Sparrow ran her fingers through her spiky blond hair. She had cut it short a day earlier, tired of dealing with longer hair. But it needed a wash. She needed a wash. For that to happen, of course, she needed water, and there wasn’t any for baths. There was barely enough for drinking.

“Why don’t you try to go to sleep now?” she suggested.

Candle looked at her, her gaze intense. “Sparrow, do you think the other kids still like me?”

Sparrow stared at her in shock. “Of course they like you.”

“Don’t say it just because you think I want to hear it. Tell me the truth. Do they?”

“Candle, why wouldn’t they like you?”

The little girl didn’t say. She just ducked her head, looked at her feet, at Cheney, and then off into the darkness as if the answer was out there somewhere. “Just because.”

“Has someone said something?”

Candle shook her head.

“Done something?”

Another shake of the moppet head.

“Then I don’t understand. Why would you think that, all of a sudden, for no reason, they don’t like you?”

“What if there was a reason?”

Sparrow thought she knew what was coming, but she didn’t want to be the one to say it. Candle needed to do that. Speaking the words was the first step toward coming to terms with what they meant.

“What sort of reason?” she asked.

Candle shrugged. “No one needs me anymore.” She was still looking at her feet as she paused, not finished, but not ready to continue, either. “You know.”

Sparrow reached over and put a hand on her chin and lifted her face so that they were looking right at each other. “No, I don’t know. You have to tell me.”

Another long pause. Then, “I can’t sense when we’re in danger anymore.”

There it was. Out in the open. Sparrow breathed a sigh of relief. Now maybe she could do something about it. She reached out for Candle and hugged her close. “Oh, Candle,” she whispered. Then she backed away so that they were looking at each other again. “My mother told me something once. I was just about your age. I thought my mother was the most wonderful person in the world. I loved her, but I admired her even more than I loved her. I wanted to be her.”