“Then just pretend you don’t,” Ruth said.

Silas couldn’t see it, but he could sense something happening between two of the three of them, the two who came from him. Some kind of exchange built into their shared blood or memory. He could feel the pull of it, like his cells were being tugged.

“No can do,” Sean said, after a minute. “I’m not letting you guys go there alone. I like Cody and Josh; they’re cool to play video games with or whatever. But I wouldn’t trust them alone with my sister.” He paused. “They can have you, though.”

“Sean!” Mickey said, followed by a slapping sound.

“How about a compromise?” Ruth asked sweetly. “We can all go. I’m sure the boys would rather Sean come than none of us. How’s that?”

“Great, I love being pity-invited to my friends’ house so they can try to defile—”

“So it’s settled, then.”

Silas heard the tapping of nails on a phone screen and the swoosh of a sent message.

“Don’t be such a prude, Sean. Mickey is her own person, you know. You’re not her dad, or her husband. If she wants to get down and dirty with—”

“Gross, gross, gross,” Sean said, pushing back until Silas could almost touch the hairs on his head through the slats of the wall.

“I don’t even,” Mickey said quietly, hardly defiant.

Silas felt his own pulse in his throat. Mickey was barely fourteen. To think those arms, that face . . . he shook his head to stop it.

“Ooh, Mick, did you bring down that Cosmo? The one with the best summer hairstyles? I think that half-up braid would look sooo good on you tonight.”

Mickey jumped up, seemingly as uncomfortable with this conversation as everyone else. Everyone but Ruth.

“I’ll go get it!”

Silas froze in the shadow as Mickey skipped past the boathouse door, her legs still long and spindly the way they had been her whole life. Prone to scabs that she picked until her sheets were mottled with blood, and covered in white-blond down like the softest kind of flightless bird.

She missed him by inches.

PEYOTE

“YOU CAN’T THINK I’M stupid enough to hide your results in my desk, even if I did figure out how to lock it.”

“Yeah, how did you—” I started, but then I stopped. “No, we’re still talking about your thing.”

I managed to get to my feet and face the hallway, where her wet footsteps left dark patches in the carpet that I knew would never fully dry. It’s all carpet everywhere in Hell.

I listened as she pulled something off a hanger, heard the jagged slide of fabric against damp, hot skin. The snap of elastic.

“Okay, all dressed,” she said. “Your innocence remains intact.”