Aaron Knicely was an awkward kid who wanted to get into Sigil and Shield. Desperately. His desire to be one of us oozed out of every pore on his body.

He was a small kid, a freshman when we were seniors. His clothes never looked quite right. He never knew the right thing to say. At parties he stood around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a nervous child.

He was never going to get into Sigil and Shield. Never. As soon as members laid eyes on him, they wrote him off.

But for some reason, he stuck around through the pledge process. He took whatever the members dished out and came back for more. He showed a lot of spine, to be honest, and while I never said it out loud to anyone else, I found myself with a growing sense of admiration for him.

The night before the official invitations to join went out, we spent one final evening with all the potential members. One more party, one more chance for those supplicants who the current members of Sigil and Shield were on the fence about to make the right impression.

The rest of what I have to tell you about that night I’ve had to reconstruct by talking to others, including Blake, and reading things in the news. To say I had too much to drink would be an understatement. I’m not sure I ever drank more in my life.

Or remembered less.

Snatches still come back to me.

I remember the party starting. I remember doing shots of tequila until I couldn’t see straight.

I remember dancing with . . . someone.

And I remember going outside. Blake and me and Aaron Knicely.

I know we had more tequila as we walked.

I know Aaron drank more than the rest of us. I know we egged him on.

I know we should have stopped. But we didn’t.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Blake’s hand remained clamped on mine. The contact between our skin started to feel unpleasant, like I’d touched something cold and unknown in the dark.

But I didn’t pull away.

We remained connected in more ways than one.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, sounding casual. “Do you still make those nocturnal visits to the Steiners’ house you told me about? You must, right?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“I wonder if they really don’t know it’s you,” he said, amused. “When they did that cheesy newspaper story, they claimed not to know who the Good Samaritan was. But if they thought about it, if they really looked into it, couldn’t they figure it out? When a crime is committed, the cops ask, ‘Who benefits?’ Well, who benefits from trying to buy off the Steiners?”