“About what?”

I don’t know how to explain without just spilling everything right here. “Can we go somewhere private first?”

He nods for me to follow him up the stairs. I do.

I just have to talk this through, and everything will be fine, it’ll be fine, but my jaw is still chattering with nerves.

Nick takes me to a room on the second floor with a label beside the door: Volunteer Coordinator. Another office. It’s been converted to a small bedroom, complete with a mattress in the corner and shoes shoved by the door. He’s collected piles of books on warfare, white supremacy, religion, and the history of environmentalism, and stacks of old newspapers gone soft around the edges. Containers of plastic pony beads and half a dozen incomplete bead lizards sit on a desk in the corner. And, of course, the windows are boarded shut from the inside.

I hadn’t realized Nick gets his own room, but it makes sense. This must be where he goes when he disappears. I imagine him locking the door and dropping his head into his hands, sucking in deep breaths, preparing to hold his chin high the next time we need him. Nick ushers me inside.

“So,” he says, wandering over to the desk and picking up a pink bead. “Talk.”

I start with, “I want to say upfront that I’m not accusing you of anything.” Since being raised a good Christian girl will do things to you, will make you hedge topics and soften blows, no matter how much Seraph you have in you. Though maybe that makes it worse, because Nick’s eyes narrow. “Frankly, I don’t believe it. I just wanted to get it out there and—”

“Spit it out.”

Right. No beating around the bush. “Cormac said you were calling me an it.”

The bead stops rolling between his fingers. A lump appears in my throat, but I keep going.

“That’s what I want to talk about. He’s been like this ever since I showed up and, look. I can put up with a lot, believe me, but he’s actively trying to turn me against you, and that is not okay. I wanted to bring it up to you before it gets worse. Does that make sense?”

Nick says nothing. The silence makes me itch.

“That makes sense,” I say, “right?”

“I,” Nick says, then he stops like the word got caught on something. It takes him a second to start back up. “I can’t discuss this right now.”

Um. “I don’t…” My eye twitches. “I don’t get it.”

He repeats, slower, as if I didn’t hear him the first time, “I can’t discuss this right now.”