“Be careful,” I say. And then Aunt Mae’s words, my father’s words, the Bible words, fly out of my mouth and into the rainy darkness. “‘You know not the day nor the hour.’”

Anders doesn’t reply to this. I’m not even sure he heard it. He shuts the window. The lock clicks. He pulls the curtain between us.

I stand there for a minute.

It’s still raining. I feel heavy, and for the first time, I feel cold.

I spoke to him. He spoke to me. He knows who I am now. The thought that he recognized me brightens the little fires again.

But he’s not meant to know me. I’ve gotten greedy. I’ve let things that will never happen, can never happen, get in my way.

And he didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t. Just like every other time, every other place. I should have known better. I do know better. But I let myself think, just for tonight, that there was some sort of connection between us. That he might see me for what I really am.

Now I’ll have to make another move.

I sort through the pieces. Click click click.

I have to get to the other side of town. Fast. I have to reach the bridge before she does. I have to be waiting.

Then I’ll bike home, passing Anders’s house one more time, just to check. I’ll bring another load down to the root cellar. Buckets and blankets and tarps, some nylon cord fine enough for binding wrists. And then I’ll tiptoe inside, down the hall, and curl up in the living room armchair before Aunt Mae wakes up.

You know not the day nor the hour.

Anders

I pull into the parking lot of the Crow’s Nest around six-thirty the next evening. The sun is low in the sky, streaking everything red. There’s still more than an hour until we play, but the lot is already packed, and I can hear the noise coming from inside. I park the Nissan in the grass at the far end, near the backstage door.

Jezz and Patrick are standing near the doorway. They’re alone. No Ellie or Mac or Lee or other hangers-on. They’re dressed for the show—jeans, favorite T-shirts, Jezz’s collection of leather and silver bracelets. Patrick holds his sticks in one fist. Their eyes follow my car. They’re talking to each other, but when I open the door and climb out, they stop.

I move slowly around to the trunk and lift out Yvonne and my amp. Even with the preshow energy pulsing through me, the equipment feels heavier than usual.

Everything that happened last night—the show, the artists’ rep woman with the mud on her heels, my running away, the insane conversation with the soaking wet stalker girl at my bedroom window—has started to seem like a strange and stupid dream. It’s just like that night in the woods almost two years ago. Now that I’m half a day away from it, I can’t remember what seemed like such a big deal. I can’t remember why I freaked out. I can’t remember much of anything except the woman’s eyes, and the fact that Goblin wasn’t waiting for me under my bed as usual, and that pale, wet girl telling me that something “dark” was coming for me, and then lying on my bed with Yvonne’s calming weight across my chest, practicing exercises until it was almost dawn.