Alice squinted. It was the guy she’d seen walking with Cybill before the summer solstice party, the one who’d toasted her with his flask. He was still in the seersucker suit and sunglasses. Still had that silver flask sticking out of his breast pocket, too. But judging from the way he was walking, it was quite a bit lighter than it had been earlier in the evening. As he staggered toward Cybill, giving wide birth to the bonfire, his wingtips sinking deep into the sand, Alice was once again struck by how much he and Cybill resembled one another: the clear skin, the face that made Alice think of an old-fashioned doll, his a shade prettier than hers because the long chin looked aristocratic on a guy rather than just too big as it did on a girl. Alice would have them for sister and brother if she didn’t know better.

Or not.

When he reached Cybill, he moved in for the embrace. She turned her face to his cheek, like she was going to lightly brush it with her lips, distracted because she was saying something to Charlie, but he surprised her, met her lips with his own. It was a real kiss he was giving her—messy and long and with lots of slippery, thrusting tongue. Cybill neither returned it, nor rejected it, just passively took it. And when it finally ended, there was no expression on her face. She just calmly stepped back, finished the sentence she’d been in the middle of delivering, barely skipping a beat. Alice would have assumed that she was as cool on the inside as she was on the outside, except Alice saw her hand uncurl by her side, saw the crescent-shaped divots in her palm, gouged out by her nails: four little moons of pain, one with a drop of blood trickling out of it.

“Aren’t they, like, first cousins or something?” a girl behind Alice whispered. “That’s sick!”

Jude turned to the girl, his sunglasses crooked on his face. He took them off, slipped them in his pants pocket, then brought his lips together in a loud, satisfied smack. “Hey, Daisy, if it isn’t sick, what’s the point? You know what I mean? And, actually, Cybill and I are only second cousins, and once removed at that. So, sadly, it’s not as sick as could be hoped for. It’s not even illegal in most states.”

Instinctively, Alice glanced over at Tommy. His face was turned down toward the sand, but there was anger in the set of his jaw, in the muscle that twitched by his mouth. And when Jude flopped down beside him and he raised his head, Alice saw the gleam of hatred in his eyes.

“Mind if I have a sip of your beer?” Jude said to Tommy.