“Worst of all,” he continued, “she doesn’t know what the cost will be to you. I wouldn’t like it if something happened to you.” He paused. “I mean, you’re my responsibility. It’s my job to protect you until you’re really ready for what we do.”

“Does she have any sense of why I need to go to the mill? Does it have to do with some ability I might have?”

“She doesn’t know, which is part of the reason I think it’s a bad idea. I think we should wait and see if she can offer any more information before we take you there.”

I nodded. I was still worried, though, because it sounded like Graham was open to the possibility of taking me there later, depending on what Callie came up with.

Graham must’ve seen I wasn’t comfortable with the situation because he added, “The other reason I don’t want you there is that we haven’t prepared you for that kind of encounter with the S-Em. You’ve seen firsthand how dangerous that fire is, right? Let’s keep you away from it, if we can.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, trying not to show how much better that made me feel. I hated to look like a coward, even if that’s what I was.

“Hey,” he said, “you wanted to see your brother, right? Why don’t we do that this morning?”

My mind flew to Ben.

“That’d be wonderful! Also, I should really call my boss. He was expecting me back at work on Thursday.”

“Okay, let’s go. You can use my phone on the way.”

A minute later we were in the car, and I was happily giving him directions to Ben’s house. I was so glad Graham recognized that I had no business going near the mill. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea at all. Thank god, I thought to myself, at least one of these people is sane.

“Okay, so I said there are ground rules,” Graham said as we turned into Ben’s neighborhood. “They’re pretty simple: don’t tell anyone about the S-Em or about the Seconds living among us. Not anyone, for any reason. No exceptions. Don’t tell anyone about your abilities or about anyone else’s you happen to know about. Don’t talk about essence or workings or anything like that.”

I waited for him to go on, but apparently there wasn’t any more. I was surprised.

“That’s it? I would think rules like that would be common sense. Otherwise you’d all be in mental hospitals, or maybe top-secret government research labs.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” Graham said. “But we take these rules very seriously, so it’s important to make them explicit.”

He gave me a searching look.