Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him. "Um. Define okay." (Ben) "Okay means you're not bleeding to death." "I'm okay.

Time for the world to end.

It was the price of survival. The cost of his people's last, desperate gamble: To rid his new home of humanity, he had to become human. And being human, he had to overcome his humanity.

And in more than half the pictures, she isn't looking at the camera; she's looking at him. Not the way I would look at Ben Parish, all squishy around the eyes. She looks at Evan fiercely, like, This here? It's mine

I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication.

I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for.