Chapter 2: What the Oracle Carved into Skin

She was heavier than she looked, which meant she was denser than she looked, which meant whatever was happening to her was happening at a level below skin and muscle and ordinary bone. He got her arm over his shoulder and his arm around her waist and got her off the dock and up the rope ladder in stages, and by the time he had her inside and the trapdoor shut below them, his shoulder was soaked with something that was not entirely blood.

The light from her wound was brighter inside. He hadn't counted on that.

He lowered her onto the narrow cot that served as his bed and took two steps back and stood in the middle of his shanty and tried to think. The space was not built for this kind of problem. One room, roughly eight feet by twelve, perched on the rooftop of what had been a two-story shotgun house before the water came. The walls were salvaged timber and corrugated aluminum. A camp stove. A shelf with canned goods stacked in order of what he'd eat first if he had to leave in a hurry. A single oil lamp on a hook. A lockbox beneath a loose floorboard that was not loose enough to be suspicious and not tight enough to be suspicious either.