Ivy guided me across the store and took my bag from me. There was the jingle of the door, and a flush of cool air. It was dark and cold on the street, matching my mood. Behind us came the sliding sound of an oiled lock, and the CLOSED sign flickered on. The store’s posted hours were from noon to midnight, but after a sale like that, you deserved to go home early.

Fumbling, I put a hand on the bench under a blue and white trolley-stop sign and sat down. I didn’t want to chance spewing in Kisten’s Corvette. It was the only thing we could drive around town in now that the truck had been seen fleeing a crash and neither Ivy nor I wanted to get in the van.

Shit. My roommates were turning me into a Brimstone addict.

Ivy gracefully folded herself to sit beside me, all the while scanning the street. “Medicinal grade is processed six times,” she said, “to pull out the endorphin stimulants, hallucinogenic compounds, and most of the neuron stimulators, to leave only the metabolism upper. Technically speaking, the chemical structure is so different, it’s not Brimstone.”

“That’s not helping,” I said, putting my head between my knees. There was gum stuck to the sidewalk, and I nudged it with my toe, finding it hardened to an immovable lump from the cold. Breathe: one, two, three. Exhale: one, two, three, four.

“Then how about if you hadn’t taken it, you’d be laying in bed needing Jenks’s help to use the bathroom?”

I pulled my head up and took a breath. “That helps. But I’m still not taking any more.”

She gave me a short-lived close-lipped smile, and I watched her face go as empty as the dark street. I didn’t want to get up yet. I was tired, and it was the first time we had been together alone since—since the bite. Returning to the motel room with Jenks, Jax, the kitten, and Nick to make my peachy-keen illegal charms and black curses had all the appeal of eating cold lima beans.

A station wagon passed us, the muffler spewing a blue smoke that would have earned the driver a ticket in Cincinnati. I was cold, and I hunched into my coat. It was only eleven-thirty, but it looked like four in the morning. “You okay?” Ivy said, obviously having seen me shiver.

“Cold,” I said, feeling like a hypochondriac.

Ivy crossed her legs at her knees. “Sorry,” she whispered.

I lifted my gaze, finding her expression lost in the shadow from the streetlight behind her. “It’s not your fault I didn’t bring my winter coat.”

“For biting you,” she said, her voice low. Her attention touched upon my stitches, then dropped to the pavement.