I ignore him as tears spring up into my eyes. I don’t want to speak to him about my dad. Rage burns in my mouth like acid, but I don’t give him the pleasure of turning around. My fingernails dig into the palms of my hands. How dare he? After what his dad did. How dare, how dare, how dare—

“My mom was there too.”

His words stop me in his tracks. At first, I don’t turn around. I listen. I wait for the sound of his heavy breaths to change into vicious laughter. I expect him to say “Joking, loser!” and then throw something at my head. That would be my typical interaction with Carter.

But nothing in his tone of voice sounds like a joke.

Jinx? Do you believe him? Jinx doesn’t answer. He’s hidden himself in the shadows, and this is one situation where my baku can’t help me. Do I trust Carter or not?

I swallow and spin around on my heels, slowly. To my surprise, Carter’s eyes are glassy with the sheen of tears. His jaw is set, like he isn’t sure if he should trust me, either.

“What did you say?” I need to hear him say it again. I need to watch him as he talks, to search his face for any signs of imminent betrayal or joking.

“My mom was at Lake Baku too.”

“For how long?”

He shrugs. “Years. I didn’t know. When I was eleven, she just up and left. I never got a straight answer from Dad about where she’d gone.”

A frown flicks its way across my face. All this time, Carter had been going through the same thing I was. All those times he’d bullied me about my dad’s absence, as if it were my fault.

He knew exactly what buttons to press—because his own were being pushed at the same time.

“But…that doesn’t make sense. I thought the whole reason you got your boar baku was because of your mom.”

He nods. “It was. Hunter has been with me for a lot longer than anyone knows. Mom picked him out for me when I was just a kid.”

“But you’re not allowed a baku until—”

Carter rolls his eyes. “Right. But remember who you’re talking to for a second, will you, Lacey?”

His tone annoys me, but then I realize: he’s right. Of course his family could bend the rules. They made the rules. “Anyway, when I was at St. Agnes, Dad made me swap for a dog baku, so that I didn’t appear too different from anyone else. But once I got into Profectus, I demanded to have Hunter back. After all, he’s the only thing I had left of my mom.”

How you convinced your mother to buy you that thing…