“But when they came back,” I urge. “You must have known something happened? That Max and Oliver weren’t with them.”

She chews on the side of her cheek like she’s trying to remember, to sift through the drowsy fog of her mind. A little black smudge is just visible by her right eye, her mascara rubbed away while she slept—the only makeup she must have brought with her. “Why are you asking me this?” Her tone is suddenly acrid, flint scraping together. Sparks catching on her teeth.

Because a bone moth is following me, I want to say. Because the throb at my temples won’t go away.

Because death is coming for me. Tiny black spots of doom—just like her smeared mascara—always just beyond my vision.

Suzy and I stare at each other, neither of us breathing, looking for the truth in the other’s face. In the lines around our eyes that often reveal when someone’s lying.

Never trust anyone who blinks too often: a note—a warning—within the spellbook.

“I didn’t know anyone was missing that night,” she says flatly when I don’t answer her. “I don’t keep track of who sleeps in which cabins.”

Anger boils up inside me now, wings thwapping against my ribs—the certainty that she knows something she won’t say—and I take a step closer to her. “But you heard them talking about it—that someone had died?”

She lifts both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, her perfect dark eyebrows raised like little tents. “I guess,” she answers. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was more worried about being stuck up here.”

“A boy died, and all you cared about was being stuck?”

She sets her jaw into place and uncrosses her arms, looking suddenly rigid. “You think I had something to do with it?”

“I just want to know what happened.”

“And you assume I’m lying?”

“I don’t have any reason to believe you aren’t.” The words should probably sting, but I’m beyond that now. Beyond caring what she thinks. I feel like I’m losing control. Like I can’t see what’s right in front of me—everyone is hiding something and I want to scream. This is my forest, the place where I’ve always felt safe, yet I have no idea what’s happening.

I am a Walker who can’t see the truth.

Suzy moves her hand too quickly, and she knocks one of my mother’s honey jars off the counter onto the floor. It lands with a loud shatter, the glass breaking on impact, and the sticky amber liquid spills into the cracks. She stares at it, like she might apologize, but then she lifts her eyes and says, “Why would I lie?”