“You’re welcome.” Campbell smiled sweetly. “You’re not forgiven for ditching me—you either, Lily—but you’re welcome. Now close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

In normal circumstances, that would not have struck me as a particularly risky proposition, but between the events of our debutante year and the summer that had followed, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that, once I closed my eyes, Campbell might calmly place a stolen masterpiece or a still-beating human heart in my palm.

Hell, if history was any indication, I couldn’t testify with any level of certainty that I was talking to Campbell and not her evil—or evil-er—twin.

Sadie-Grace closed her eyes and held out her hand. Lily did the same.

“Sawyer,” Campbell prompted.

“Fine.” Eyes closed, hand held out, I waited, and then Campbell placed something in my hand. I opened my eyes and determined the present in question to be a necklace. The chain was simple and delicate, and the tiny charm on the end was . . .

“A shovel?” Lily said. “Really, Campbell?”

Campbell smirked. “They’re platinum. Custom-ordered. Honestly,” she continued as she affixed her own shovel necklace in place, “the White Gloves are proving a little mild for my taste. I deeply suspect the four of us can do better.”

“A shovel!” Sadie-Grace did the math. “Like the kind people use to dig holes!”

I could have done without the insignia Campbell had chosen, but I put the necklace on anyway.

“We’re ladies,” Campbell said as Lily and Sadie-Grace slipped their necklaces on, too. “And my mama raised me to believe that ladies play to win.”

When I’d taken Lillian’s deal more than a year earlier, it had been because I wanted to find my father, but deep down, what I’d really been looking for was family. I’d been looking for my people, for a place where I belonged. I hadn’t imagined finding it among the Debutante set.

With Lily, with Sadie-Grace, even with the devil herself, Campbell Ames.

But here I was, wearing a platinum shovel around my neck and walking back into the party with the three of them, arm in arm.

“Do you know anything about the new class of Debutantes?” Lily asked Campbell as the world around us blurred into a mix of champagne and black ties, fresh flowers and live music.

“Nothing worth repeating,” Campbell replied. “You know the girls the year below us. They’re boring. Now, if you start to look a couple of years down the line? Two of my little cousins on the Bancroft side will be coming out. I trained them in my own image.”

That was terrifying. I thought of Nick’s sister, as much an outsider to this world as I’d ever been.

“Is this the part where we say Bless their hearts?” Sadie-Grace asked.