Blackforest nodded, and brought her hand up to her head, nervously adjusting the thinnest of the jagged twigs, thorny vines, and barbed wire that formed her hair. She locked eyes with Egg, then immediately dropped her hand. “I wasn’t signaling for a hug, I know you can’t—I mean—”

She was exhausting to be around.

He put out his hand for a handshake. She shook it, her hand rough and heavy, though gentle against his.

“No sweat,” he said.

She held his hand for a second longer than necessary, drinking in that ‘no sweat’ in a way that he found painfully familiar. He drank in Engel that way.

And, he realized, unlike how he thought of Engel, Blackforest might like him.

Which was weird and hard to picture. How would that work? What did she visualize? He was gross. He’d told her at one point he was incapable, and how insane with frustration he was. Stupid things that he regretted divulging, but it had been something like nine conversations over two weeks, some of them hours long, most of them extending past midnight. Talking her off of a ledge, so to speak. Being scared for the person on the other side of the internet connection, who he only knew as a friend of Chantilly’s, not knowing how to talk to someone in as dark a place as she was, except to share his own darkness.

Being here, seeing people, it was dark in its own way. If he tried to count off the individual betrayals on his fingers, he would run out of fingers. Whippersnap had bailed when they needed soldiers and allies. Chantilly had gotten mad at him for getting mad, and stopped talking to him. The Palanquin guys didn’t answer the call for attacking Cauldron. Too many PRT Case Fifty-Threes had refused to leave the organization, even after the Eidolon revelations. Grackle had driven a major divide in their ranks by pushing the happier and friendlier Case Fifty-Three crap, only for his subgroup to end up more bitter and vicious than any of them, calling other Case Fifty-Threes traitors unless they followed the specific Grackle way.

Chantilly and Whippersnap were talking, pointing to people for Hexie’s benefit. Maybe doing their part for what they thought was Blackforest’s benefit, distracting her friend, while she stood by Egg.

“You cold?” he asked Blackforest, quiet.

“No. I don’t really get cold. Stiff.”

“Me too.”

“Can you stay near me, Egg?” the girl asked, voice soft.

“I can, but why? Nervous?”

“I feel like I can count on you. No offense to Tilly and Hexie, but I’ve had a lot of trouble finding people I can count on.”

“Me too,” he said.

“You have Engel, right?”

“She’s not someone you count on, unless you’re counting on her to be there. You hitch yourself to her and she brings you along while going this way or that.”