Sasha watched the green die.
It began at the arch near the waterline, where the vines went gray and slack. Then the color drained upward through the braids, floor by floor, until the whole face of the building hung from its own brick like old skin. She had spent two weeks studying that wall through binoculars, and she had never seen it do anything but grow.
The man inside had let go. That told her he was leaving, and it made her thumbnail find her teeth.
She crouched behind the parapet of a flat roof with a gray coat over her shoulders and rain gathering in the hood. Across the lake a plated skiff slid away from the dead building, riding low. She counted the people aboard twice. Three men she had watched arrive. A heavily pregnant woman, helped in by a thin man with a bow. A girl clutching a wire cage. And the older sister.
Valerie.
