Pat was covering her face with her hands. She shook her head without uncovering. “I’m so stupid,” she said. “I want to die.”

“Please don’t,” said Danny. “The police would wonder why my fingerprints were all over your back.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “I’m coming to warn you and you know more than I do. You know more about everything.”

“No, I don’t know anything at all. Really, I just gave you a complete list of all the people I knew in DC, my complete resume as a friend-maker. Unless you count the Silvermans and Veevee, but they kind of had an introduction to me and believe me, I didn’t do all that good a job of making friends with them, either. But I had to, don’t you see? I was on the run, my Family was after me to kill me, I had no idea how to live outside the Family compound. I had to make friends with people and only find out later whether I could trust them. Like Hermia, at first I thought she was out to kill me, but—”

“That’s my point,” said Pat, uncovering her face. “That girl. She is not your friend.”

Danny shook his head. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know nothing about her. But she. Is. Not. Your. Friend.”

“This is about Hermia? You came here to warn me about Hermia?”

“I came here to beg you to be careful. You trust people that you shouldn’t trust.”

“I trust you,” said Danny. “I let you into my house late at night. I listen to you because I believe you really are my friend. Why should I trust you and not her?”

“What could I do to you?” asked Pat. “But she—she can hurt you.”

“I’m not falling in love with her, if that’s what you think,” said Danny. “She’s older than me. But she’s like Veevee—a fellow gatemage. She taught me how to lock my own gates—she took terrible risks to follow me and we teach each other. We help each other.”

“See, that’s it,” said Pat. “She’s using you.”

“And I’m using her.”

“No, she’s using you. It’s all calculation, it’s all—”

“And you know this how?”

“I just do! She needs you right now, but the minute she doesn’t, the minute she sees some advantage in betraying you—”

“But that might be true of anybody,” said Danny.

“No,” said Pat.

“Yes!” insisted Danny. “People are human, even people like me. You can trust people until you can’t. They mean what they say until they don’t.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Pat. “People aren’t all like that. There are people you can count on because they’d die before they’d betray you or even let you down.”