We both know I’m lying, but I can’t seem to stop with the bravado, even here, even now, where I actually feel safe lying naked beside a guy in a bed, instead of getting all trembly and turning into Anxious Girl.

“You don’t have to be without it,” he says.

“Do you have a miracle cure up your sleeve?” I ask, then I whip back the sheets. “Nope. You don’t even have sleeves.”

“I don’t have a cure,” he says, “but the crow girls do. We talked about this last night.”

I sit up so that I can lean against his shoulder. I trace the bumps of his ribs with a finger.

“I know,” I say.

“So let’s just do it.”

“Except we can’t,” I tell him. “I don’t have the feathers anymore. I can’t remember what happened to them after the crow girls arrived.”

And I realize I don’t mind. They were used for a good cause and I’d rather be in my present condition than not have brought Geordie back in the world of the living.

“You’re just stalling,” he says.

“No, I’m not. I really don’t have them. I can’t even guess where they are. And you know what the crow girls are like—they come and go at their own whim, never when you expect them to.”

“Do you really think you need the actual feathers in your hand?”

“Maida and Zia sure gave me that impression when they handed them to me way back when.”

“Maybe you just need to call them to us the way we did Walker.”

I lean back a bit so that I can see his face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Oh, that’s right. You weren’t here. Remember Walker told Lizzie he’d help her whenever she needed him? All she was supposed to do was call his name and he’d come.”

“I remember.”

“So when we didn’t know what to do, we went into the woods and did just that, and sure enough, he just showed up out of nowhere. He wasn’t so happy when he arrived, but he did come.”

“Why would that work with the crow girls?”

“Don’t you think they’re expecting you to call them?”

I give a slow nod. “I guess I could make it out to the woods, so long as we don’t go too fast and we don’t have to go too far.”

“Why do that? I’m sure we can call them from here. We only went into the woods to call Walker because—well, we weren’t sure what exactly would show up, and it didn’t seem so smart to do it in the hotel room.”