Immy doesn’t get music. She doesn’t want to get it. The way it wants to make you feel something. Just because it’s a minor chord, you’re supposed to feel sad? Just because it goes faster, your pulse is supposed to speed up? Why should you have to do what the music wants you to do? Why shouldn’t it do what you want? She doesn’t want a soundtrack for her life. And she doesn’t want somebody’s pretty lyrics getting in the way of what she’s really thinking. Whatever it is that she’s thinking.

Immy doesn’t want a Vampire Boyfriend. Or a Werewolf Boyfriend. Not anymore.

“I want more absinthe,” Ainslie says. “Somebody go fetch the absinthe.”

“I’ll get it, darling,” Oliver says.

“No,” Immy says. “I’ll go get it.” If you send a Boyfriend off for a bottle of homemade absinthe, likely as not he’ll come back with a bottle of conditioner. Or a lamp.

“Thanks, Immy,” Ainslie says.

“No problem,” Immy says. But maybe you can’t trust a friend, either, because instead of going straight back with the absinthe, she finds herself lingering in the sunroom, looking down at the new Boyfriend. His eyes are closed again. She reaches down and touches his face. Just one finger. His skin is very soft. It isn’t actually like skin at all, of course, but it isn’t like anything else, either. His eyes don’t open this time; he’s still not all the way awake. And anyway, Ainslie set him for Spectral Mode. His body will just lie here. His ghost will do whatever it is that ghosts do.

He could already be here, she supposes. He could be watching her.

She doesn’t feel as if she’s being watched. She feels all alone.

So it’s an impulse, maybe, that makes her reach inside her purse and take out Ainslie’s present. She rips off the wrapping paper and the ribbon, not carefully.

Inside the locket is a braided ring of human hair. Victorian, according to the online seller. Probably their own kids’ hair, but never mind.

Two pieces of the braid of hair are jet black; one is ash blond. Black for Ainslie, blond for Immy.

The ring doesn’t fit over any of Immy’s fingers. Maybe she has fat fingers. She goes back to the coffin, crouches down beside it. “Hey,” she says softly. “I’m Ainslie’s friend. Immy.”