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“You could go home.” Erika’s words ring in my ears over the rumble of noise in the moderately busy diner, but I don’t look up at the girl I only knew as Doll Mask for the first few times I met her. My eyes drag up from my plate of fried eggs and toast, and I study her small, heart-shaped face set under blonde curls. In a way, she still looks like a doll. Even in a cardigan and long-sleeved tee over leggings and boots, there’s something delicate about her.

Not that she seemed very delicate when she was tying a bracelet of entrails around my wrist a month ago.

“Yeah, I tried that,” I mutter, eyes dropping back to my food. The orange in my hair is fading, and normally I would’ve replaced it by now. It irritates me every time I catch sight of it in the corner of my eye, and today is no different. Absently, I shove my hair back over my shoulder. That’s another problem for another day. Possibly another month . Hell, the new year is coming soon. Maybe I’ll worry about it then.

She doesn’t argue. But she’s not really eating, either. While I chop at my eggs lightly, she tears up the peels of oranges with her delicate fingers while her cup of black coffee steams at her elbow. “I don’t know how you drink that.” My casual remark is all I can really think to say, and I gesture with my fork at her coffee. My own iced coffee isn’t anywhere near black. Or brown. If I was being gracious, I’d call it beige.

If I’m honest, it’s more of an off-white color from all the cream and sweetened vanilla flavor in it.

“Because I don’t like to drink my sugar.” She grins at me, taking a sip of the black coffee, then another, before dropping an ice cube in it and setting it back down on the table. “Ever had bulletproof coffee?”

“Is that where you put butter in it, like some kind of psycho?”

“That’s how Sam drinks his. Pretty sure he picked it up from Kieran, actually.” At my bemused look, she adds, “ Nero, I suppose, is still the only way you know him.”

“He named himself after an awful emperor,” I remark. “Goes along with his awful taste in coffee, I guess.”

“His best friend is a Roman History professor in Ohio,” Erika snorts. “I can assure you he did it on purpose.”

Part of me wants to ask if this best friend knows what Nero—Sam—does in his spare time. But it’s not my business, and I’m not sure I want to open myself up for that kind of distraction from the conversation at hand. After all, any interest I have in them as a group stems from the two people I haven’t seen in a month.

The two people I really should want to get away from.

“So…” I stab my eggs again, loudly enough for the tap tap tap of metal on porcelain to be audible between us. “Are you going to tell me where they are, or am I going to have to learn how to become some sort of bloodhound?”

Erika snorts at that and finally eats a grape from her bowl of fruit. “I want to tell you no . I want to hope you’ll just go back home and be normal. You’re not like us,” she points out. “You know, none of us thought our lives would end up this way. None of us expected to be traveling around like modern nomads setting up—” she breaks off, and a second later our tired-looking waitress reappears with another glass of chocolate milk for me, and another cup of water for Erika. We both thank her, but she barely seems to hear as she follows her pre-mapped out route to another table a few feet away.

“Well, you know.” Erika shrugs, tugging her blonde curls behind her ear. “Your hair looks awful, by the way.”

“Rude. And I’d insult you back, but…” I look her over, head resting on my hand. “You look like you were expecting better company than me.” She’s dressed for a casual, if classy, date. I’m dressed like I fumbled around for my clothes in the dark.

Her smile is sweet and free of malice, making it hard to remember she’s a murderer, just like Kieran and Val. As kind and sweet as she is, and how easy she is to be around, I won’t let myself forget that she’s not afraid to kill to protect herself or them.

And I’m not quite sure if I’m part of the us right now. It makes me choose my words with care, trying to pull the worst of my sarcasm out of my words before speaking. She can’t be much older than me, if at all, yet she’s such an unknown factor that I refuse to let myself get too comfortable.

“I’ve been trying to let it go,” I go on, finally slumping back. “I thought they’d come back, and then I was glad they didn’t. Pretty sure you know what they did. What I did,” I correct, knowing I have to take some kind of responsibility if I want her to help me with what I’m asking. “I was so happy with every day that went by when they didn’t come back. For about a week, anyway.”

She doesn’t speak. Judging by the look in her big, doe-like brown eyes framed with long lashes, she’s waiting for me to go on.

And maybe I owe her that.

“But I kept trying, okay? I’ve been hanging out with my friends, working at the coffee shop…” I shrug my shoulders with a huff. “I don’t know. It’s not like I’m trying to find them to, you know, do something stupid.”

“Yeah you are,” she disagrees. “Because finding them at all is the stupid part. Especially when you could just pretend they never happened. Wipe that seventy-two hours out of your head and move on.” There’s something wistful in her voice. Something almost…regretful.

I wonder if she wishes she could do the same.

“They’re fine.” Erika surveys me as she says it, scrutinizing me for any reaction. But I don’t give her one, except to chew my lower lip thoughtfully.

“Is that you telling me they would rather I stay away?” It’s not the answer I’d expected or a possibility I’m prepared for. If they don’t want me there?—

But Erika snorts in spite of herself and offers me her first genuine smile of the morning. “Hardly. Before they left, Val was moaning and whining all over the place. Kieran had to drag him out by his shirt or he probably would’ve come to hide at your apartment. He likes your cats.” But there Erika stops and sits back. “If I don’t tell you, what will you do? If I do tell you, what then?”

The two part question catches me off guard. “If you tell me, I’m going to go find them,” I reply simply with a shrug. “If you don’t…” I trail off, because I don’t know what I’ll do.

Clearly, whatever it is I’m attempting to do now without them isn’t working out. So if she won’t tell me, then I guess I’ll have to suck it up and figure out something else.

It’d be too embarrassing to completely fall apart over two men who I met while they intended to murder me, after all.

When she doesn’t say anything, I hide my anxiety by once again mutilating my already destroyed eggs. As a last resort, I take a bite of the almost burnt toast, nose scrunching at the bitter taste even through the butter I layered on top that’s not even a little melted. Erika watches me and finally snorts before she once more settles back on her side of the booth. “Give me your number.” Her voice is quiet, almost resigned, and I don’t let myself get my hopes up as I recite it to her.

Seconds later, there’s an address popping up from an unknown number I save as her, and then a phone number after that.

“If you want my advice, don’t call that number,” she tells me. “I’d rather have the upper hand if I were you, for whatever you’re planning. And don’t try to, you know” She taps her knife, then her throat. “Because then you’d piss off the rest of us, and one of us would end up doing the same to you.”

Shaking my head at that, I shove my phone into my pocket again, while trying to figure out just how far the drive from here to the town she’d sent me is. Frankly, I’ve never heard of it and I have no idea if it’s an hours-long trek, or days.

I guess I’ll find out once I’m back at my apartment if the cats are going on vacation to Auntie Sienna’s house.

“Thank you,” I tell Erika again. “I really appreciate this, since you didn’t have to.”

“If I didn’t, it would’ve been for you,” Erika replies honestly. “I think you deserve something normal. But I also think you deserve the choice. Just because the rest of us didn’t really get one, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to make your own.” She taps her fingers on the table and I go back to my toast, suddenly not feeling quite so nervous or put out by the situation.

Our waitress comes back minutes later, as if magically summoned by the end of our conversation, and by the time I’ve taken care of the small bill for our meager breakfast, I’m itching to leave. To go home, change, and plan out this spontaneous road trip.

“Hey.” Before I can even stand up, Erika reaches out to grip my wrist, her dark eyes on mine. “Noa…” She hesitates, trailing off, then sighs. “They won’t change, you know? They can’t change. Not even if they love you. Can you handle that?”

I open my mouth, then close it. I definitely hadn’t been expecting the question, but Erika is proving she’s good at coming up with things out of left field.

“That’s what I want to find out,” I admit as I get to my feet, causing her hand to slide off of my arm. “One way or the other, I want to know the answer to that question, too.”