He frowns at her—Rhett—the reason she snuck up to the camp in the first place. He’s why she’s here, why she’s trapped like the rest of us. And I eye him, trying to understand why he’s the boy she chose. He’s cute, obviously, with a roundish face and a dimple in one cheek, but his eyes are not soft and warm like the rest of him seems. There is something callous in them. Cruel even. A boy who usually gets what he wants.

“Ignore them,” Suzy says, flicking her hand in the air and brushing a bit of her long wavy hair over one shoulder. “They’re just pissed they have to live way out here in these miserable mountains.”

But that’s not why they call me the moon girl, why they look at me with unease etched into the slopes of their brows. It’s because they’re afraid of me. They believe my blood is the color of the blackest night and my heart is woven with spikeweeds and vinegar. I should be feared. And most importantly, avoided.

They don’t know that unlike my ancestors, unlike the Walkers of the past, there is no nightshade brimming along my edges.

Suzy clears her throat and lifts her chin. “That’s Rhett.” She nods to dimple-boy, and he looks at me but doesn’t smile—a cool, calculating gaze. Like he’s trying to see if the rumors are true. If I could turn his blood cold with a flick of my outstretched finger. And right now, I wish I could.

“That’s Lin,” she continues, glancing to the boy on my left, who nods but doesn’t speak. The oversized navy-blue puffy coat he’s wearing is like a cocoon—hood pulled up, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets. Like he doesn’t plan on taking it off until spring, like he’s never been so cold in his entire life. He must have been sent here from somewhere warm, like California or Florida. Somewhere where the sky is usually aqua blue and the air smells like coconut.

“I’m Jasper,” reindeer-sweater boy interjects, smiling across the fire at me and holding out the bottle of dark liquid, wagging an eyebrow. “Whiskey,” he says, nodding for me to take it. But I ignore the bottle.

I don’t care what their names are; I didn’t come down here to hang out. To drink booze, torch marshmallows, and tell childish ghost stories. “You have to put the fire out,” I say again, sharper this time, my thumb fidgeting with the moonstone ring on my finger, twirling it in a circle.

Rhett sneers and picks up a stick, poking at the fire, sending more sparks up into the overhead limbs. Taunting the trees.

“Maybe we should listen to her,” Lin says, lifting his shoulders in his too-big coat. “After everything that’s happened—”