Page 162 of What We Burn

“You okay, kitten?” I ask.

“Fine. Yeah. Just—” She shrugs one shoulder. “Today was weirdly good.”

Fine. She’s said that word four times today and hasn’t meant it once. I log it and let it go, because pushing her on the doorstep of her own house is how you get a door closed in your face.

“You can thank Micah. I wanted to do arson.”

She smiles. “That would have been weirdly good too.”

“Arson’s always good. Except for when there’s fiberglass in the insulation. But I love that you get me. It’s why we’re poly-soulmates.”

She holds out a hand, and I tug her inside and into my arms. She looks up at me. “You’re my poly-soulmate too.”

FORTY-TWO

MICAH

“Three targets,” Holden says, spreading the folders across the kitchen table. “All connected. None of them are members yet.”

It’s almost midnight. The dishwasher is running its last cycle, the hall clock is ticking too loudly, and the television murmurs to itself in the next room.

Sage went upstairs an hour ago.

She hasn’t said much since we got home from lawn bowls. She laughed in the car. Leaned into Milo when he made another joke about the divot Eli tore in the green. But the anger she carried from the club to the green still came home with her.

Lawn bowls doesn’t cure a deep-seated need for vengeance. I know that feeling all too well.

Holden taps the first folder. “Fenrir sent this to Milo about thirty minutes ago. While he was matching usernames to people, he found a new thread in the onboarding section of The Kennel. Three applicants. One invitation. They’re applying as a group.”

“I printed it out so all you techno-strugglers could follow along.” Milo dips a celery stick into the jar of peanut butter balanced on his thigh. He offers it to me.

I shake my head.

He eats it with a crunch that makes Holden’s eye twitch.

“They’ve been given an initiation activity,” Milo says. “Contribution before admission. No proof, no access to the main platform. Which is honestly very country club of them, except instead of a recommendation from an orthopedic surgeon and a questionable relationship with khaki, you need to commit a felony.”

“A planned assault,” Eli says. His voice has been rough since this afternoon. “At a party next Saturday.”

Knox sits at the far end of the table, shoulders filling the chair. “Three men on one woman.”

Holden fans out the files.

Three faces. Three names.

“Ryan Jeffries. Quarterback. Twenty-one. Two accusations at university level, both buried. One of the women kept the text messages he sent afterward.” Holden moves to the next photograph. “Byron Sands. Wide receiver. One accusation. The university settled before it reached a hearing, and the woman transferred schools.”

His finger lands on the third.

“Devon McConnell. Offensive line. No formal complaint, but Fenrir found four separate accounts on a survivors’ forum describing the same man, the same dorm, and the same method. None of the women knew about the others.”

“They do now,” Milo says.

I look at him.

He swirls another celery stick through the peanut butter. His face is blank.

“Fenrir connected them and passed everything to Odin’s legal people. Anonymous introduction. Secure channel. They get to decide if they want to talk.”