One: Cal didn’t know the General’s mark was fake.

Two: She wanted it, which meant I had to get it first.

“Thanks for this,” I said. “But are you sure there isn’t anything else you can do? I just want my own results that were already granted to me. Please, buddy. Help me out.”

Felix rolled back and forth for a second, like a person debating their next step. But Felix didn’t seem like the kind of creature who debated.

“There is one thing I can do, and only one thing.”

“What?” I asked.

A tiny raccoon hand touched my skin, followed by a hiss and a loud pop, and then nothing.

MICKEY

“TRUTH,” JOSH SAID, ONE hand around his plastic cup, the other pitched on the arm of the couch. When he got down to the basement, he took the spot next to Mickey, and she barely heard anything anyone had said since. Every time he gestured, his knee came so very close to hers.

Ruth rolled her eyes from her place on the floor.

“Boring,” she said.

“That’s me,” Josh answered, shrugging. Mickey grinned. She loved how he didn’t perform for Ruth the way Cody—or even she—did. He was immune, and she wanted what he had. She wanted the cure of him.

“Josh, are you a virgin?” Ruth asked. Sean laughed in a coughing way, and Cody joined.

“Define ‘virgin,’ ” Josh said. Mickey could see a poster of some football team’s cheerleaders hanging over his head, missing one thumbtack.

“That’s a yes,” Cody said.

“No, come on, I’m trying to play the game right,” Josh said. “I picked truth, so I want to make sure I’m telling the truth.”

“Have you had sex?” Ruth said. Mickey heard the word on the inside as much as she did on the outside.

“No,” Josh answered. He shifted on the couch, jostling Mickey just enough to spill a little of her drink on her thigh. She wiped it off with her forearm.

“Have you?” Cody asked Ruth.

She smiled. “It’s not my turn, perv.”

“I’m not the perv! It was your question!”

Mickey noticed how when Ruth laughed, she leaned back so her shoulders rested on Sean’s leg. She could tell Cody saw it too. She made a note to ask her about it later.

“Your turn,” Ruth said to Josh. He nodded.

“Mickey, truth or dare?”

Mickey froze and burned at the same time. She hurt from his attention, but when he turned his head away, she found she also hurt from the lack of it.

She swallowed.

“Dare.”

PEYOTE

I OPENED MY EYES and thought for a second I was at the Harrisons’.