Rachel stared across the café table as Jason stared out the window. The emergency vehicles threw sharp, flickering lights over his scratched and bruised face. He hadn't looked at her once. Not when she finally came in after him. Not when she plonked a coffee on the table in front of him. Not when she sat down, her own cup steaming but untouched in front of her.

Most of the gawkers had lost their initial interest in the affairs across the street and were settled back in their seats, or had gone home for the night, or left to do more interesting things than stare. Still, Jason's eyes searched the crowd, slowly thinning as more uniforms arrived and set up a perimeter around the building. The unmarked cars that had been blocking the road had left a long time ago, making room for other emergency personnel. Rachel's own car was parked next to the smoldering building, tantalizingly close and impossibly far away. None of that was changing. But still he stared.

She frowned. Her fingers drummed her own styrofoam cup, the heat teasing her skin. "That's going to get cold, you know."

He just hummed in response. She didn't drink hers either. She didn't trust her stomach.

"If we're gonna sit here while all that dies down," she said, "the least you can do is start explaining."

"Not here," he muttered.

She hit the table, drawing the looks of a couple other patrons. Jason startled, glancing in her direction—but still not really at her. Drawing her hand back, she lowered her voice. "If not here, then nowhere."

His eyes closed, as if for a second, he just couldn't keep them open anymore. Then he returned to his watch at the window. "Then go." His voice was dead flat. "Like you said, you should be getting away from here."

"A sorry thank you that is," Rachel bit out.

He flinched.

She simmered, glaring him down, but he still wouldn't meet her eyes. Her hand clenched. "I don't think you really want me to go," she said. "I think that you're feeling sorry for yourself, but I'm gonna tell you, right now, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself too. I had a gun," she whispered, "in my own—" Rachel cut off, still not able to fathom it. "What was that?"

"I don't know," he muttered, eyes on the window.

"You know something." Still, he wouldn't look at her. Her stomach coiled into knots, and she sucked on her lip so hard it hurt. "Jason, you promised. You said you'd tell me whatever I wanted to know."

"And you said I was a liar."

"Honor among thieves," she said sharply. "Right?"

He winced. For the first time, she wondered if it was at her words or his shoulder. He shifted in his seat. His lips sealed shut. The barista called out someone's order. A patron entered, and someone else left.

Finally, he said quietly, "I'm sorry she scared you."

"Ana?" The admission cut Rachel like a knife to the stomach. The kid was freaky, sure, and that scream had been... Her hair fell into her eyes, head shaking. "But how? How does a person—?" Rachel didn't even have the words to ask.

"I don't know." He shrugged his good shoulder. "And you wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell you what I do."

The bloodcurdling scream rang in her ears, the sense of death, the endless, sharp misery in its tone a void dragging her deeper in. She wrapped her hands around her coffee, trying to borrow its warmth. "Tell me anyway."

Instead, he muttered, "We have to figure out how to get her back."

Rachel's nails dug into the foam. "She tried to kill me, and you want to drag her back?" She didn't know how Little Miss Creepy had done it—attempted murder by melody or whatever that was—though she supposed that was half the horror. It wouldn't tie her gut into so many knots if she understood it.

"I don't think she knows what she's doing." His fingertips pushed and flattened against the tabletop. "She never did it when we were kids. I didn't know she could do it. But she's been pushed and stretched and—" His hand flattened, pressed white against the table. "She can't handle this kind of stress."

So Little Miss Creepy really was some kind of thing, a curse waiting to be set loose. And all the running and shooting and—Rachel sucked her lip with a twinge of guilt—maybe even the gun she'd waved around had started to crack open the girl the curse was locked inside.

"But that gives her a free pass on trying to kill me?" Worse than that, she'd slithered inside Rachel's head, poisoned her thoughts, paralyzed her will, made Rachel hers. She shuddered, finally taking a sip of her drink, just to melt the chill growing inside her.

"No. No." His fingers twitched up, almost waving off her words. "But she's hit me and bitten me on this trip too. Not," he said, glancing over before Rachel could protest, "that it's the same thing. But I'm saying she doesn't normally act like this. She doesn't know what she's doing."

His eyes were intense, convicted in a way they hadn't been yesterday. Circles were starting to form beneath them. A muscle in his jaw twinged, the same way the Lost Boys' would when they were in pain and didn't want anyone to know. If Rachel was smart, she would leave. He didn't have anything left to offer her, and he was desperate. A scared, hard kid at the end of his rope.

Looking down, she took another sip of her coffee. "What happened with Sam?"

"We fought," he said, voice flint again. "He didn't want to tell me what he knew. Ended up blabbing a bit anyway, then freaked out when he heard the alarm. We fought some more." When Rachel glanced back up, Jason was staring out the window. "I think he was abused as a kid. Pretty bad."

The flat words had an edge to them. Rachel blew a breath over the top of her cup. She'd seen it enough before to agree. Some kids cracked and never grew back. Some hardened and never opened up again. Her eyes roamed over the angles of Jason's face. "Were you?"

His head twitched toward her sharply, his brow drawn. "No." He stared at her in consternation, as if baffled what would give her that idea, until she shrugged. He relaxed back into his window vigil. "No."

She did wonder, if it wasn't that, what made him the way he was. She felt like she'd seen at least three different versions of him: the scared, naive kid; the warm, charismatic protector; and this, the shut-up and shut-off calculator.

The first one, she was pretty sure now was an act. Getting shot at wasn't his favorite activity, sure. But he'd been snookering her, a pool shark setting her up for a bad bet.

The second version, she... wanted to be true, and that scared her. That version reminded her of Rafe—the best parts. Because sometimes his eyes looked like a promise. And she'd seen how fierce he was when it came to his sister. How sweet. She wanted someone to run after her right into danger, to stay in the hotseat for her, to stare down the cops like he was doing now.

He'd looked at Rachel like that a couple times already, like today at the gas station when he'd lied and said she couldn't be bought. But it was a nasty game of pretend. He didn't know her. He wanted something from her. That was all. She brought her coffee closer to her chest.

This third version—this tired boy staring tirelessly out the window, not sparing an unnecessary word or gesture or look—this she thought was real. And after all the lies, she deserved a bit of reality.

"Why'd you pull me out of the building?" she asked quietly. "When you thought the alarm might be legit?"

His eyes flicked to her, then back to his watchpost. "Why would I leave you behind?"

Her heart flittered, and she caught her breath. "You were worried about your sister," she pressed. "You could have torn out the front door. But you checked on me."

He shrugged. "I thought you might know something. I need you. And I guess I didn't love the thought of you burning up if the building was on fire."

The coils in her gut twisted tighter. She wished his words were written down so she could pore over them, could pick them apart, but all she had was right now, this tiny window, this one moment where he might maybe be telling her the truth.

"You keep saying that—you need me." She squeezed her cup so tight, the lid popped up. "You don't act like you need anyone."

She wanted him to look at her, to give her something, to see the truth he offered in his eyes and hold it in her hands. But the boy staring out the window looked hollowed out, like he didn't have anything left to give. Voice blank, he said, "I'd be locked up with Ana if it weren't for you."

"No." She sat her bent cup down. He didn't move, just stared dully out the window. She hesitated, but he looked so pitiful and hopeless, she laid her hand over his. "Listen. They'll put your sister in a Home. They're not going to lock her up."

Rachel, like a lot of orphans and runaways she knew, had done everything she could to stay out of those Homes, but they were better than jail. They were even better than the old foster system used to be—least that's what adults said. His sister would be fine.

His hand withdrew. "It's not the police chasing us."

Her brows drew. "But you said—"

"How dumb are you, Rachel?" Now he looked at her, fire blazing in his eyes. She drew back. "You said yourself I'm a liar. When are you going to realize not a thing I told you was true?" He took a swig of the coffee, made a face, and stood up. "Thanks. For your help." He paused, almost as if to say something else, then turned and walked out of the café.

Rachel blinked after him. Something surged within her, and she shoved to her feet.

"Excuse me!" she said as she pushed out the door behind him.

He glanced back, frowning as he pulled short. His eyes flicked over her like she wasn't supposed to exist.

"You don't just get to walk out!"

He turned away, shoulders hunched, sticking to the shadows as he walked away from their crime scene. "Why not?"

"Because you wrapped me up in all of this," she hissed, "and left me out to dry! My car's wrecked, my money's gone, and that creepy guy is still probably following us. Why else would they have shown up here?"

"He's not after us." His strides lengthened, forcing her to chase after him.

She snagged his wrist. He shook her off, and she spun around in front of him, stopping him with a hand on his chest. In a whisper, she said, "I just blew up a building because they were definitely after you!"

"It wasn't me they wanted," he growled.

"Says who?"

"Says my mom." He grabbed her wrist and tossed it away. "And they're gone. The cars that came for us, they left. The people in the crowd, watching, they left with them. They got what they came for."

"You don't know that. You wanted to watch—"

"The crowd has thinned out, the fire's dealt with, the police are mopping up. She's not there, Rachel." He grabbed her shoulders, the angry, desperate cut of his face looming over her. "Don't you get it? They got her. They got her because I couldn't keep her. She ran off—I let her run off—and the got her."

A boy in headphones glanced up at them only briefly before walking around. Rachel's throat tightened. Down the road, police still interviewed witnesses, and firefighters were winding up their hoses.

"Come on," she murmured. She slipped his hands, taking his elbow and pulling him around the corner. They walked and walked, and not even she was sure where she was taking them until a bit of greenery popped up between the towering buildings. She towed them over to a bench, and the street lights shone over them through the leaves of a tree, like bits of yellow rain.

Beside her, Jason sagged onto the wood. She folded her hands in her pocket, the money there crinkling. Her heart sank, mourning the rest hidden in the car, swarmed now with police. So much for a fresh start.

They sat there for a long time, the wind cutting through their hair and chilling their skin. A fountain tinkled. When Rachel watched it instead of the cars passing by, it was easy to pretend for a moment that they were the only ones in the city.

"Why are you still here?" Jason asked. His voice was as warm as the biting night, as full as the wisping wind—here, gone, empty. Head tilted back, he faced a starless sky.

She watched it with him. "I don't know."

He snorted, but there was no humor in it. It was an empty puff of breath. "I do."

"What does that even mean? You can't ask me and then say—"

"I know," he said, "because I engineered it, Rachel. I wanted you to care. And you do. Mission accomplished."

His dead voice sounded like a steel knife. Her lips curled, heat rising to the back of her neck. "Well aren't we all knowing?"

He sighed like the wind. She bit her tongue to stave off the burning in her eyes. He didn't say anything else. She wasn't sure whether that was a good or a bad thing.

"Look," she snapped. "We can't stay out here all night. You said you needed me. Did you mean it?"

"It doesn't matter, Rachel." He shook his head, and he winced.

She frowned. "Your arm is still bothering you."

"You shouldn't care about that."

"After saving your life," she drawled, "I guess I have a bit of a vested interest."

"You still don't get it."

Rachel tossed a pebble into the fountain. "I'm pretty much operating in the dark right now, even though someone promised to explain, so yeah. I'd say in the dark is about accurate."

He pressed his good hand to his face, one finger against the length of his nose. He looked for a second as if he might argue, but then he just closed his eyes. "I'm headed out to Arizona."

"That's... all the way across the country."

"Mm-hmm."

"Your sister was kidnapped here." She looked him over, trying to figure out if maybe the bullet had rattled a bit of his brains loose too.

"And I have no idea who took her or where. But there might be people willing to help me in Arizona."

"And you know this because...?"

"Something Sam said. The freaks in Arizona. Freaks," he said, eyeing her knowingly, "like my sister."

That scream echoed in Rachel's head. Her tongue tingled in metallic memory, and her jaw ached. Meeting more people like that wasn't exactly number one on her bucket list.

She looked past the fountain, out at the streets of the city. She didn't like it here either, though. And people would be looking for them soon. Between the breadcrumbs of dirty money, her stolen car, and the bomb she'd set off, Sunset Park was a hotspot she didn't really need to be in.

Still, they'd fought so hard to make it. Cars slogged by on the street, just like they had. After everything, it seemed wrong just to abandon—

Her eyes went wide. "Get down!" she hissed, tugging Jason off the bench. They lay on the ground, hidden behind the fountain.

"What is it?" Jason whispered.

"One of the cars that was blocking the road earlier. It's back." They lay for several heartbeats, the grass tickling their faces, until Rachel risked peeking over the fountain ledge. "They're gone now."

"They're scouting the area," Jason asked as he moved into a crouch beside her. "Aren't they?"

Rachel shrugged. "They might think you won't leave without your sister. So much for your theory. It's not just her they're after." They won't give up, and neither will Jason. She set her hand to the gun in her waistband. "If they're out looking, maybe you can use it against them. We could hide out in an alley, track them back to wherever they're keeping her—"

"No," Jason said. She looked over at him sharply. His eyes were scanning the road. "That might be exactly what they want me to do. They don't have any doubt they can pick me up. They're confident. Remember that guy waved at us?"

Rachel nodded.

"And with good reason, right? What am I going to do to them? If it weren't for you, and it weren't for"—his voice tripped a bit—"Ana, they would have caught me more than once. I don't have anything on them."

"That's not exactly a rousing speech. How do you want to get her back?"

He rose into a half-crouch, edging toward the next shadow. "By leaving her here."