“We thought you might have hypothermia,” Kitty explains, pink-faced, tucking her hair behind her ear.

Aiden stares at her.

“So, you’re – you’re feeling … okay?” I ask.

“I’m thirsty,” he says, his voice croaky, his eyes fused to Kitty’s.

“Right – that’s the um, Fretizine.” I turn and dig through my pack for a bottle of water and hold it out to him. He takes it without shifting his gaze. “Well. I’m thinking clothes might be in order. I brought a change for you.” I gesture at the pile on the second bed then grab the pack and shuffle to the bathroom, but Kitty doesn’t move. “Um … Kit? Clothes?”

She takes a few steps backwards to keep her body hidden behind the pillow and slips into the bathroom. I follow her in and close the door before collapsing against the wall. Relief and exhaustion loosen a valve inside me and hysterical laughter bubbles up, shaking my shoulders. I cover my mouth, eyes watering. Kitty buckles next to me, smothering her face, struggling to stifle her giggles. “Did you see his face?”

I press my finger to my lips. “I think he’s wondering if he’s been violated.”

Kitty slides down next to me. “Do you think he heard us?”

“I can hear you now,” Aiden’s voice carries softly through the wall.

Kitty gapes and then we’re writhing with laughter on the wet linoleum, trying and failing to keep our noise down.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “That’s better.”

SCALPEL

“You have twelve new messages …” I stab the “end” icon and swipe the screen. I don’t want to hear Miriam fuming on voicemail. It’s bad enough reading her text messages. Six, ranging from Where are you? to Tell me you’re not where I think you are and ending with Please, please don’t do this.

The weight pressing on my chest makes me curl in. My head hasn’t stopped spinning and my stomach rumbles, but I’m too nauseous to eat. It’s nearly three-thirty. Aiden was out almost two hours. The trains won’t start till five-thirty but we can’t sit here. If we can get him to Boston, he can take the first train to Virginia. I spread Pop’s map to the beach house flat on the bed beside me, ignoring the tremor in my hands.

“They know?” Aiden asks, swaying on the bed opposite, clamping the cotton swab to the crook of his elbow. His head nods, still groggy with the effects of Fretizine. Beside him a sealed baggie, containing the full syringe of his blood. It was the best I could come up with and I hope the lack of sterile equipment won’t corrupt the sample. But Doctor Sullivan had made do with Richard’s blood on my gym uniform and this had to be a purer sample than that. Aiden checks he’s stopped bleeding and pulls the sleeve of his new Dartmouth College sweatshirt down to his wrist. It’s way too big. So are the sweatpants. Incredibly, the sneakers fit.

I drop my phone on the map. “Miriam knows.”

“What will she do?” His words come slurred.

“Hopefully nothing.”

Aiden’s attention drifts towards the sound of the shower, his lips pressing together, that crease forming between his eyebrows that appears when Kitty speaks or looks directly at him.

“She won’t be long,” I say. “We’ll be on the road before four.”

He nods but the sound of the shower stopping distracts him. His head makes a slow swing back to me. “I got the impression she wasn’t going to be in on the law breaking.”

“I took her to the station.” I shrug. “Then she was here when we got back.”

“I don’t – that’s so … reckless. She shouldn’t be here. What if something goes wrong? What if she gets hurt? I mean, God, what if I–”

“Stop.” I put my hand on his knee, tilting my head to catch his fuzzy gaze. “We’re not doing this.”

“She should be repulsed by me,” he says, groaning, his speech as muddy as a drunk’s. He leans on his elbows, his head in his hands. “Why isn’t she repulsed?”

I can guess why. “She says you smell nice.”

He looks up slowly. “What does that mean?’

“Oh, hell,” Kitty’s muffled voice comes through the bathroom door then it bangs open and she stumbles out in her jeans and Watch yourself! T-shirt, wet hair dripping, clutching her phone. “Jamie knows. He knows.”

Reeling, I launch up and snatch the phone. The text message reads: You have a half-hour to return my call before I notify the AP. He sent it forty-five minutes ago. I slump on the side of the bed, stars popping in my peripheral vision, imagining him clocking up demerits, using illegal terminology, to cue a call from his Watcher. There’s no other way to contact them, they’re a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” organisation.

“I had my phone turned off,” Kitty whimpers, her voice high and thin. “And now it’s too late. They’re coming.”

I scroll back through the barrage of messages.

12.05 am: Where are you?

12.20 am: Answer your bloody phone!

12.21 am: Miriam called me at midnight looking for Evie. She said you were at the library together. Evie hasn’t come home. What’s going on?

12.43 am: I know you’re not at Lila’s. I called her. She says she hasn’t seen you since this morning and that you weren’t in class this afternoon. Where the f*&% are you? Are you with Evie?

12.56 am: Miriam just hung up on me! Now she won’t answer my calls. If I don’t hear from you in five minutes I am going over there.

2.03 am: F*&%! F*&%! F*&%! This is NOT happening. Tell me you aren’t with her.

Her.

2.13 am: I am begging you to call me. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you. Please, if you’re safe I won’t notify the AP. Tell her, I WON’T if you’ll just call me.

Breathing heavily through my nose, I’m about to pass the phone back to Kitty, about to tell her to call him, about to say maybe it’s not too late, when a new text comes through, making the phone vibrate in my hand. A long message.

It’s done. Tell her not to run - it will only make things worse. Stay with her till they find you. They will bring you home. Please be safe. Do NOT let her leave you alone with him under any circumstances. I cannot begin to fathom your actions after everything this family has been through. I won’t be home when you get here as AP will collect me tonight. They’ll take Miriam too. Barb and Dad know because I had to wake them and explain. I’m sure you can imagine how they are feeling right now. Be sure to tell your best friend what she has done and that I will hold her personally responsible for anything that happens to you.

I thrust the phone back into Kitty’s hands and stagger upright as she reads the new message.

“Affinity know,” Aiden says, barely a murmur.

I give an abrupt nod and snatch my pack, tipping it upside down, shaking the contents onto the bed – the medical kit tumbles out. I wrench the zipper open and riffle for the scalpel. The blade gleams in the lamplight and I turn to Kitty, pins and needles eviscerating my spine. “Cut my tracker out. Now.”

“You brought a scalpel?” Kitty cries, following me into the still steaming bathroom, holding the blade between her thumb and forefinger, away from her body. Aiden leans, milk white, in the doorway. Cotton pads and bandages, hastily snatched from the mess on the bed, are cupped in his hands.

Electric with terror, I knot my hair on top of my head and fold my collar back. I lean on the sticky vanity and close my eyes over the sink hole, the smell of something dead fuming from the drain. Ominous high-pitched ringing fills my ears. “The incision scar can’t have disappeared yet; I don’t heal that quickly. All you have to do is follow the red line, maybe a quarter-inch of blade.”

“All I have to do?”

My eyes spring open and the sink hole spins. “I’m not asking you to replace a heart valve.”

“No. Just to cut your bloody neck open!”