“You are,” Laurel said. “You’re being so alluring that he doesn’t trust himself. That’s why he turned on the fence.”

Janet lay on her back, folding her arms into a pillow.

“Besides,” Laurel went on. “You witnessed his most profound spiritual moment. Men are deeply affected by that kind of thing.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Janet said, without raising her head. “She was eleven.” In her black clothes, so close to the ground, she was nearly invisible.

“I’m not the one who’s being disgusting in this scenario,” Laurel said. “And that’s not what I meant.”

“What do you think, Olivia?” Serena asked. “Has he said anything?”

I swallowed. Eye. Leaf. Fireplace. I shook my head. “Something is definitely holding him back,” I said.

Serena reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out her own vial. I could see that it was already half full of a dark red liquid. “I know,” she said.

She had a new plan, she explained. One that would finally make Luke tell her everything. We would sneak some of her blood into Luke’s food. Laurel worked in the kitchen; I worked in the garden. It shouldn’t be too difficult. If Luke had redoubled his defenses, she said, we had to respond in kind.

Even I had heard of this old magic: if a man eats your blood, he’s yours. If he’s yours, why wouldn’t he tell you all his secrets, teach you to fly? If he’s yours, why would he ever even look at another girl, no matter how close to him she stood?

“This seems a little extreme,” I said.

“Not to mention unsanitary,” said Janet.

“It’s unnecessary,” said Laurel. “He’s already in love with you. You just have to take the next step.”

Serena stroked Laurel’s head fondly. “This is the next step,” she said. Then she tucked the vial into my bra. She took both of my hands and kissed my cheek, hard. “I know I can count on you,” she said.

As I walked back to the dormitory, the vial rubbed and squeaked against my breast. Now I wonder: Had she heard me after all, there in the garden? Or did she simply guess that I dreamed about Luke every night? Did she realize that as hard as I tried to scrub myself of desire, to realize the truth of emptiness, to gear my body and mind toward levitation, I still wanted him, as badly as I had ever wanted anything? If she did, her response was brilliant and cruel: to make him love her with magic and therefore unimpeachably, and even worse, to make me cast the spell.

Or maybe it was nothing like that. Maybe she was only trying and trying and trying to put off the moment when she’d have to do something real. When she’d have to give something up.