I lay down, easing back into the fluffy pillow, and surprised myself by drifting back to sleep without a single dream to mar the bliss of escaping the world for a few hours.

The next several days were so quiet I might as well have been entombed already. The nurses—all of them some form or other of Super Duper so they were not at risk of infection—checked on me regularly. They brought me meals, asked me how I felt. None asked where Dahlia had gone. They cleaned her clothes and items out, changed the bedsheets, and said nothing about her absence.

The second day, I stopped my nurse from leaving right away. “Can I ask you a question about being . . . a supernatural?”

The nurse, a slim lady with slightly pointed ears and long flowing hair, paused as she tucked in the sheet at the foot of my bed. “What would you like to know?”

Merlin’s words about the Walls being created had continued to reverberate through me, long after he left. I picked at the hole in my sheet as I formed the question.

“Do you think the Wall is a good thing?”

She shrugged as she smoothed out my top sheet, her voice low and soothing though the words were anything but.

“My family is scattered on both sides of the Wall. Some are human, some are supernatural. Others are half-breeds.” Her hands slowed. “I’ll never get to see my little sister again. My family adopted her, she’s full human.” A tear dripped down her face, just one. It plopped onto the bed, leaving a tiny wet spot. “I’ll never get to be an auntie to her babies. She had a little boy last year. I’m not even allowed to see pictures of him. Even having a picture is enough to land me into trouble.” From her uniform she pulled a tiny, folded photo and handed it to me.

I took it, surprised she would trust me.

“Who are you going to tell?” she asked, not unkindly. She had a point.

I unfolded the image. A little boy grinned up at me. He had blond hair and bright-blue eyes, and his nose crinkled up with captured laughter. “He’s beautiful.” I handed the picture back to her and took her hand. “Firstamentalists, they helped fund the Wall. Do you . . . hate them?”

She snorted. “They did help, but it was the government, Alena. They’re afraid of us.”

“I didn’t ever meet a supernatural before I came here. I mean, not that I know,” I confessed.

“We aren’t allowed across the Wall. Unless you’ve got a lot of power, or a specific job like us here on Whidbey, there’s no reason to let us out. We are causing the virus to spread. That much is true.”

She put my hand down. “Do you hate supernaturals?”

I realized then she knew that at some point I’d been a Firstamentalist. It would have been in my chart to indicate that as a minor I wasn’t allowed certain procedures. Like having a gynecological exam for fear of my virginity being lost.

“No,” I whispered, and I realized it was true. I didn’t hate the Super Dupers. I didn’t want to be one, but I didn’t hate them either.

She smiled, bent, and kissed my forehead. “You’re a better person than most, Alena. Don’t forget it.”

My heart swelled, her words meaning more to me than I would have thought.

On the third day I asked another question that had been tumbling through my head. The nurse on duty this time was part gargoyle, part something else. I wasn’t sure of the mix; I knew only that as gentle as she tried to be, her hands were rough like granite stone on my tender and easily torn skin.

“Nurse Polli.”

“Yes?” She didn’t look up from changing a dressing on a bedsore that had rapidly spread up and over the bone of my hip. I bit my lip through the sharp pain as her knuckles brushed against the raw wound.

“Why does no one talk about the real cure to the virus? Merlin was in here and he just walked out with Dahlia, and now everyone acts like she was never even here.”

Nurse Polli froze in place, and her eyes slowly rose to mine, a flicker of fear behind them. “There is no cure for the virus. Dahlia died three days ago. I took her body out myself.”

I frowned. “No, Merlin took her out.”

Her eyes darted away from mine. “Merlin is a fictional character, honey.”

I rolled my head back. “Well, I’m not entirely sure it was his real name. I think it was like a pen name. You know, like how authors do sometimes because they don’t want their prudish friends to know they write erotic fan fiction of their favorite sparkling vampires.”

Her eyebrows rose incrementally as I spoke. “Really.”

“Yes, but that’s just from what I’ve heard. Where are you going? Are we done already?”

She nodded as she backed away and out the door, her gray eyes never leaving mine. Like I was going to suddenly reach up and grab her. I mean, she outweighed me by at least two hundred pounds, and I was weak as a newborn kitten. Yet she looked at me as if I were raving mad.

The door swooshed shut behind her, and I checked my dressing. It wasn’t even finished. She’d left it unbound and open to the air. Maybe I’d get an infection and die faster. The laugh that escaped my lips turned into a sob.

I didn’t want to die. But I’d thrown my chance away. And if I were being honest, even if Merlin showed back up right that moment, I would have turned him down. I’d been raised to do the right thing. Even when it hurt me.

Maybe most especially then. Because suffering was a part of life, and without it you grew prideful and full of ego.