“Or is it chibi?” she went on, nodding at Syd’s costume. “I can never remember . . .”

The girl offered up the cigarette, and Sydney reached to take it. She’d never smoked, but she’d seen Serena do it.

The trick is to hold the smoke in your mouth, like this.

The tip of the cigarette had glowed red, Serena had counted on her fingers one, two, three, and then exhaled a perfect plume of white.

Now, Sydney did the same thing.

The smoke filled her mouth, hot and acrid. It tickled her nose, crept into her throat, and she quickly blew it out before she could start coughing.

Her head felt cloudy, but her nerves were settling.

She handed the cigarette back and stepped into the party.

The house was teeming with students. Dancing, shouting, moving, sprawling. Too many. Too much. She felt jostled by elbows, shoulders, capes, wings, caught up in the sea of bodies, motion.

Sydney stepped back, trying to get out of the waves, and collided with a man in a black domino mask. Her heart lurched. Eli. Her fingers flew toward her backpack—but it wasn’t him. Of course it wasn’t him.

This boy was too short, too wide, his voice too high as he shuffled past her, calling out to a friend across the crowded room.

Sydney was just starting to relax when someone caught her wrist.

She spun around to see a tall guy in a metal helmet and skin-tight spandex. “How did you get in here?” He raised her arm, and his voice, at the same time. “Who brought their kid sister?”

Sydney felt her face flush hot as heads turned.

“I’m not a kid,” she snarled, pulling free.

“Yeah, sure, come on,” he said, pushing her toward the front door.

What Sydney would have given, in that moment, for Victor’s power instead of hers.

The college boy shoved her across the threshold. “Go trick-or-treat somewhere else.”

Sydney stood on the front porch, face burning, as the party raged behind her and more guys and girls started up the path to the house.

Tears threatened to spill down her face. She fought them back.

“Hey, are you okay?” asked a guy in a cape, kneeling beside her.

“You want to call someone—”

“Fuck off,” said Sydney, marching down the steps, her face on fire.

She couldn’t go home—not yet. And she couldn’t bring herself to text June, either, so Sydney wandered the town alone for another hour, as the sticky heat finally cooled and the crowds in costumes thinned. She kept the backpack in her hand, the zipper parted and the gun in reach in case anyone tried anything.

No one did.

When she finally returned to the apartment, the lights were all off.

She slipped off her shoes, heard the soft sound of a body shifting on the couch, and turned, expecting to see Mitch.

But it was Victor, stretched out on the sofa, one arm across his eyes, his chest rising and falling in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.