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She blinked as if snapping out of a trance. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what... what did I just say?”

“Quite a bit,” Bryony replied, looking intently at her. “You can hear it, can’t you?”

“Sometimes,” she murmured. “It whispers. Sometimes I can hear. Sometimes I understand. It’s louder now.”

Desmond gave an unsettled chuckle. “Come on, guys. This is all a bit dire, isn’t it? Seriously, Helen, no Master of Harrow has ever gotten gobbled up. They’ve all lived super long lives and died of old age. Except Leopold, I guess, but a bad heart is basically old age. You should just be enjoying yourself.”

“Enjoying myself?” I asked.

Desmond’s eye glinted. “Yeah. Relax. Drink. Try this: never have I ever... kissed a boy.”

“That’snotwhat we’re doing,” Celia squeaked. But she drank. So did Bryony. A spike of disappointment went through me. Did that mean she only kissed boys? Did that mean she didn’t want to kiss me? Of course she didn’t want to kiss me.

Desmond smiled, then gave a shrug and took a drink as well.

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Celia said. “You were lying? Youhavekissed a boy?”

“I just wanted to know if you had,” Desmond said, winking at her.

“Who did you kiss?” she demanded.

“Marcus Hollins,” he answered, exaggerating his enunciation. “It was a fine kiss, he’s very sweet—turns out I’m not into dudes. Who’dyoukiss?”

“I also kissed Marcus Hollins,” Celia said. She was beet red but tipped her chin up.

“You kissed the same guy?” I asked, incredulous.

“The boy’s objectively gorgeous,” Desmond pointed out, not the least bit defensive.

“But so, so dense,” Celia lamented. Then she gave Desmond a pointed look. “I’venever kissed a girl. And that’snota lie, unlike yours, you lying liar who lies.”

Desmond laughed and drank, and Bryony—Bryony, looking straight at me, took a dainty sip.

I almost crumpled the plastic cup in my hands.

“Wait, have you never kissed anyone?” Desmond asked me.

I shrugged. “I don’t really interact with humanity. People find me weird.”

“We don’t,” Celia said.

“We have a pretty high threshold for weird, granted,” Desmond pointed out.

The warmth spreading through me wasn’t just the booze.

“We are so completely off topic,” Desmond said, but he was grinning. “But I’m not sure what we can tell you to help. We don’t know what the fundamentalnatureof this thing is.”

“Well,” Bryony said, her smoky voice breaking through the jovial mood, “we could just ask it.”

16

WE ALL STAREDat Bryony. She shrugged. “You all want to know what lies within Harrow’s walls, but none of you have asked the thing itself, have you?”

“How the hell would we?” Desmond asked with a nervous laugh.

“It speaks through the figments,” Bryony said. “They’re the part of it that talks to people. About something other than whether it’s allowed to eat them, I mean.” She flashed a little smile at me, and my stomach flipped. Her eyes glinted gold and green in the light of the dancing flames.

“Can we do that?” I asked. “Call it up?”