“And they took him,” he says. “That is the only secret, nothing else. No great power or discovery or secret protection.”

Looking at him, I think he must have spoken wrong, but the hair on the back of my neck begins to prickle. Germ, on instinct, reaches for my hand and grasps it.

“Him who?” I ask, barely above a whisper. The woods all around us seem to have gone silent. The crickets and tree frogs that were roaring at our arrival are quiet. The moon has disappeared.

“Three lives, not two,” he says. “And they took one to the bottom of the sea.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head. I can feel the blood draining from my cheeks. I feel like I’m slipping down a slope with nothing to grab to stop my fall, because of something that has always been not there. A missing piece of me. A second half. It all flares up like something my heart knows but doesn’t know the contours of.

Beside me, Germ has gone so pale, her freckles float on her skin like in a bowl of milk.

The Murderer just stands there, ruminating, looking up at the sky, distracted. “They took him,” he repeats. “Dropped him in the ocean, I guess.”

“Him who?” I press. “Dropped who?”

He turns to look at me, as if just now remembering I’m there. “Your mother only had time to hide one of you. He was crying; you weren’t. They never knew there were two.” His shoulders sag as if in release, or surrender, or both. And then he says the only thing that really matters. “Twins.”

Now the sound in the trees is growing louder. Leaves flutter. Insects begin to chirp, hum, and cry. The woods are agitated about something.

But I can only focus on what the Murderer has said. From the moment I hear the words, I know it’s true, and a howl rises in my heart.

And then the Murderer cocks his head, as if listening intently to something. Whatever he hears, it makes him turn his face sharply to the woods, and then the sky, and then to me.

“She’s coming,” he says.

“Everybody, leave here.

“Leave now.

“Run.”

CHAPTER 20

Above, a flock of birds takes sudden flight, and flees across the horizon. In the trees, squirrels scurry and leap from branch to branch, all headed in the same direction—away. We stand watching them, frozen.

“Um, that can’t be good,” Germ says.

But I can’t think about what I see around me. All I can think about is the word “twins.”

“Rosie,” Germ says, looking up at the sky, “we have to go. We have to get home. Your bow and arrows…”