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Once the song is playing, Hunter takes off the headphones and gestures for us to follow him to the outer room. Another DJ has just shown up, a female.

She coughs and waves her hand around. “I see you’re still smoking.”

“I see you’re still a ray of sunshine,” Hunter says, then makes quick introductions. “Everly, this is DK and Arianette.”

She takes Damon in first, soaking in the dirty boots and wet jacket. The drop of ice cream on his jacket. “The other Baron and,” her eyes flick to mine, “the Baroness.”

“We got ice cream,” I blurt, immediately feeling dumb. She’s poised and polished, the kind of girl any guy would want to be with. The kind without piles of trauma, and a mouth that speaks too much, and a husband-to-be that hates her. She looks smart too, and not like she just spent the day crawling around the mud chasing ghosts.

I’m not sure she notices because she’s already turned back to Hunter. “That show was different from your usual moody introspectives.”

He shrugs. “Just using my platform to spread awareness and offer discourse on an important subject.”

Her eyebrow arches. “By encouraging peoplenotto go to the police.”

“Fuck the police,” Damon mutters, face twisting up. “They’ve had time and have done jack shit with it.”

I have a feeling she would love to argue a little bit more, but the song is winding down and her shift is starting. She steps inside without another word and shuts the door behind her, sealing us out.

“Any leads worth following?” Damon asks as he sinks into a chair, legs sprawled like he owns the place.

I perch on the arm next to him, still trying to ground myself.

“There was that one call about bones in the woods. That felt,” he searches for the word, “real.”

Damon leans back, rubbing a hand over his face. “We’ll check it. First thing tomorrow.”

“It’s already tomorrow,” Hunter grins, “you know that, right?”

Ares curls at his feet like a guardian. I stay still. Quiet. My skin still tingles from the woods, from the ice cream, from the warmth of Damon’s body in the car. I feel haunted. Hungry.

Hunter loops his bag over his shoulder, nodding toward us. “What about you two? Make any progress out at the river?” His eyes roam up and down my body, at Damon’s hoodie, at what I’m sure is disheveled, messy hair. “Other than falling in?”

I go still. Waiting. Bracing. Ready for Damon to tell him everything–how I cried in the woods, how I begged him without words and he made me forget everything with the tip of an arrow. Why my lips still ache. I know what I must look like.

Damon’s eyes flick to mine, unreadable. He shrugs. “Nothing we didn’t already know.”

That’s all.

Just that.

And somehow, that answer makes my chest hurt more than the truth ever could.

27

Hunter

I’m walkingout of statistics, sun glaring hard off the concrete, when I see her again.

Sofia Martinez.

She’s a graduate student and TA for my electrical engineering class. Smart, and serious in an ‘I’m busy and important’ way. She’s tough with grading and a stickler for not wasting her time in tutorial. I’ve never spoken to her outside of class, but the past few days I’ve caught her looking at me more than once.

This time she doesn’t look away.

"Hey," she says, falling into step beside me. “You’re Hunter Sorrin, right?”

Before my initiation, I roamed the campus incognito, no one realizing the guy next to them in class was on the radio at night. But after becoming a Baron, that gift of anonymity is no more. “I am.” I frown. “Is there something wrong with my project?”