Blake pulled his hand away and laughed in a low, snuffling way. When he finally stopped and wiped his eyes, he said, “Did you really just say, ‘It’s in the past’? Really? You’re still bringing the Steiners envelopes of cash, and you don’t want anyone to know about it, but you think it’s in the past? Let me ask you something else, Ryan. . . . Does Amanda know everything about that night yet? Have you ever told her? Does she know about the money you give to complete strangers?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to because he knew I’d never told her my role in the accident. Amanda hadn’t attended Ferncroft. We’d met after graduation, and she pretty quickly knew about the accident. After all, what does someone do when they meet a new person? They Google them. And the information about the accident was right there for all to see. Aaron driving drunk when he hit the other car. One person killed, one injured in the second vehicle. Two of Aaron’s passengers—Blake and me—injured. One—me—injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. Amanda didn’t know that the bad dreams I had several times a year were images of Maggie and Emily passing across my mind during the darkness of the night.

It had been Blake and I who suggested Aaron go perform one of the oldest rituals known to students at Ferncroft College—drive fifteen miles out into the countryside, down winding state roads, and take the sign announcing the entrance to the small town of Gnaw Bone, Kentucky, population 343. Almost every dorm and social club on campus had a stolen Gnaw Bone sign in it.

I knew it all led Aaron to think he had an iota of a chance to be admitted to Sigil and Shield when he really didn’t.

“So Amanda knows all about the accident,” Blake said, “but she only knows what was in the papers. The official story. You were in the car and got hurt. . . .”

“Blake—”

“Oh, yeah. I remember now. There’s the thing with Amanda’s sister. How old was she when she died?”

He waited until I answered.

“Fifteen.”

“On her bike, right? Hit by a drunk driver. Didn’t you say that was one of the things you and Amanda talked about when you first met? How you both had drunk-driving accidents that affected your lives? It would be tough to tell her the truth now, wouldn’t it? You’d have to admit to her that you were behind the wheel in an accident that killed a seventeen-year-old girl. You wouldn’t be any different in her eyes from the monster who killed her sister. If you thought Amanda was pissed over me bumping Henry’s head against a lamp—”

“It’s over, Blake.”

“How does Amanda accept you owning a stake in a bar when her sister died in a drunk-driving accident?”