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“Good work getting him processed, Nova,” Otto Brady says cheerfully, giving the kitten a head rub before gently scooching him into the kennel.

A hint of a Yorkshire accent slips out on some of his affectionate words, even after three decades in the States.

Approaching middle age, he’s got the slightest dusting of gray at his temples and plenty of laugh lines around his face when he smiles.

“No fleas or ticks, no signs of malnourishment. I’d say Inky here is in reasonable health.

He put up with me poking and prodding him on the exam table without any fuss, too. ”

“Inky?” I ask, watching the kitten explore the padded cat bed, washable fleece blanket, and water dish.

Otto grins as he latches the door. “Well, someone had to name him.”

“What was wrong with my suggestions?” Austin asks, sounding indignant but looking like the before picture of a lint roller commercial, dog hair sticking on his black chino shorts and graphic anime tee. After dog grooming, he’s always wearing more hair than the brush.

I raise an eyebrow. “You wanted to call him Bagheera? Wednesday? Salem?”

“Kids.” Otto’s being serious now, which he almost never is. “I know it’s tempting, but let’s remember that cute names help get our animals adopted.”

“Toothless was cute!” I protest. “So was Poe. And Diablo!”

“Isn’t that Spanish for devil?” Austin picks at his shirt, gathering hair into his palm.

I shoot him a withering glare that conveys exactly how helpful his comment is.

“Thank you, Austin,” says Otto. “Unfair as it is, the names we give strays like Inky create an impression. Our goal is to find their forever homes.”

The weekend before Halloween, the shelter organizes a parade down Main Street for our cute costumed canines.

It’s our chance to show off their leash training and how well socialized they are with other dogs and humans.

Each year, without fail, we successfully rehome every dog and most of the cats in the shelter, even the ones that are harder to adopt, like elderly schnauzers whose humans went into assisted living with a no-pets policy, cats with cataracts, and bulldogs with bladder control issues.

I make a face. “Please don’t wear your ‘I’d shove you in front of a zombie to save my dog’ tee to the parade again.”

“Hey, it was Otto approved! And it was ‘I’d throw you to the zombies to save my dog,’ thank you very much. Get it right, Nova.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for not remembering the exact phrasing. Guess I was too busy fixating on the fact that in the event of an apocalypse, my best friend would let the undead chow down on me.”

“Hey, it’s not just you. Anyone.”

Our shift over, we say our goodbyes to Otto and head out. I cast my eyes to the sky, to the ominous scowling clouds and the swoop of blackbirds overhead. “Please save me from my best friend’s disastrous fashion sense and even worse sense of humor.”

Austin grins. “You just haven’t met the right graphic tee yet, Little Miss Dark Academia.”

“I know you don’t mean that as a compliment, but you can’t stop me from taking it as one,” I say primly, walking faster so he has to break into a jog to catch up.

Can’t lie, I do like my thrifted tweed blazers with the shoulder pads and the elbow patches and the silk lining.

Pair them with chunky loafers or block-heel boots for some height—perfect.

Summer is hell without the comfort of my slouchy sweatshirts and cozy cardigans and pleated miniskirts with black lace-up boots and knee socks.

And if all those items tend to skew to a more or less monochrome color palette, what’s so wrong with that?

When most of your stuff is black, tan, cream, mulberry, or juniper, everything matches, so there’s no early-morning rush to dig through my closet for something to wear to school, which gets me a few extra minutes of sleep.

Austin bumps my arm, making sure not to step on a crack in the sidewalk. “All jokes aside, thanks for coming out with us last night. First day of the festival. After so long.” He clears his throat. “I’m glad you were there.”

I give him a look. “You don’t have to thank me for hanging out with my best friends.”

“But it was hard for you,” he says gently. “I don’t want to ignore that.”

That’s true, and there’s little point pretending otherwise, so I just nod.

I didn’t want to spoil last night by telling them what Mom was planning to do.

Talking about it makes it real. Maybe that’s why she hid it from me for so long.

But also, I know that Shane is a sore spot for Austin.

He’d cheated on their family a year before he disappeared, and while Austin doesn’t really remember, his parents never worked through it.

His mom started dating again when we were twelve, and he’s been more or less okay with it.

Does it make me a bad person that I wouldn’t be? I don’t want Mom to be alone. I know human beings need companionship. But the idea of that person being anyone other than Dad…

Austin must sense I’m ready to change the subject. “I think that’s the longest I’ve ever seen you and Kiara hold a conversation. What was it, twenty minutes?”

“Shut up. No.”

He fake gasps. “You mean it was thirty ?”

“I can’t believe I let you eat the rest of my cotton candy last night,” I groan. “For your information, she was the chatty one.” I can trust him to be honest to a fault, so I know he’ll give it to me straight when I ask, casually as I can, “Have you ever heard of, um, bad luck hounding a person?”

His grandma runs the most popular apothecary in town and is a font of local folklore and superstitious stories that all happened to someone she knows, or—in the event of their death thanks to aforementioned superstition— knew .

Austin is less superstitious than most in Prior’s End, but he doesn’t dismiss it, either.

“Hounding?” His brows furrow. “I guess we’ve all had those days when everything seems to go wrong.

Like you forget to set your alarm for school on Monday, you sleep in, then you hit every red light on the drive over, and just when you think you’re going to make it to first period on time, you get busted for running in the hall by the vice principal. Like that?”

I blink. “Uh…not exactly.”

I fill him in on what’s happened to Kiara since last night. I keep it short since I’ll have to repeat it again when we get to Caroline’s house for lunch.

She loves food that resembles other food, like fried egg gummies and zucchini noodles, and we’re heading over to her place now for her latest obsession, garlic bread pizza.

My stomach gives a hungry lurch. I’m so distracted by thoughts of crusty bread and gooey cheese that I almost miss Austin’s grin.

“And now you’re worried about her?” He makes an obnoxious awwwww noise. Seeing my grumpy frown, he takes pity on me, his face softening. “I doubt your bullshit had anything to do with it, Nova. But even if it did, Grandma says bad luck comes in threes, so it’s probably run its course already.”

“How do you figure?”

As we turn onto Caroline’s street, her house coming into view, he counts off on his fingers. “One, the bizarre incident with her cardigan coming apart. Two, poking herself with the mascara wand. Three…”

“There is no three!”

“What do you call a black cat crossing her path?”

“He didn’t, though. Hikers found him.”

Austin laughs. “Don’t be so literal. I don’t think bad luck is that picky. It takes what it gets.”

“So as long as nothing else bad happens, I’m off the hook?”

“I mean, it’s not like I have a PhD on the subject, but—hey, why are you so concerned anyway? I thought you didn’t really believe in superstition.”

Flustered, I frown. “I didn’t. I don’t. It was just weird, okay? I’ve never seen her be anything less than fully put together, and I think if she spent even five more minutes in my presence, she’d have, like, erupted in fiery red zits or something, it was that weird.”

He doesn’t look like he believes me, but he nods. “Well, there you go. Three events. Kiara’s run of bad luck is over. Everything will go back to normal now.”