“Maybe I am cursed,” she muttered while watching the evening news with her mom.

Three days Ben had been dead, and Lia couldn’t wrap her mind around anything. There was nothing for her to do except sleep and speculate. Her teachers hadn’t sent her homework—Gem and Devon said they hadn’t gotten anything either—and without the game to plan for, she had nothing to fill her head. So Abby and Ben did instead.

“Lia,” her mom said with that sigh of an adult holding back. “There’s no such thing as curses.”

“Still.” Lia fiddled with her school agenda, flipping to the back pages. “Abby was my target. Ben was my teammate.”

Abby Ascher—II

Ben Barnard—I

She would get a kill in his name if it killed her.

“Why on earth would a curse or a killer center their life around you?” her mom asked. “Correlation doesn’t equal causation.”

That didn’t totally apply, but Lia let her mom have it. “Devon’s calling,” Lia lied. “I’m going to go talk to him.”

Can we talk? Lia texted him when she got to her room. She lay back on her bed, her open agenda in one hand and her phone in the other. She ran a thumb across Abby’s and Ben’s names, and the pencil smeared. Lia tossed the agenda aside. About anything?

Devon’s response buzzed in her palm. “Of course,” he said, his voice quiet and low.

“How are you holding up?” she asked, glad that he had called and not texted.

It felt weird to ask, but Lia wasn’t sure talking about anything else was appropriate. No one ever prepped teens for deaths. She’d no clue what to do or say.

“I’m okay I think,” Devon said. “Did they ask you if Ben had any enemies?”

“Yeah. I told them he was the least likely person to have enemies.” Lia rolled onto her stomach and tried to separate her memories of Devon’s voice and how much she loved it from how Ben’s hand flopped against his dead chest with a hollow smack. “They kept asking about time, too.”

Devon didn’t say anything for several seconds. “I think he died right after we left.”

Lia didn’t ask why. It was Devon. He loved the weird, gross parts of biology few others did, and if he thought something, he was probably right. He deferred to her on the game; she trusted him with this.

“They wanted to hurt him. He would have died even if they hadn’t stabbed him like that,” Devon said. “His arms and face were broken out from an allergic reaction, and I bet he couldn’t breathe. Even if he had won the fight, he wouldn’t have lived.”

“But how did they know about his allergy?” Lia asked.

Ben had barely wanted to tell them. She could think of no one who knew.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you going to the funeral?”

“No.” Lia swallowed, throat hot and sore. “Apparently, I don’t do great at them.”

“Ben would probably want a party instead anyway.”