“How are you not sick?” Reed asks slowly. “I think I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying,” Veronica responds. I could feel the eye roll. When Graham’s sick his entire world shuts down. He can’t work, can’t cook, can’t move off the couch. The rub some dirt on it mentality was lost in the Walker blood. “You just have food poisoning,” she continues. “Not surprising with this trendy caterer she hired.”

Nice dig.

“I’m going to get some coffee.” I hear some feet padding on the floor. “Do you want s—” a pause “—what the fuck is this?”

Then everything goes bitterly silent.

I move a few steps farther down the hallway, my back to the wall between us. I’m just around enough of a bend that if one of them comes storming out of their room, I wouldn’t be seen. Not that Reed seems in any physical position to storm anywhere, but I have to be careful. When adrenaline kicks in, even the sickest can’t feel pain anymore.

I close my eyes again, listening. When one sense is gone the others are heightened, after all.

“Where’d that come from?” Reed asks, from farther into the room, maybe on the bed or the chair in the corner.

Silence.

“Where the fuck did that come from? Where did you—”

I hear a gag, then running, then the bathroom door slamming so hard it jostles the bedroom door. I can hear him vomiting through the wall. Surely he’ll want Molly fired. Any good caterer knows better than to leave any evidence. He’s the only one sick, after all. We all ate the same things.

I expect the door to open, for Veronica to come out, leaving the paper on the nightstand for Graham to deal with. But no sounds come. No more talking, no more shuffling.

Instead, I smell the fireplace in their room turn on—that gaseous warmth that comes with a remote control–operated fire.

I could have sworn I heard the crinkle of the paper as it began to burn.

“There she is!”

Sarah Keens’s voice echoes through the foyer, rippled with pride like she’s an old friend I haven’t seen in years and not a reporter from the Times. She stands at the bottom of the stairs, drowning in a faux fur jacket far too warm for an average October night, and smiling like we’re doing one of those stupid first looks and she’s the awed groom.

Sarah New-York-fucking-Times Keens.