Becky stood at the mouth of the ravine. The strands of unruly hair that weren’t held back by her bandana were tugged forward by the vacuum caused by the whistling wind, making them stir like reeds in water. Moonlight clipped the bridge of her nose and hands, making them luminous. And it was possible that this bleaching of her usual complexion by the moon was what gave her appearance a certain strangeness now. But when she tilted her hands into the moonlight as if to contemplate the unfamiliarity of her own pale skin, Peter saw the change.

Becky had left Essie to die in the truck out on the ice that night, then risked her own life by racing back through the Restless Ones to rescue his dad. And perhaps if he’d been to visit her even once this last month to thank her, he’d have known she’d been hurt. Worse, bitten. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t been a better friend. And, for a moment Peter stood there wondering why. But any shame he felt was swiftly replaced by an altogether different feeling: irritation that Becky now had access to a range of Cooper’s feelings he would never understand.

Cooper wandered a short distance from the mouth of the ravine following the Restless One back out on to the ice. But he never once broke his connection to Becky. He nudged the Stetson from his brow with the nose of the beer bottle and stood gazing up at the stars. The other hand he held out for her to join him.

“Tell me what you see,” he said after a while.

Becky wandered out to take his hand. “The stars,” she said. “The stars. I can hear them burn.”

Cooper nodded like no further explanation than that needed to be spoken. His hand gripped hers. Then their eyes travelled across the sky like all four feet weren’t even on the ground any more. Peter stared at those clasping fingers. They held on to each other so tightly, he couldn’t even tell whose belonged to who any more. They’d just spent the last three weeks out on the trail sleeping together beneath the night sky, but Cooper never once took him by the hand and showed him the way. Not like this.