I burst out laughing, and she looks pleased that she made me laugh first. At the sound of my laughter, the kid with the basketball turns around and tucks it under his arm and watches us.

The front door of the house opens again. Mike Lyle stands on top of the stoop. When she hears the door open, Grimshaw stiffens a little in front of me and doesn’t look up. But I’m taller than her, and I look over her head directly into those snake eyes. She puts her arms around my waist. I put my arms around Grimshaw and rest my chin on her head.

“Is it him?” she asks.

“Mm-hm.”

Mike folds his arms across his chest.

“Well, well, well,” he says. “Look what the cat dragged across. Somebody just couldn’t stay away, could they?” He’s still tinkering with his image. The black hair now has streaks of blond in it, and he’s grown a beard, very trim and shiny. A diamond stud in one ear flashes in the sun. He gazes down at me through slitted eyes, like he thinks I’m in his territory now and all the rules are different. A thin thread of fear slices lengthwise through my body. But I don’t know why I should be afraid: he’s still Mike Lyle, from Colchis, who doesn’t know how to swim.

Grimshaw steps aside and opens the gate for me. “Be prepared,” she says in a low voice.

“Hey, Grimshaw,” I whisper. “You don’t have an extra toothbrush, by any chance. I forgot mine.”

She stops. “For four days?” she demands.

We stop halfway up the walkway, and I tell her about the worst chicken salad sandwich in the world, which I bought out of a vending machine. “It was so bad, I can still taste it. I only had one bite.”

She tips back her head and laughs, this clear flutelike sound I’ve never heard from her before. While Mike watches, she kisses me. She looks like she did when I first met her. She hasn’t put on makeup yet, and her eyelashes are pale. She looks innocent, more like a little girl than she did when she was one. She smiles, and we link arms and walk together toward Mike. She lifts her chin up in the way that you do when you’re letting somebody know that you don’t care what they think. So I do it, too.