“No!” I looked around. The other girls who had their rota in the kitchen were not even pretending not to listen. Svetlana’s look of outrage was somewhat mediated by the enormous rubber gloves she had on. “I do rota in the garden, and I know he missed his lunch today,” I said. This was actually true, or at least it had a good chance of being true. Luke often missed lunch, preferring to meditate inside at the hottest parts of the day. We had missed lunch too, of course, preferring to starve ourselves, but Tenzin didn’t know that.

“All the little girls love Luke,” Tenzin said. She dipped her finger in one of the bowls, dabbed it into another, and then put it in her mouth.

“I’m just trying to practice, you know, loving-kindness,” I said. This was a phrase Shastri Dominique had been saying a lot lately in our meditation sessions.

Tenzin snorted. “Well, good for you.” She turned to let a few of her sous-chefs bustle past, and I was hit sideways with the scent of rosemary. “I don’t know what you’re up to,” she said, “but I didn’t see Luke at lunch, so you’re in luck. Bring him a bowl. But don’t make me regret it, or this one will be scrubbing my ovens for the rest of the summer.” Laurel filled a glass bowl with chili, fitted a plastic lid on top, and handed it over, her face carefully blank. I left without waiting for any more discussion.

When I was out of sight of the main building, I stopped and sat down behind a tree. I put the bowl between my legs and opened the vial above it. The blood was thick; I had to tap the sides to get it out. Even then, the glass was still red by the end. I thought about using my finger to scrape with—the vial was wide enough that I might have gotten it to fit—but instead I screwed the cap back on and kept the dregs for myself. Just in case.

The blood sat, viscous and dark, on top of the chili. I waited for it to sink in, but it wouldn’t, and I hadn’t remembered to bring a spoon, so I stirred with the first two fingers on my right hand. I winced when I plunged them in; the chili was still hot. I had to knead a little bit to integrate the blood. When I pulled out my fingers, they were stained pink. I thought of Jamie, whose right index finger was always burned to a raw-looking red from nail to joint. But that was another thing entirely. That was the opposite of what I was trying to do now.

I looked down at the chili, suddenly hungrier than I had ever been. So what if I had already mixed it with Serena’s blood? No one would see. And in fact—