“Lily Markerville. She was new in town this year.” Clara blew out a breath, and her shoulders slumped. “We started hanging out around the time of the Anti-Festival, and it seemed like she was really into me, and then she…” Her voice hitched, but she regained control. “She stopped replying to my texts and acknowledging my existence entirely—like, wouldn’t even make eye contact with me at school.”

“Well,” said Sawyer. “Then fuck her very much.”

After two hours of hauling boxes up three flights to Clara’s room in the muggy heat of a Toronto August, Eve was beat. When her phone rang, she jumped at the chance for a break. She would yak the ear off a telemarketer if she could do it sitting down in the shade.

It wasn’t a telemarketer, though; it was Maya. “Hey.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Toronto helping Sawyer move Clara. Where are you?”

“Outside the back door of the Mermaid to pick you up for antiquing.”

“Oh, crap.” She’d totally forgotten that she’d agreed to go shopping with Maya for furniture for the set of her Anti-Festival play. “I feel like Richard needs an antique chest in which to keep his dagger between murders,” Maya had said.

Eve waved to Sawyer to indicate that she needed to take the call and walked to a bench and plopped down. “I’m so sorry. I stood you up.”

There was a long pause. Eve felt terrible. She was ramping up to apologize again when Maya said, “You fell in love with him.”

What? “I’m not in love with him!”

“Oh, so you’re just there performing manual labor on behalf of his little sister as a gesture of friendship.”

“Correct.”

“Is that why you’re sleeping with him, too?”

“I am not sleeping with him!”

“Eve. Come off it. You took my advice, I guess, but you didn’t bother to tell me about it.”

That last part was true. She’d thought about telling Maya. She’d meant to. But Maya had suggested she have sex with Sawyer once, in a get-it-out-of-your-system way. She hadn’t known how to tell Maya when once became…six months. And Sawyer himself was hiding it, so she’d defaulted to following his lead. She sighed. “How did you find out?”

“I have my sources.”

“Oh my God, that town.” It was maddening.

“You know what I think? I think you love this town, and you love Sawyer.”