded my love for my parents in exchange for my life, it was like…a prelude. As if he knew he was preparing me for being anchorless in a storm.”

Walker watched her steadily. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Why did you think I was so obsessed with finding Abby?” She rubbed the inside of her arm. “She’s my last link to my parents. My old life. I’ve protected her since…since Paul died. I was the reason he died, you know.” She’d told him about it before.

“That’s not true.” He said it with quiet conviction.

“It is. I was the one who—”

“Your brother died because a man stabbed him. Nothing more.” Walker gripped her arms. “You have enough ghosts haunting you, enough burdens to bear without hanging on to that.”

Tears filled Hettie’s eyes, and she trembled. Walker kissed her then, closing his arms tightly around her. She would never understand his capacity for forgiving her. But for now, in this moment, they had each other.

Robbed of his sight, Walker relearned her body by touch, and Hettie found a quiet peace in their coupling, departing the world briefly, blissfully, without forgetting about it.

Afterward, Hettie allowed herself to close her eyes, and for the first time in months she slept unafraid of the world threatening to steal what little she had left.