For Jillian, looking directly at Erin felt like staring into the sun, something that had left her with a pretty heavy prescription for color corrective lenses as a kid. It was dangerous, and it hurt, but it was just so beautiful it made everything worth it.

"I used to lie under my bed and wonder what it was like to be dead," Erin says, lying in the back of the hearse. Even with the rails taken out, it isn't very comfortable. The clattering stops. Holtzmann leans back, still halfway out the window with one socked foot hooked under the steering wheel, to look at her. "How did you die?"