Normally I would have made a joke here, asking her how can you tell? or something along those lines, but I knew this was not the moment for that. “He has?”

“Yes. Like he’s been hiding something.” She turned to face me. “He knows, doesn’t he? You told Clark, and he told Tom.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. I was almost to Palmer’s house, and even though the street was deserted, I put on my blinker to turn into her driveway. “But—”

“So not only were you keeping a secret from me, you were making my boyfriend lie to me.”

“I had to tell someone,” I said. “I was doing the best thing I could think of to keep us together and I just wanted to know—”

But she was already unbuckling her seat belt, shaking her head as she got out of the car. She slammed the door hard and walked fast across her driveway, not once looking back at me.

? ? ?

When I got home, my dad wasn’t waiting up to talk to me. I could see the light was on in his study, but I didn’t make a move to walk down the hall. What could he possibly do in this situation? And I didn’t want to tell him about what had happened. Because even if he had advice that was helpful, I couldn’t let myself get used to it—because who knew if he’d be here the next time I needed him.

I shut the door to my room behind me and leaned back against it for just a moment. I pulled out my phone, hoping against hope that there would be a text chain going, everyone admitting that they were sorry, and that we could all move past this. But there was nothing. I started to send a message, then stopped when I realized I had no idea what I would say. I selected just Toby’s name and started to write, trying not to see the last time we’d texted, when she’d been excited about the movie.

ME

Toby, I’m so sorry.

Are you okay? I’m worried.

I looked down at the screen, waiting, hoping she would respond. After a full minute I set my phone down on my nightstand and started to get ready for bed, even though it was only a little after ten. I felt like I was moving underwater as I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then turned off my light and got into bed. I’d just rolled over onto my side when my phone dinged with a text message.

TOBY

I waited to see if there would be more, but nothing else followed. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that—had no idea how I was going to make any of this right, or if that was even possible. I looked at my phone, glowing in the darkness of my room, for a long moment.

Then I turned it off.

Tamsin looked across the shadows of the dungeon at the old man who always sat huddled against the stone, the one whose voice was like the rattling of bones, the one who hadn’t seen sunlight in fifteen years. He’d asked her to describe the sun when she’d first been thrown in here, which she had thought was ridiculous. Who could forget what it looked like when light dappled across leaves in the forest? She could recall them so easily—the early-morning light, so cool and blue and not yet warm; the way sunsets in Castleroy seemed to linger, putting on their best show before disappearing for the night.

But now, though it had been only three months, she was beginning to understand better. She’d forgotten about warmth, forgotten that once, she’d been lucky and free and able to raise her face to the sunlight, closing her eyes and breathing in the day. Once, she never could have imagined herself in a place like this. Now she was having trouble remembering that she’d ever been anywhere else.

“The Elder is dead,” she said out loud for the first time. As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. He would have come for her if he hadn’t been. He would have done something. She would not have still been in here if he could have prevented it. “I’m all alone.”

The old man in the corner turned to face her, moving inch by inch, until she could see his face, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the light of the flickering torches. “We’re always all alone,” he said, his voice cracked and worn.

Tamsin shook her head. She knew that wasn’t true. She had years of proof to the contrary. “No,” she said. “Not always. Not even often.”

“Oh,” the old man said, with a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his being. “I forget you’re still young yet.” He coughed then, a dry, rattling sound. “Sometimes we get a little bit of a facade. We think we have people. Family, friends . . . but in the end, it’s just you and the darkness. Everyone leaves eventually, my young friend. It’s better, really, to learn it early. This way, you can save yourself some disappointment.” He sighed then and slumped back against the wall once more. “Because believing you’re not alone is the cruelest trick of all.”

—C. B. McCallister, The Drawing of the Two. Hightower & Jax, New York.

Chapter SEVENTEEN

I stood in the back of the Stanwich Community Theater, clutching my iced latte and a blended java chip drink for Palmer. I’d been at Flask’s, getting my usual, when I’d found myself blurting out Palmer’s order as well. I decided, there in the coffee shop, that I’d bring it over to her as a kind of a peace offering and hope she’d forgive me, so that we could start to sort this out. Because the longer my phone stayed silent, the longer there was no communication on our group text, the more worried I was getting. Toby and Bri were both equally stubborn, and I didn’t want to know what would happen if more than a few days of this standoff went on. I was afraid that at some point this would just become our reality. This had to change, and I knew I couldn’t do it without Palmer, especially since Toby wasn’t mad at her, as far as I knew.