“So are we done?” Ryan asked, and it was so close to the words he’d used breaking up with me that I wanted to laugh.

“We haven’t even really started,” David told him. “The three of us, we’re . . . connected. We will be forever, and—”

Ryan held up his hands. “Whoa, what do you mean forever?”

I was exhausted and heartsick and wrung out, and I wanted Saylor here so badly I ached. But she was gone. There was no one left to explain things, to offer guidance. We only had each other.

David reached out and squeezed my hand, and I saw Ryan’s gaze drop to it. “That was . . . fast,” he said, and David dropped my hand like it was on fire.

“It’s not like that,” he said, but I shook my head.

Taking David’s hand in mine, I held it tightly and faced Ryan. “Actually, it kind of is. And if the three of us are going to work together, Ryan needs to know that.”

Ryan looked between the two of us before heaving a sigh that seemed to come from his toes. “I can’t,” he finally said. “I can’t deal with any of this. Superpowers, and Brandon murdering old ladies, and the two of you, I . . .”

He pushed past us. I went to grab his arm, but David stopped me. “Let him go,” he said. “Give him time.”

I didn’t want to. Blythe and the Ephors had Bee, and we had to get her back somehow. We’d need all three of us, working together. But Saylor had let me go once. I had to do the same for Ryan.

The earthquake that hit Pine Grove the night of Cotillion was destined to be a legend. It almost destroyed Magnolia House, and nearly everyone there had some kind of injury, from scrapes, to bruises, to a couple of broken bones. Luckily, no one died. But the house would probably have to be torn down, and no one who was there that night had an especially clear memory of what happened. They all agreed the trauma had probably rattled them all.

Bee’s parents were glad Bee had decided to go to cheerleading camp instead of participating in Cotillion this year. No, they weren’t sure when she’d be back. Soon. They knew it was soon.

The Aunts mourned the loss of their mother’s punch bowl, damaged by falling plaster that night, and Aunt Martha blamed Aunt May for not putting it in a more secure location. Aunt Jewel only knew she never wanted to make punch for Cotillion again, but she didn’t know why.