My throat squeezes shut.

“He asked you what you wanted more than anything. And you told him.” She pauses to let each of the words hit me. “He told you you’d get it. Everything you wanted. And then it started to happen. An expensive guitar. Inspiration for songs. People raving about you online. Pretty girls throwing themselves at you.”

My whole body is ice. Nobody knows this. Not all of it.

There’s no way. There’s no way.

“They knew you would love it,” she says. “They knew that once you had it all, you’d do almost anything to keep it. That’s what they do. They make sure that you’re hooked. That you’re already half theirs. And then they make you pay.” She pauses. A tendril of her long hair, pale and fine as a cobweb, wavers on the air between us.

“That woman who came to the Crow’s Nest last week,” Thea goes on. “She was one of theirs. You could tell, couldn’t you? You could feel the woods on her.” She waits for a beat, staring down at me. She can read the answer in my eyes. “She tried to make you sign. She would have made you theirs. And you said no.” She leans even closer. I can feel her breath, just barely, on my face. “So they’re not just going to take back what they gave you. They’re going to take the things you love, one by one.”

I’m not even sure my heart is beating anymore.

“I’ve been watching,” she says, which is such an understatement that I bray out a weird, nervous laugh. “That’s what I do. I’m here to protect you.” Her hands shift on the handlebars, opening and closing. “You may not believe any of this. That’s why I usually hide it. But I’m not going to lose another one.”

For a second we’re both quiet. I’m still sitting on the cold mud, staring up at her. She’s still clenching the handlebars of her bike.

The weird thing is, I should be afraid of her. The things she’s said turn my skin to ice, but right now, this girl is one of the only things I don’t fear. She’s so steady. So certain. Her forcefulness, her insistence that I believe in her, has taken the choice right out of my hands.

I can let go. I can just believe.

“Okay,” I say, and a huge weight that’s been balled up in my chest floats out, exhaled on that word. “Okay. So—what now?”

Thea straightens up at last. She scans the trees. “Go home,” she says. “Right away. Lock yourself inside. And take the guitar with you. Leaving it here won’t do any good anyway.”

I rock awkwardly to my feet and scramble toward Yvonne’s tree. “And then what?”

“I’ll be with you. Watching,” she says. “You’ll be safe. At least for tonight.”

Yvonne’s metal case is cold. Clods of mud are stuck to the corners. I scrub them away with my thumb. Her handle fits back into my fist like somebody else’s hand holding mine.