Page 19

I should be furious. Instead that flat, certain voice reaches in and steadies something under my ribs that's been shaking since sunrise.

Then I remember he still won't tell me a single thing, and the aggravation floods back. Good. Aggravation I can work with.

Lila checks her phone. "I have to go."

"You just got here."

"I forgot. I've got a thing."

"A thing."

Her eyes go to Gage, then away. "Work."

On a Saturday. Sure.

She hugs me fast, cheek cold against mine. "Call me tonight. Please."

"Lila."

She's already down the steps.

Sid watches her cross to her car. So does Gage. I move up beside him.

"What was that?"

"No idea."

"You don't like her."

He looks down at me. "Didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

His gaze follows her taillights until they turn the corner and vanish behind the Hendersons' inflatable graveyard. Then he turns back to me, and everything about him sharpens.

"The mirror. Has it done anything else?"

I hesitate.

And there it is, right on cue. The thing I've told no one. Yesterday at noon every mirror in the shop fogged over at once, and behind where my reflection should've been, a woman in black raised one hand and pointed at me.

I haven't said it out loud since. Not to Lila. Least of all to Lila, and I can't explain why my gut drew that line.

"No," I say.

Gage studies my face the way other people read road signs. "You're lying."

"You should teach a class."

His jaw works. He lets it go. For now.

"Help me clean this up," I say, and crouch by the burst pumpkin before he can circle back.

We work in silence. It's stupidly normal, the two of us scooping cold orange guts off the sidewalk while, three houses down, someone's fog machine coughs to life for the afternoon. Woodsmoke drifts from a chimney. The whole street smells like wet leaves and coming rain.

Then a broken stem slices my palm open.

"Ow. Damn."