Sam bites his lower lip and shakes his head. “I don’t want to be a hero. And girls are already all over me.”

Six and I roll our eyes, but I also see Six blush. Or maybe I imagine it.

“I mean it,” he says. “I’m not leaving.”

I shrug. “I guess that’s settled. Sam equals x in this equation.”

Sam watches Six walk to her small duffel bag beside the TV, and his attraction to her is painted all over his face. She’s wearing black cotton shorts and a white tank top with her hair pulled back. A few strands fall loose around her face. A purple scar is prominent on the front of her left thigh, and the stitch marks around it are a tender pink, still scabbed over. Stitches she not only sewed herself, but also removed. When Six looks up, Sam shyly diverts his gaze. Clearly there’s another reason Sam wants to stick around.

Six bends down and reaches into her bag, removing a folded map. She opens it on the foot of the bed.

“Right here,” she says, pointing to Trucksville, “is where we are. And here,” she continues, moving her finger from North Carolina to a tiny red star made in ink close to the center of West Virginia, “is where the Mogadorians’ cave is, the one I know of, anyhow.”

I look where she’s pointing. Even on the map it’s obvious the location is very isolated; there doesn’t appear to be any sort of main road within five miles, nor any town within ten.

“How do you even know where the cave is?”

“That’s a long story,” she says. “Probably one better left for the road.”

Her finger takes up a new route on the map, heading southwest from West Virginia, traversing Tennessee, and coming to rest on a point in Arkansas near the Mississippi River.

“What’s there?” I ask.

She puffs her cheeks and releases a deep breath, undoubtedly remembering something that happened. Her face takes on a special look when deep in concentration.

“This is where my Chest was,” she says. “And some of the stuff Katarina brought from Lorien. This is where we hid it.”

“What do you mean, where it was?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s not there anymore?”

“No. They were tracking us, and we couldn’t risk them getting it. It was no longer safe with us, so we stowed it and Katarina’s artifacts in Arkansas and fled as fast as we could, thinking we could stay ahead of them . . .” She trails off.

“They caught up to you, didn’t they?” I ask, knowing her Cêpan Katarina died three years ago.

She sighs. “That’s another story better left for the road.”