Free The Arrivals by Melissa Marr

you ruining my evening. That was your fault.”
    “After wine bathing and lindwurm dancing, I can see how you’d be disappointed to leave,” Jack drawled. “Out of curiosity, what number did you make it to before you decided not to hit me?”
    She didn’t bother telling him that she was glad that he’d shown up to help. She didn’t even admit that if she could’ve invited him to go out rabble-rousing, she would’ve because she knew he needed to let off steam more than any of the rest of them. Instead, she rolled her eyes and answered, “I’ll let you know when I get to it.”
    Jack laughed, and they headed back toward camp in a more comfortable silence.
    When they were almost at the gate, Jack suggested, “I could be there when the woman wakes.”
    Kitty smiled. “Because you’re so good at dealing with weeping women?”
    “Don’t know that this one’s a crier,” Jack mused.
    “Chloe. Not ‘this one,’ Jackson. Her name is Chloe .” Kitty didn’t admit that she’d done the same thing in her mind, tried to not-name the new arrival. Names made people real. Sometimes, that was the part Kitty wanted to avoid: them being real. If they weren’t real, maybe their eventual deaths would hurt less.
    “Right.” Jack nodded. “I don’t think Chloe will be a crier.”
    “Let’s just hope she’s not the sort to side with Ajani.”
    Jack grimaced, but he didn’t comment. They both knew that the possibility of Ajani wooing Chloe away was a very real one. Sooner or later, he’d come around. Until he did, they’d just do what they could to help Chloe get settled. It was all they could do—well, that, and worry.
    They’d been in this exact same situation well over a dozen times since they’d arrived in the Wasteland. If Kitty were truly honest with herself, she’d admit that this was what she needed—not losing herself in drink or in the company of a Wastelander. What she needed was this togetherness with the only person who could possibly feel the same worries, think of the same deaths, remember the same long-gone faces. She needed her only remaining family.

Chapter 9
    A fter leaving Katherine at camp, Jack fled. He felt foolish for offering to be there for Chloe, especially when there was work to do. The monks and the demon they’d summoned still needed finding. Morning would be soon enough for following up on Edgar’s temper and Francis’ gullibility. Jack had brought Katherine home safely, but he knew—and he suspected that Edgar did too—that she’d simply needed a break. Chloe’s arrival was hard; Mary’s death was still fresh. His baby sister tried to hold her emotions in, but she’d reached her limit. She’d confronted the governor, shot Daniel, patrolled with Jack, and then she’d nursed Chloe through that first horrible day of transition sickness. Unless someone forced her to rest, she’d spend the next few days helping Chloe, who would feel like she had some combination of poisoning and madness. For all the things Katherine did that made him crazy, he couldn’t ever fault her for the way she cared for the new Arrivals.
    We all cope in our own ways.
    Katherine had gone looking for trouble, and Jack was walking alone in the dark. For him, peace was best found in open spaces. The desert breathed around him as he walked away from camp. Sometimes he felt like he could get lost here, like he could let the sand and sky swallow him whole. It was like being back in the world where they’d all been born, back where things made sense. Despite what some of the others thought, he was certain that they weren’t going to be swept back en masse to the world they’d once known. Aside from the obvious problem of not knowing what year they’d be dropped into— our own year? the current year? —there hadn’t been more than one person to arrive in the Wasteland at a time, except for Katherine and him. Whatever brought them through did it slowly and did it solo.
    The shadows shifted around him as