Jin collapsed on his bed, giving the weary springs a jolt. After he’d fled the cemetery—and Taehyung—he’d practically sprinted up to his room. He hadn’t even bothered to turn on a light, so he’d tripped over his desk chair and stubbed his toe hard. He’d curled into a ball and gripped his throbbing foot. At least the pain was something real that he could cope with, something sane and of this world. He was so glad to finally be alone.

 

There was a knock on his door.

 

He could not catch a break.

 

Jin ignored the knock. He didn’t want to see anyone, and whoever it was would get the hint. Another knock. Heavy breathing and a phlegmy, allergy-ridden throat-clearing sound.

 

Ken.

 

He couldn’t see Ken right now. He’d either sound crazy if he tried to explain all that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours, or he’d go crazy trying to put on a normal face and keep it to himself.

 

Finally, Jin heard Ken’s footsteps treading away down the hallway. He breathed a sigh of relief, which turned into a long, lonely whimper.

 

He wanted to blame Taehyung for unleashing this out-of-control feeling inside him, and for a second, he tried to imagine his life without him. Except that was impossible. Like trying to remember your first impression of a house after you’ve lived in it for years. That was how much he had gotten to him. And now he had to figure out a way to wade through all the strange things he’d told him tonight.

 

But at the edge of his mind, he kept spiraling back to what he’d said about the times they’d spent together in the past. Maybe Jin couldn’t exactly remember the moments he’d described or the places he mentioned, but in a strange way, his words weren’t shocking at all. It was all somehow familiar.

 

For example, he had always inexplicably hated dates. Even the sight of them made him feel queasy. He’d started claiming he was allergic so his mom would stop trying to sneak them into things she baked. And he’d been begging his parents to take him to Brazil practically his whole life, though he never could explain exactly why he wanted to go. The white peonies. Taehyung had given him a bouquet after the fire in the library. There had always been something so unusual about them, yet so familiar.

 

The sky outside his window was a deep charcoal, with just a few puffs of white cloud. His room was dark, but the pale full blooms of the flowers on his windowsill stood out in the dimness. They’d sat in their vase for a week now, and not a single petal had withered.

 

Jin sat up and inhaled their sweetness.

 

He couldn’t blame him. Yes, he sounded crazy, but he was also right—he was the one who had come to him again and again suggesting that they had some sort of history. And it wasn’t only that. He was also the one who saw the shadows, the one who kept finding himself involved in the deaths of innocent people. He’d been trying not to think about Yi Jung and Jung Hwan when Taehyung started talking about his own deaths—how he had watched him die so many times. If there had been any way to fathom such a thing, Jin would have wanted to ask whether Taehyung ever felt responsible. For the loss of him. Whether his reality was anything like the secret, ugly, overriding guilt he faced every day.

 

He sank onto the desk chair, which had somehow made its way to the middle of the room. Ouch. When he reached underneath him, hand groping for whatever hard object he’d just plopped down on, he found a thick book.

 

Jin moved to the wall and flicked on his light switch, then squinted in the ugly fluorescent light. The book in his hands was one he’d never seen before. It was bound in the palest gray cloth, with frayed corners and brown glue crumbling at the bottom of the spine.

 

The Watchers: Myth in Medieval Europe.

 

Taehyung’s ancestor’s book.

 

It was heavy and smelled faintly of smoke. He tugged out the note that was tucked inside the front cover.

 

"Yes, I found a spare key and entered your room unlawfully. I’m sorry. But this is URGENT!!! And I couldn’t find you anywhere. Where are you? You need to look at this, and then we need to have a powwow. I’ll swing by in an hour. Proceed with caution.

 

xoxo,

Ken"

 

Jin laid the note next to the flowers and took the book back to his bed. He sat down with his legs dangling over the edge. Just holding the book gave him a strange, warm buzzing sensation just below his skin. The book felt almost alive in his hands.

 

He cracked it open, expecting to have to decode some stiff academic table of contents or dig through an index at the back before he’d find anything even remotely related to Taehyung.

 

He never got beyond the title page.

 

Pasted inside the front cover of the book was a sepia-toned photograph. It was a very old carte de visite-style picture, printed on yellowing albumen paper. Someone had scrawled in ink at the bottom: Helston, 1854.

 

Heat flashed across his skin. He yanked his black sweater over his head but still felt hot in his shirt.

 

The memory of Taehyung’s voice sounded hollow in his mind. I get to live forever, he’d said. You come along every seventeen years. You fall in love with me, and I with you. And it kills you.

 

His head throbbed.

 

You’re my love, Seokjin. For me, you’re all there is.

 

He the outline of the picture glued inside the book. Jin’s dad, the aspiring photography guru, would have marveled over how well-preserved the image was, how valuable it must be.

 

Jin, on the other hand, was hung up on the people in the image. Because, unless every word out of Taehyung’s mouth had been true, it made no sense at all.

 

A young man, with light cropped hair and lighter eyes, posed elegantly in a trim black coat. His raised chin and well-defined cheekbones made his fine attire look even more distinguished, but it was his lips that gave Jin such a start. The exact shape of his smile, combined with the look in those eyes … it added up to an expression that Jin had seen in every one of his dreams these last few weeks. And, over the last couple of days, in person.

 

This man was the spitting image of Taehyung. The Taehyung who had just told him that he loved him—and that he had been reincarnated dozens of times. The Taehyung who had said so many other things Jin didn’t want to hear that he had run away. The Taehyung whom he’d abandoned under the peach trees in the cemetery.

 

It could have been just a remarkable likeness. Some distant relative, the author of the book maybe, who’d funneled each one of his genes straight down the family tree right to Taehyung.

 

Except that the young man in the picture was posed next to another young man who also looked alarmingly familiar.

 

Jin held the book inches from his face and pored over the man’s image. He wore a white coat that hugged his body to his waist. His small teeth showed between his lips, which were parted in an easy smile. He had clear skin a few tones lighter than the man’s. Deep-set eyes bordered by thick eyelashes. 

 

It took a moment for Jin to remember how to breathe, and even then, he still couldn’t tear his strained eyes away from the book. The man in the photograph?

 

It was him.

 

Either Jin had been right, and his memory of Taehyung had come from a forgotten trip to a Savannah mall, where they’d posed for cheesy dress-up shots at Ye Old Photo Booth that he also couldn’t remember—or Taehyung had been telling the truth.

 

Jin and Taehyung did know one another.

 

From an altogether different time.

 

He could not catch his breath. His whole life tossed in the roiling sea of his mind, everything came into question—the itchy dark shadows that haunted him, the gruesome death of Yi Jung, the dreams …

 

He had to find Ken. If anyone could come up with an explanation for such an impossible occurrence, it would be Ken. With the inscrutable old book tucked under his arm, Jin left his room and raced toward the library.

 

The library was warm and empty, but something about the high ceilings and endless rows of books made Jin nervous. He walked quickly past the new call desk, which still looked sterile and unlived in. He passed the formidable unused card catalog and the endless reference section until he had reached the long tables in the group study section.

 

Instead of Ken, Jin found Jimin, playing a game of chess with Seo-joon. He had his feet up on the table and was wearing a striped conductor’s cap. His hair was tucked under the hat, and Jin noticed again, for the first time since the morning he’d cut Jimin's hair, the glossy, marbled scar along his neck.

 

Jimin was fixated on the game. A chocolate cigar bobbed between his lips as he contemplated his next move. Seo-joon had twisted his dreads into two meaty knots on the crown of his head. He was giving Jimin the hawk eye, tapping one of his pawns with his pinky.

 

“Checkmate, ,” Jimin said triumphantly, knocking over Seo-joon's king, just as Jin thudded to a stop in front of their table. “Seokjin-ahhhh,” he sang, looking up. “You’ve been hiding from me.”

 

“No.”

 

“I’ve been hearing things about you,” Jimin said, causing Seo-joon to tilt his head attentively. “Nudge nudge, wink wink. That means sit down and spill. Right now.”

 

Jin hugged the book to his chest. He didn’t want to sit down. He wanted to scour the library for Ken. He couldn’t make small talk with Jimin—especially not in front of Seo-joon, who was clearing his things off the seat next to him.

 

“Join us,” Seo-joon said.

 

Jin lowered himself reluctantly onto the edge of the seat. He’d just stay a few minutes. It was true that he hadn’t seen Jimin in a few days, and under normal circumstances, he would really have missed the guy’s bizarre ways.

 

But these were far from normal circumstances, and Jin could think of nothing other than that photograph.

 

“Since I just wiped the chessboard with Seo-joon's , let’s play a new game. How about ‘who saw an incriminating photo of Jin the other day?’” Jimin said, crossing his arms on the table.

 

“What?” Jin jumped back. He pressed his hand down firmly on the cover of the book, feeling certain that his tense expression was giving everything away. He should never have brought it here.

 

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Jimin said, rolling his eyes. “Yoongi snapped a picture of you ducking into a big black car yesterday after class.”

 

“Oh.” Jin sighed.

 

“He was going to turn you in to Bo-young,” Jimin continued. “Until I gave him what for. Mmm-hmm.” He snapped his fingers. “Now, to show your gratitude, tell me—are they sneaking you away to see an off-campus shrink?” He lowered his voice to a whisper and tapped his fingernails on the table. “Or have you taken a lover?”

 

Jin glanced at Seo-joon, who was giving him a fixed stare.

 

“Neither,” he said. “I just left for a little while to have a talk with Jungkook. It didn’t go exactly—”

 

“Bam! Pay up, Min,” Seo-joon said, grinning. “You owe me ten bucks.”

 

Jin's jaw dropped.

 

Jimin patted his hand. “No big deal, we just made a little wager to keep things interesting. I assumed it was Taehyung you’d gone off with. Seo-joon here picked Jungkook. You’re breaking my bank, Jin. I don’t like it.”

 

“I was with Taehyung,” Jin said, not really knowing why he felt the need to correct them. Didn’t they have anything better to do with their lives than sit around wondering what he did on her own time?

 

“Oh,” Seo-joon said, sounding disappointed. “The plot thickens.”

 

“Seo-joon.” Jin turned to him. “I need to ask you something.”

 

“Talk to me.” He pulled a notepad and a pen out of his black-and-white pinstriped blazer. He held the pen poised over the paper, like a waiter taking an order. “What do you want? Coffee? Booze? I only get the hard stuff on Fridays. Dirty magazines?”

 

“Thigars?” Jimin offered, lisping through the chocolate one in his mouth.

 

“No.” Jin shook his head. “None of that.”

 

“Okay, special order. I left the catalog up in the room.” Seo-joon shrugged. “You can come by later—”

 

“I don’t need you to get me anything. I just want to know—” He swallowed dryly. “You’re friends with Taehyung, right?”

 

He shrugged. “I don’t hate the guy.”

 

“But do you trust him?” he asked. “I mean, if he told you something that sounded crazy, how likely would you be to believe him?”

 

Seo-joon squinted at him, seeming momentarily stumped, but Jimin quickly hopped up on the table and swung his legs over to Jin's side. “What exactly are we talking about?”

 

Jin stood up. “Never mind.” He should never have raised the subject. The whole mess of details came rushing back to him. He grabbed the book from the table. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

 

He pushed his chair in and walked away. His legs felt heavy and dull, his mind overloaded. A breath of wind lifted the hair at the back of his neck and his head darted around in search of shadows. Nothing. Just an open window high up near the library rafters. Just a tiny bird’s nest tucked into the window’s narrow open corner. Scanning the library again, Jin found it hard to believe his eyes. There really was no sign of them, no inky black tendrils or shuddering gray weather system roiling overhead—but Jin could feel their distinct closeness, could almost smell their salty sulfur in the air. Where were they, if not haunting him? He’d always thought of them as his alone. He’d never considered that the shadows might go other places, do other things—torment other people. Did Taehyung see them, too?

 

Rounding the corner toward the computer stations at the back of the library, where he thought he might find Ken, Jin ran smack into Mr. Bogum. Both of them stumbled, and Mr. Bogum caught Jin to steady himself. He was dressed in fashionable jeans and a long white shirt, with a red cardigan tied around his shoulders. His metallic green glasses hung from a multicolored bead chain around his neck. Jin was surprised at how firm his grip was.

 

“Excuse me,” Jin mumbled.

 

“Why, Seokjik, what’s the matter?” Me. Bogum pressed a palm to Jin's forehead. The baby powder smell of his hands filled Jin's nose. “You don’t look well.”

 

Jin swallowed, willing himself not to burst into tears just because the nice librarian was taking pity on him. “I’m not well.”

 

“I knew it,” Mr. Bogum said. “You missed class today and you weren’t at the Social last night. Do you need to see a doctor? If my first-aid kit hadn’t been burned up in the fire, I’d take your temperature right here.”

 

“No, well, I don’t know.” Jin held the book out in front of him and contemplated telling Mr. Bogum everything, starting from the beginning … which was when?

 

Only, he didn’t have to. Mr. Bogum took one glance at the book, sighed, and gave Jin a knowing look. “You finally found it, didn’t you? Come, let’s have a talk.”

 

Even the librarian knew more than Jin did about his life. Lives? He couldn’t figure out what any of it meant, or how any of it was possible.

 

He followed Mr. Bogum to a table at the back corner of the study section. He could still see Jimin and Seo-joon from the corner of his eye, but they seemed at least to be out of earshot.

 

“How did you come across this?” Mr. Bogum patted Jin's hand and slipped his glasses on. His small black-pearl eyes twinkled behind the bifocals’ frames. “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble, dear.”

 

“I don’t know. Ken and I had been looking for it. It was stupid. We thought maybe the author was related to Taehyung, but we didn’t know for sure. Whenever we went to look for it, it seemed like it had just been checked out. Then, when I came home tonight, Ken had left it in my room—”

 

“So Lee Jae Hwan knows about its contents as well?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jin said, shaking his head. He could feel himself rambling, and yet he couldn’t make himself shut up. Mr. Bogum was like the cool, zany grandfather Jin had never had. His own grandfather’s idea of a big shopping trip was going to the grocery store. Besides, it felt so good just to talk to someone. “I haven’t been able to find him yet, only because I was with Taehyung, and usually he acts so weird, but last night he kissed me, and we stayed out until—”

 

“Excuse me, dear,” Mr. Bogum said, a little too loudly, “but did you just say Kim Taehyung kissed you?”

 

Jin covered his mouth with both hands. He could not believe he’d just spilled that to Mr. Bogum. He must really be losing it. “I’m sorry, that’s completely irrelevant. And embarrassing. I don’t know why that slipped out.” He fanned his burning cheeks.

 

Already it was too late. Across the study section, Jimin boomed at Jin, “Thanks for telling me!” His face looked stunned.

 

But Mr. Bogum snapped Jin's attention back when he shook the book from Jin's hands. “A kiss between you and Taehyung is not only irrelevant, dear, it’s usually impossible.” He his chin and looked up at the ceiling. “Which means … well, it couldn’t mean …”

 

Mr. Bogum's fingers started flying through the book, tracing down each page at a miraculously rapid pace.

 

“What do you mean, ‘usually’?” Jin had never felt so left out of his own life.

 

“Forget the kiss.” Mr. Bogum waved his hand at Jin, taking him aback. “That’s not half of it. The kiss doesn’t mean anything unless …” He muttered under his breath and went back to flipping through the pages.

 

What did Mr. Bogum know? Taehyung's kiss meant everything. Jin watched Mr. Bogum's flying fingers dubiously until something on one of the pages caught his eye.

 

“Go back,” Jin said, laying his hand over Mr. Bogum's to stop him.

 

Mr. Bogum leaned slowly away as Jin turned back the thin, translucent pages. There. He pressed a hand to his heart. In the margin was a series of drawings sketched in blackest ink. Quickly done, but in an elegant, fine hand. By someone with a certain talent. Jin ran his fingers over the drawings, taking them in. The slope of a man’s shoulder, seen from the back, his mullet hair resting on the neck. Soft bare knees crossed over each other, leading up to a shadowy waist. A long, thin wrist giving way to an open palm in which a large, full peony rested.

 

Jin's fingers started to tremble. A lump rose in his throat. He didn’t know why this, out of everything he’d seen and heard today, was beautiful enough—tragic enough—to finally bring him to tears. The shoulder, the knees, the wrist … all were his own. And he knew—all of them had been drawn by Taehyung's hand.

 

“Seokjin.” Mr. Bogum looked nervous, slowly inching his chair away from the table. “Are you—are you feeling quite all right?”

 

“Oh, Taehyung,” Jin whispered, desperate to be near him again. He wiped away a tear.

 

“He’s damned, Seokjin,” Mr. Bogum said in a surprisingly cold voice. “You both are.”

 

Damned. Taehyung had spoken of being damned. That was his word for all of this. But he’d been referring to himself. Not Jin.

 

“Damned?” Jin repeated. Only, he didn’t want to hear any more. All he wanted was to find him.

 

Mr. Bogum snapped his fingers in front of Jin's face. Jin met his eyes, slowly, languidly, smiling dopily.

 

“You’re still not awake,” Mr. Bogum murmured. He closed the book with a smack, catching Jin's attention, and laid his hands down on the table. “Has he told you anything? After the kiss, maybe?”

 

“He told me …,” Jin started. “It sounds crazy.”

 

“These things often do.”

 

“He said the two of us … we’re some kind of star-crossed lovers.” Jin closed his eyes, remembering his long catalog of past lives. At first the idea had felt so foreign, but now that he was getting used to it, he thought it might just be the most romantic thing that had ever happened in the history of the world. “He talked about all the times we’ve fallen in love, in Rio, and Jerusalem, Tahiti—”

 

“That does sound rather crazy,” Mr. Bogum said. “So, of course, you don’t believe him?”

 

“I didn’t at first,” Jin said, thinking back to their heated disagreement under the peach tree. “He started out by bringing up the Bible, which my instinct is to tune out—” He bit his tongue. “No offense. I mean, I think your class is really interesting.”

 

“None taken. People often shy away from their religious upbringings around your age. You’re nothing new, Seokjin.”

 

“Oh.” Jin cracked his knuckles. “But I didn’t have a religious upbringing. My parents didn’t believe in it, so—”

 

“Everyone believes in something. Surely you were baptized?”

 

“Not if you don’t count the swimming pool built under the church pews over there,” Jin said timidly, jerking his thumb toward Sword & Cross’s gym.

 

Yeah, he celebrated Christmas, he’d been to church a handful of times, and even when his life made him and everyone around him miserable, he still had faith that there was someone or something up there worth believing in. That had always been enough for him.

 

Across the room, he heard a loud clatter. He looked up to see that Seo-joon had fallen out of his chair. The last time he’d glanced at him, he’d been leaning back on two legs, and now it looked like gravity had finally won.

 

As he stumbled to his feet, Jimin went to help him. He glanced over and offered a hurried wave. “He’s okay!” he called cheerily. “Get up!” he whispered loudly to Seo-joon.

 

Mr. Bogum was sitting very still, with his hands in his lap under the table. He cleared his throat a few times, flipped back to the front cover of the book and ran his fingers over the photograph, then said, “Did he reveal anything more? Do you know who Taehyung is?”

 

Slowly, sitting up very straight in his chair, Jin asked, “Do you?”

 

The librarian stiffened. “I study these things. I’m an academic. I don’t get tangled up in trivial matters of the heart.”

 

Those were the words he used—but everything from the pulsing vein along his neck, to the almost un-noticeably light sheen of sweat dotting his brow told Jin that the answer to his question was yes.

 

Over their heads, the giant black antique clock struck eleven. The minute hand trembled with the effort of snapping into its place, and the whole contraption gonged for so long it interrupted their conversation. Jin had never noticed how loud the clock was. Now, each chime made him ache. He’d been away from Taehyung for too long.

 

“Taehyung thought …,” Jin started to say. “Last night, when we first kissed, he thought I was going to die.” Mr. Bogum didn’t look as surprised as Jin would have liked him to look. Jin cracked his knuckles. “But that’s crazy, isn’t it? I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Mr. Bogum took off his bifocals and rubbed his tiny eyes. “For now.”

 

“Oh God,” Jin whispered, feeling the same wash of fear that had made him leave Taehyung in the cemetery. But why? There was something he still wasn’t telling him—something he knew had the power to make him either much more or much less afraid. Something he knew already on his own but couldn’t believe. Not until he saw his face again.

 

The book was still open to the photograph. Upside down, Taehyung's smile looked worried, like he knew—as he said he always did—what was coming around the next corner. Jin couldn’t imagine what he must be going through right now. To have opened up about the uncanny history they shared—only to have him dismiss him so completely. He had to find him.

 

He shut the book and tucked it back under his elbow. Then he stood up and pushed in his chair.

 

“Where are you going?” Mr. Bogum asked nervously.

 

“To find Taehyung.”

 

“I’ll go with you.”

 

“No.” Jin shook his head, imagining showing up to throw his arms around Taehyung with the school librarian in tow. “You don’t have to come. Really.”

 

Mr. Bogum was all business when he bent down to double-knot the laces of his sensible shoes. He stood up and laid a hand on Jin's shoulder.

 

“Trust me,” he said, “I do. Sword & Cross has a reputation to uphold. You don’t think we just let students run around willy-nilly in the night, do you?”

 

Jin resisted filling Mr. Bogum in on his recent escapade outside the school gates. He groaned inwardly. Why not bring along the whole student body so everyone could enjoy the drama? Yoongi could take pictures, Jungkook could pick another fight. Why not start right here, and pick up Jimin and Seo-joon—who, he realized with a start, had already disappeared.

 

Mr. Bogum, book in hand, had already taken off for the front entrance. Jin had to jog to catch up to him, speeding past the card catalog, the singed Persian carpet at the front desk, and the glass cases full of Civil War relics in the east wing special collections, where he’d seen Taehyung sketching the cemetery the very first night he was here.

 

They stepped outside into the humid night. A cloud passed over the moon and the campus fell into inky blackness. Then, as if a compass had been placed in his hand, Jin felt guided toward the shadows. He knew exactly where they were. Not at the library, but not far away, either.

 

He couldn’t see them yet, but he could feel them, which was so much worse. An awful, consuming itch coated his skin, seeping into his bones and blood like acid. Pooling, clotting, making the cemetery—and beyond—reek with their sulfur stink. They were so much bigger now. It seemed like all the air on campus was foul with their wretched stench of decay.

 

“Where is Taehyung?” Mr. Bogum asked. Jin realized that though the librarian might know quite a bit about the past, he seemed oblivious to the shadows. It made Jin feel terrified and alone, responsible for whatever was about to happen.

 

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling as if he couldn’t get enough oxygen in the thick, swampy night air. He didn’t want to say the words he knew would bring them closer—far too close—to everything that was making him so afraid. But he had to go to Taehyung. “I left him in the cemetery.”

 

They hurried across campus, dodging patches of mud left over from the downpour the other day. Only a few lights were on in the dormitory to their right. Through one of the barred windows, Jin saw a guy he barely knew poring over a book. They were in the same morning block of classes. He was a tough-looking guy with a pierced septum and the tiniest sneeze—but Jin had never heard him speak. He had no idea if he was miserable or if he enjoyed his life. Jin wondered at that moment: If he could trade places with this guy—who never had to worry about past lives, or apocalyptic shadows, or the deaths of two innocent boys on his hands—would he do it?

 

Taehyung's face—the way it had been bathed in violet light when he’d carried him home this morning—appeared before his eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported him far away from any darkness. For him, he’d suffer all of this, and more.

 

If only he knew how much more there was.

 

He and Mr. Bogum jogged forward, past the creaking bleachers framing the commons, then past the soccer field. Mr. Bogum really kept in shape. Jin would have worried about their pace if the man hadn’t been a few steps ahead of him.

 

Jin was dragging. His fear of facing the shadows was like a hurricane-force headwind slowing him down. And yet he pressed on. An overwhelming nausea told him that he’d barely glimpsed what the dark things could accomplish.

 

At the cemetery gates, they stopped. Jin was trembling, hugging himself in a failed attempt to hide it. A guy was standing with his back to them, gazing into the graveyard below.

 

“Ken!” Jin called, so glad to see his friend.

 

When Ken turned to them, his face was ashen. He wore a black Windbreaker, despite the heat, and his glasses were fogging up from the humidity. He was trembling just as much as Jin was.

 

Jin gasped. “What happened?”

 

“I was coming to look for you,” Ken said, “and then a bunch of the other kids ran this way. They went down there.” He pointed toward the gates. “But I c-c-couldn’t.”

 

“What is it?” Jin asked. “What’s down there?”

 

But even as he asked, he knew one thing that was down there, one thing that Ken would never be able to see. The curdling black shadow was coaxing Jin toward it, Jin alone.

 

Ken was blinking rapidly. He looked terrified. “Dunno,” he said finally. “At first I thought fireworks. But nothing ever made it to the sky.” He shuddered. “Something bad’s about to happen. I don’t know what.”

 

Jin breathed in and coughed on a deep whiff of sulfur. “How, Ken? How do you know?”

 

Ken's arm shook as he pointed into the deep bowl in the middle of the cemetery. “See that?” he said. “Something’s flickering down there.”