“Eternal damnation for wanting your kids not to be shot—it’s just a tough gig, is all.”

“If you think about it like that, sure,” she said, but her eyebrows were higher than the Downstairs’s electricity allowance.

“How do you think about it?”

Cal sighed. “You’re talking like one of them,” she said, and nodded toward the group across from us, who had kept their eyes down since KQ’s descriptive announcement. “Like a human.”

I opened my mouth, but she went on.

“You’re thinking of it as a morality issue, but morality isn’t our framework anymore. It’s like when you learn a card game—let’s say Go Fish. That’s all you play until someone says, Hey, you know what else you can do with those? And they teach you a brand-new game. A faster, more fun game. Same tools, different rules. We’ve outgrown morality, Pey. I mean, technically, we failed it. But either way, we are onto the next game.”

She was right. My skin burned with it, how right she was. I felt like the neighborhood kid who still used training wheels. I felt like a goddamn joke. I met her eyes for one second, and she saw it.

“Wait—” she said, cocking her head. “You didn’t think you were . . . what? ‘Doing the right thing’?”

KQ returned and rapped the table with her knuckles, knocking the patronizing look off Cal’s face.

“What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Then let’s blow this Popsicle stand!”

She flicked her wrist, freezing the scene around us, and lifted the man’s wallet off the other table. She took out a twenty and slapped it down on the table. Then she swirled her finger through the dregs of the marinara sauce, popped it into her mouth, and waved her free hand to restart it all.

When I stood up to follow, Cal grabbed my arm.

“You’re not human anymore,” she said, her face so close I could smell her Chapstick. “These aren’t your people. We are. The sooner you figure that out the better.”

Then KQ tapped a button on her tablet and the world went blank.

LILY

THE KIDS TOOK OFF as soon as Silas pulled to a stop in the gravel driveway. Mickey and Ruth sprinted to the dock, shrieking with laughter. Lily watched Sean hesitate, watching them, before shouldering his backpack and knocking his way through the screen door, which slammed with the specific sound a screen door makes. The slowness of summer hit Lily like a lead blanket.

It was going to be a long six weeks.