“Kostia kept reading as the nurse faded away and my tears began to slide. You aren’t wanted here, I told death, breathing faint and inexorable over my shoulder. You were supposed to take me. Not him. Death didn’t care. He stood at my shoulder, implacable, immovable, as the hours of day slipped into night, as Kostia read and read and read, as Lyonya sometimes stirred in delirium and opened blind, blank eyes, and sometimes lay still as a headstone.”
