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Cooper’s hands came up. He stayed as still as he could. He’d never had a gun pointed at him before.

He’d waited in the boiler room, hoping Jeff might return, but not for long — not after he found other coc.o.o.ns in the shadows. Cooper had gathered up Jeff’s coat, then wandered the bas.e.m.e.nt, looking for his friend, looking for a weapon.

When he’d turned a corner, he’d almost walked right into this gun-slinging girl.

Cooper bent a little, lowered his shoulders, tried to look as unthreatening as he could.

“Don’t shoot,” he said. “Please, put that down. I’m not one of them.”

a.s.suming she would know what them was, that he hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing, that he hadn’t dreamed about his best friend wrapped up in a membrane, hadn’t imagined strangling a triangle-tongued man to death, hadn’t made up the people with inhuman voices and swollen, yellow feet.

Her trembling aim stayed fixed on his face.

“Mister, if you think I’m going to put this down, you’re f.u.c.king r.e.t.a.r.ded.”

“Fine, just try to not aim it right at me, okay? The way your hand is twitching, you might kill me by accident.”

Her eyes s.h.i.+fted to the gun. Her eyebrows raised — she hadn’t realized she was shaking.

She lowered the gun, rested it against her thigh. She sagged a little to the left; her foot slid over quickly to maintain her balance. She was exhausted. How much blood had she lost?

The girl jutted her chin at him.

“Stick out your tongue,” she said.

The man in the boiler room, with the triangles on his tongue … she’d seen the same thing and was guarding against it. That meant she was normal.

“Thank G.o.d,” Cooper said. “Lady, you don’t know what I’ve—”

The gun snapped up again, the barrel’s tiny, black hole a window into death.

“Your tongue, a.s.shole.”

And then Cooper realized that he had no idea if he had triangles on his tongue or not. He rubbed it against the roof of his mouth, trying to feel b.u.mps … he couldn’t feel anything, but did that mean they weren’t there? And if he had them, was he going to wind up like the bald guy?

Give us a smooch …

She moved her right foot back, widening her stance. She straightened her arm. She moved with confidence, like she’d done it before — this girl knew how to use a gun.

Her hand stopped trembling. “Last chance, mister.”

Cooper closed his eyes. He stuck out his tongue.

“Open your mouth wider,” she said. “Stick it out farther.”

He did. He wondered if he’d hear the bang, or if everything would just end.

The girl let out a sigh of relief.