"I wondered if the gas would kill me quickly or if I would suffer, choking and sputtering as I gasped for clean air. I thought about what Serena had told me—how four thousand Romani, some of them diviners, were killed this way in a single day at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Four. Thousand. People. I guess the Nazis haven’t changed much since then. Was it easier for them? To not have literal blood on their hands? Easier for us to die in a room far away from them? A room far away where the only evidence of our deaths could be chalked up to respiratory failure or asphyxiation? Would they bury our bodies—our powers along with us—in the state park above, or would they dispose of us elsewhere? Maybe they would burn our remains—cremate us beyond recognition—and scatter our ashes haphazardly until all traces of us were gone. No one would be the wiser. Not even the Lawrence Police Department down the street.

They weren’t planning to kill us. They were planning to destroy us.”