It’s only been a few weeks since Conor left the college, and Nessa can’t quite get over how relieved she feels. And all for the price of two measly stitches in her scalp! Rain pelts the glass as Nicole deals cards to Megan, Marya, Aoife, and herself for a hand of Twenty-Five. Other students lounge around on sofas, goggle-eyed at ancient magazines full of bizarre celebrities. “By Crom, she’s like something the Sídhe got hold of!” And over everything, the crackling radio struggles from one thirty-year-old hit to the next. Who has the resources these days to make new music? To record it? To store it?

But Nessa doesn’t care. Her belly is pleasantly full and an old-fashioned fire roars in the grate, with boys taking turns to pile on the wood. She stifles a yawn, thinking of Anto, who sat at the top table for the first time this evening, ignoring the stares at his deformity. But he did meet the eyes of one girl. He did smile, and Nessa grinned right back.

Now she follows suit on a two of hearts, while Megan flings up her hands and snorts, “Who invented this stupid game?” Then it’s Aoife’s turn, and she hesitates.

The blonde girl hasn’t spoken much since Squeaky Emma was Called, so even Megan is patient as she breaks the biggest taboo of them all.

“What … what will you girls do if you survive?” she says.

Nicole looks away, embarrassed for her. Marya covers her mouth and nobody dares answer.

“It’s just … it’s just I think the State’d make me marry some guy. And I’m not … you know, I’m not cut out for it.”

“Men aren’t worth it,” says Megan, winking at Nessa, who fights and fights against the idiot grin that her face wants to make.

But Aoife takes the comment seriously. “I don’t hate men. I adored my stepdad. It’s … it’s the, uh, the act itself. You know what I mean? It’s … it seems so vile.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Nicole. “Agreed. Vile is the word. So disgusting I doubt I could do it more than five times a night. As for ten? He’d have to be Crom-twisted gorgeous.”

Marya laughs, all shock and delight, until even Aoife joins in. And slowly, the group cooperates in getting her away from the horrifically unlucky subject of “after.”

But then Megan of all people digs it up again in the middle of a particularly bad hand.

“I don’t care if I don’t make it,” she says, and Nessa feels a chill on her heart. “I mean it. The country is done for, and we all know that’s the truth. Aoife is right. Even the survivors have nothing to look forward to except decline and old crones with tightened assholes in charge of everything.”

Marya, however, is a true believer and surprises them all by smacking the table with her little fist. “So why bother?” she hisses. “Nobody can make you stay in a survival college if you don’t want to. Why not enjoy the rest of your worthless life? You don’t have to put up with all the training.”

“Oh, I want the training,” Megan says, glaring right back at her. “Because the Sídhe did this. They’re the ones who ruined everything. Everything! My parents are weeping wrecks. I’ll never travel in a plane or climb Everest or whatever Crom-cursed crap everybody had that we don’t. But there’s something I can do. Something I want more than living forever or flying into space. I want to kill a fairy.” She uses the English word for the Sídhe, while both spit and spite fly from her lips. “I want to kill as many of them as I can, but even one would make my life worthwhile. Even one!”

The whole common room has fallen silent at Megan’s outburst. Her eyes travel around the table, meeting their gazes one by one. Marya stands abruptly, then circles around to where Megan sits and hugs her hard. “Me too!” she declares. “Me too. I want to be a Fairy Killer.” And Nessa, though she never allows herself any show of passion, wishes she had been the one to hug her best and only friend. It’s Megan who supports and tolerates Nessa, who gives total loyalty for no other reason, it seems, than that they travel on the same bus.

It’s not too late though. Nobody is stopping Nessa from hugging her right this minute.

Yet habit pins her to her chair.

Slowly, wordlessly, they all take up the cards again. Round after round, with Nessa keeping score on a scrap of paper and the rain beginning to weaken, until eight o’clock comes around and Marya insists on tuning the common room’s ancient radio to the news station. “I want the lists,” she says, and everybody lets her have her way, so that they catch the very first part of the broadcast. The announcer burbles on about how great the survival of the Nation is going today: the achievements, the government appointments, and so on.

“And now,” she declares proudly, “the list of today’s survivors. We had ten today! From all over the country. So, in order of their return, we have O’Donnell, Charlie. McDade, Elaine—”

Megan grins. “Two Donegal names to start! We are the best!”

Nessa holds up a palm for the high five that must inevitably follow.

But it doesn’t. Because Megan is gone, and it will be exactly three minutes and four seconds before any of them see her again.