chapter 39

ZAVION

Help—

A thousand voices calling for help flooded through Zavion.

He couldn’t tell if the sounds were coming from inside him or out on the street. He stopped running, stopped walking, and then stood still.

Help—

He looked around but didn’t see anyone on the street.

Fear was back. He knew it had been waiting for him, curled up in a tight ball. Zavion couldn’t tell if it had been hiding in the rubble of New Orleans, camouflaged in mud and trash, or if it had been lodged in his own body, tucked small and hard at the corner of his lower rib.

But it was back. Long and cold. It stretched from Zavion, to the stop sign on the corner, and wound around back to his body.

Zavion stared at the gray street. At the gray neighborhood. He listened to the silence, now that his heart had stopped blasting. Please let there be some sound, he thought. Please let there be some movement. But there was nothing. Only the fierce sun pushing down on a city ripped open, top to bottom, organs and veins and muscles torn away, with its bones exposed to the harsh light.

And what did that make Zavion? A lone cell, flung far, gasping for breath, lost, lost, lost.

Fear was definitely back.

But Zavion had made it to Luna Market.

Its window was taped up with a piece of cardboard and half the space was dark, but the lights were on in the front and Zavion could see a woman carrying a box down an aisle.

Okay, then.

They would walk in together.

He and Fear.

He reached into his pocket and touched his marble.

He would stand here for a few minutes, until he could walk in as a trio.

Zavion, Fear, and a Magic.