Sisters of the Lost Nation

BERKLEYAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comCopyright © 2023 by Nicholas MedinaReaders Guide copyright © 2023 by Nicholas MedinaPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Medina, Nick, author.Title: Sisters of the lost nation / Nick Medina.Description: New York : Berkley, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022031860 (print) | LCCN 2022031861 (ebook) |ISBN 9780593546857 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593546871 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels.Classification: LCC PS3613.E314 S57 2023 (print) | LCC PS3613.E314 (ebook) |DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220811LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031860LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031861Cover design by David LitmanBook design by Nancy Resnick, adapted for ebook by Kelly BrennanThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_143320646_c0_r1 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationContent WarningProloguePart IDay 36Day 1Day 1Day 33Day 4Day 5Day 33Day 7Day 7Day 33Day 7Day 8Day 9Day 33Day 9Day 9Day 34Day 9Day 12Day 35Day 13Day 14Day 14Day 15Day 23Day 24Day 24Day 26Day 26Day 27Day 28Day 28Day 34Day 31Day 33Day 33Day 33Day 34Part IIDay 34Day 34Day 35Day 35Day 35Day 35Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 36Day 37EpilogueAuthor’s NoteAcknowledgmentsDiscussion QuestionsReading ListAbout the Author_143320646_ To Nan & Gram Content WarningSisters of the Lost Nation includes content that addresses issues of addiction, drug abuse, murder and death (off-page), physical assault and battery, sex trafficking (off-page), sexual abuse of a minor (off-page), self-harm, and racism. Please read with your well-being and best interest in mind. PROLOGUE“Do you hear that?” her uncle whispered.“Hear what?” she said, refraining from taking a big bite of the caramel apple she’d made.“The rustling. Over there. In the bushes.”Her ears strained. The fire burning in the pit between their lawn chairs popped, sending up orange embers that failed to alleviate the encompassing darkness. She shook her head and lifted the apple to the corner of her mouth where she still had teeth capable of piercing the hard flesh; adult incisors had yet to fill the holes in her smile.“Listen,” he hissed, once more stopping her from taking a bite.“I don’t hear any—” The rustle of leaves sounded from far off in the yard, back where the manicured lawn merged with the untamed field that bordered the house. “Is someone there?” she asked, tongue lisping against her gums.“Not someone . . . not really.” Her uncle’s spindly body shifted, making his leather jacket—black as the night, his feathered hair, and the shiny motorcycle he’d rode in on—creak.She questioned him with her eyes.“I shouldn’t tell you,” he said.“Tell me what?”Twinkling in the orange and yellow light, his eyes, usually brown and warm, looked black now too. “About what I found at work a few months ago,” he said.She grew silent, thinking about where her uncle worked. The cemetery. “What’d you find?”“Do you really wanna know?” he asked, pulling on the scraggly beard he’d barely been able to grow.She nodded. She guessed so.He slowly leaned forward in his chair.“I found three unearthed graves,” he said. “Someone dug them up.”The wind blew, making the fire thrash.“Why would someone do that?”“I don’t know, but it wasn’t very smart.” He poked the fire with a stick, casting more embers into the autumn air. “A man, a woman, and Hilaire Broussard—the last official chief of our tribe, our nation—were the three dug up. . . . Do you know what becomes of a body after it’s spent years in the ground?”She didn’t gamble a guess, she just looked toward the house, wishing her parents would come back out. It’d taken them both to wrangle her tantrum-throwing three-year-old brother to bed.“The bodies turn to bone,” he said. “Skeletons. They still look like bodies, only without all the skin.” The flames cast shadows that leapt about his face. “That’s what I expected to see when I looked into the open graves,” he said, “skeletons that resembled bodies, a bone for every head, arm, leg, finger, and tiny toe.”She cast an uncertain gaze at the ground where her little sister sat atop a sleeping bag, legs crisscross applesauce, oblivious to everything their uncle was saying. Her busy tongue licked the caramel from the fruit she wouldn’t eat. It was past her bedtime, but she’d stay up as long as Mom and Dad were busy with their brother; only five, she already knew how to go unnoticed.“Bones were missing,” their uncle carried on. “Taken.”The older girl redirected her gaze from her little sister to her uncle, who showed no sign of jest.“The woman’s fingers were gone,” he said. “Her toes too . . . every little piggy. And the two big bones from her left arm, below the elbow. The man’s skeleton didn’t look like it was missing anything at all, but someone—something—had gnawed on his ribs. There were gashes in the bones. And the chief”—he looked her dead in the eyes—“was without a head.”She jumped in her seat, causing a glob of warm caramel to drip onto her dress. She wiped it with her free hand, smearing it, getting her fingers sticky.“The skull was gone, but it wasn’t taken. It, as a matter of fact, took something itself.”She pulled at the braid hanging along the left side of her face, getting caramel in her hair. “What’d it take?” she asked, wondering how it could take anything at all.He leaned closer to the fire, inches from the flames.“A life. More than one. The spirit of a chief, you see, is a powerful thing. The skull became a head again when it was lifted from the grave . .