The Ferris wheel turns slowly as another rollercoaster car shoots around the first big loop. I glance over at Julian and he’s watching the action with a straight face, barely interested in what’s happening.

I’m busy feeling paranoid as hell. Every big guy, every lurking shadow, heck, even loud little kids could be working for Hunter, here to track us down and kill us. We’re in the middle of a crowded amusement park on the boardwalk of Wildwood, but I still feel like we’re at risk. Although it’s the public and there’s a ton of cops all over the place, I still think Hunter could take us out if he wanted to.

It’s totally irrational. Hunter’s family has a lot of money and power, but they can’t just murder two people in a crowded place in broad daylight. Nobody has that kind of power, not even in a corrupt place like this.

Besides, we’re not on his turf, which is the whole reason we’re here. His influence doesn’t extend here, or at least not directly. We set up a meeting with Alex, and initially she wanted to see us someplace in Avalon, but I pushed for Wildwood. It’s a pain in the ass, coming all the way out here just to talk, but I feel safer. Julian wasn’t totally thrilled with the idea but he backed me up.

“She’s late,” Julian says softly. I can see the tension starting to form around his eyes.

I reach out and take his hand. He squeezes back and glances over at me.

“It’s not like her,” he says. “She’s normally right on time.”

“Just relax,” I say. “Besides, she was late to our last meeting, remember?”

“Yeah,” he grunts. “Guess so.”

“Just relax.” I feel like a hypocrite, telling him to calm down, but I can tell he needs me right now. Frankly, I want to get up and run screaming into the night like a wild animal, but I know better than that.

I haven’t survived this long as a junkie by being a complete moron. Nobody survives heroin and robbing houses and violence and all the things I’ve been through without at least some ability to get things done. I can turn off all the screaming voices in my head, at least for a little while, and that’s my greatest strength.

Julian squeezes my hand again and I want to lean close to him. I want to kiss him, whisper in his ear, but I stop myself. I keep doing this, I keep wanting to run away from him one second then wanting to kiss him and hold him the next. I can’t decide if he’s my kidnapper, a murderer, a bastard, or if he’s the only person that’s keeping me alive. I think he’s all of those things and much more.

That scares the hell out of me. I’ve never met a person that can be everything and nothing to me, all mixed and blended together into this strange and terrifying creature that has such complete… control.

It’s thrilling, it’s horrifying. I want him and I hate him. He’s handsome, he’s a killer. I squeeze his hand and he’s made of flesh and blood.

Families move around us with their shrieking kids and big ice cream cones. I want to be a part of them, even though I used to rob people like them and make fun of them all the time. Leo and I used to say how pathetic normal people are, but we were wrong. We were the pathetic ones. Now I wish I could be more like them, except I can’t.

I’m a vampire, stuck in the dark.

“You okay?” Julian asks me.

“Yeah, I’m totally fine.” I give him a forced smile.

His worry lines deepen and he’s about to say something when she appears, coming through the crowd like a goddess.

Alex is tall and strong but still strangely feminine. She’s wearing short jean shorts, a loose white tank top, and a colorful bikini underneath. She’s showing off a generous amount of cleavage and it’s taking all of my strength not to stare at her boobs. I glance at Julian and I expect him to be ogling her, but instead he still just looks tense.

“Glad you could make it,” he says, standing.

“And miss a chat with my favorite killer? Never.” She hugs him and he hugs her back a little awkwardly. “And I see you brought your little pet.”

I glare at her. “Kay.”

“I remember.” Alex smiles sweetly before looking back at Julian. “Okay, so I’m here. You got my ass down to Wildwood. What do you want?”

“We gotta talk about the other night,” he says.

She shrugs. “Okay, fine. Talk. But let’s get moving.” She glances around for a second and her smile vanishes. “I’m worried he followed me.”

She says it so quietly and casually that I almost miss it, but Julian sure doesn’t. He tenses even more and goes to look around but she puts her hand on his arm, a big smile on her face.

“Come on, idiot, be cool. Let’s go play a carnival game.”

I stand up and the three of us move off into the crowd, not talking. Alex stays cool and casual but I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin. We bypass a few booths, ignoring the milk bottle game, the ring toss, the froggy hop mallet thing, the basketball, before finally stopping at the game where you squirt water into a hole to make your horse run.

We sit next to each other and Julian pays the guy to start the game. We’re off in a corner and the bored teenager with bad acne stays on the other side of the booth. He should be announcing the winners and all that but he clearly doesn’t care enough to bother.

“Do you actually think they’re listening?” Julian asks her.

“Maybe,” she says. “Probably not, but we should be careful, right?”

I get a strange feeling, a tingle on my neck. “If you’re worried you’re being watched, why did you come?” I ask her.

She shoots me a look. “Couldn’t pass this opportunity up.”

I go to say more, but Julian interrupts me. “We need your help,” he says.

“I know that. You want me to kill the bastard.”

“Yes and no.” Julian frowns. The game starts ringing and our cannons fire water. We’re all aiming, but not aiming well. The horses move forward limply as we keep talking.

“What do you mean?” Alex asks.

“We need to get on the Oakes beach. Kay and her ex buried a stash of heroin near the dunes, and we need to dig it up.”

She hesitates before laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I know, it’s a big ask.”

“Security’s been crawling all over the beach ever since they decided to hunt you down. Maybe two weeks ago, no problem. But now?”

“Please,” Julian says. “It’s important. We’re going to use the drugs to get close to Hunter, and then…”

Alex frowns. “And then I can castrate the bastard. Is that what you mean?”

The game starts to ring as lights and a siren go off. I’m a little startled when the pimple-faced teen comes over. “Winner,” he says, in the most droll and bored tone imaginable. He hands me a tiny duck plushie. I take it and stare at it for a second before Julian hands him more money, and we start all over. The kid shrugs and head back to his stool, ignoring us again.

“You know you want this,” Julian says to Alex. “I know it’ll be hard, but you can think of something to distract them.”

She sighs as the game starts again, and the horses are off.

“Maybe,” she says finally. “But it won’t be easy. Did you hear?”

Julian cocks his head. “I’ve been underground, Alex, so no. I haven’t heard anything.”

“Ah,” she says, a little smile creeping to her lips. “Lionel is dying.”

Julian lets his cannon drop, squirting the bottom of the set. The kid glances over but doesn’t bother getting up.

“No shit,” he says softly. “And that means…?”

“Hunter’s going to inherit everything.”

“What’s wrong with the old man?”

“Cancer. Bad cancer, and it’s been bad for a while. They’ve been hiding it from everyone, including the family. I only found out two days ago.”

Julian chews his lip. “This is why he wants me dead,” he says. “He’s afraid that if his father finds out what I know, he won’t get his inheritance.”

Alex frowns at him. “What do you know, exactly?”

Julian shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Fact is, I’m taking this to my grave.”

“Maybe it would be better, letting it out. Maybe if he loses his inheritance, he can’t hurt you.”

Julian laughs at that. “You know him, he’ll personally find me and kill me real slow if I did that. No, nobody needs to know.”

Our cannons keep firing water as my horse takes the lead from Alex. “Fine, keep it to yourself. I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as I get to look into his eyes when I murder the fucking bastard.” Alex’s jaw is set and she aims her cannon square in the center, sending her horse galloping forward.

She wins by a nose. The teenager tosses her a duck which she throws on the ground. We stand up as a group and move away from the game.

“Can you do it?” Julian presses her.

Just a short hesitation. “Fine.” She purses her lips. “But it won’t be easy. Let’s say, two nights from tonight.”

Julian nods briskly. “We can handle that.”

“Good, you’d better. Once you get the shit and get out of there, we’ll meet up again and set up a meeting with Hunter.”

“And if everything goes well, he’ll be dead in a few days.”

“And you’ll be free.” Alex claps him on the back. “Cheer up, big guy. Things are looking good.”

I watch her carefully and I don’t get it. I don’t get why she’s so chipper, so easygoing in this moment. She’s signing on to do something dangerous, something really, really dangerous. She might be signing her own death warrant right now.

I suppose that’s just the kind of people these two are. Fearless, intense, unbreakable. I wish I were more like that…

Still. There’s nothing in her eyes that would even hint at what she’s about to do.

“Good,” Julian says. “Two nights from tonight, then.”

She smiles and gives him another hug. “Good luck.”

“We won’t need luck if you can pull this off.”

She winks and dances off, practically skipping away into the crowd.

We’re left standing there between the rope ladder crawl and the funhouse entrance. Julian watches as she goes before turning back to me.

“Well?” he asks.

I arch an eyebrow. “You want my opinion?”

“Of course I do.”

I laugh a little bit. “I don’t trust her.”

“No, you don’t.” He sighs and starts walking. “But why?”

“I don’t know her.”

“I do.”

“She’s his cousin.”

“She hates him.”

“Why?”

He hesitates. “He got her beaten up… but it’s more than that. He did things to her when they were younger.”

“Like what?” I ask softly. “What could be so bad that she’d want to kill him?”

He looks straight ahead and talks quietly. “They’d have sleepovers, since they’re family and around the same age. He’d sneak into her room at night and strangle her within an inch of passing out. He was a lot bigger than her back then. He also apparently…” He clears his throat. “Did things to her a cousin shouldn’t do.”

“She told you all this?” I ask softly.

He nods. “We used to get drunk together a lot, back when I was fighting. She liked to talk.”

I take a breath and let it out. “Even assuming any of that’s true… she seemed too calm. Like she wasn’t in any danger.”

“That’s just her,” he says, waving me away. “She’s a fighter. She knows what she’s doing.”

I don’t buy it though. Julian’s as much of a fighter as she is, and I can still see the stress in his eyes. There was nothing on Alex’s face, absolutely nothing.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. As much as I don’t trust her, we have no other options. We have to do this, we have to get the drugs. We have no other plan.

I step closer to Julian and take his hand. “I’ll trust you,” I say pointedly. “But I don’t trust her.”

“Good enough for me.” He squeezes it once and lets it drop. “Come on. We better get back and start preparing.”

“Yeah,” I say softly. I want to stay among the families and the games, pretend like we’re a normal couple, a normal family. I can close my eyes and imagine that I’m pregnant, a little baby coming to make things normal.

We’re not normal though, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have any of that. We leave together, and I can tell Julian’s mind is on business and nothing else.