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"He's got a thing."

Lila sets her mug down. "The whole pack's in a barn on Ferris Road right now deciding whether to hand you over to the coven."

The room gets very quiet.

I count the candles. Not on purpose. It's a thing I do while my brain catches up.

"How do you know that?"

"Maren."

"How do you know that, Lila?"

"Evelyn told me." She says it fast and easy, no gap in front of it. "She checked in on me last week because I'm the one person you talk to. She said things were escalating. She said the pack was going to have to make a call."

I’ve only met Evelyn Sorrell three times. She has never asked me one question about my friends. So how does she know who I talk to?

"Okay," I say.

Lila blinks. "Okay?"

"Okay."

She waits for me to keep going, and I don't, and the silence gets long enough that she has to fill it herself.

"Come stay at my place tonight."

There it is.

"Lila."

"Just tonight. One night. You get a bed and a lock and a friend, and nobody in a barn on Ferris Road gets to vote on you." She reaches over and takes my hand. Her fingers are cold. "I'll make you eat something. We'll drink wine."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I promised him I wouldn't open anything, and I'd have to open the door to leave."

It's a joke. It comes out of my mouth as a joke and lands in the room as something else entirely, and both of us hear it.

Lila lets go of my hand.

"You've known him for six months," she says.

"I've known you for three years."

"That's not the same thing."

"No," I agree. "It isn't."

She looks at me then, straight on, and there's a second where I'd swear she's about to say it, whatever it is, the thing she's been hiding. Her mouth opens.

I give her the space to do it. But, she doesn’t take it.

"Is there anything you want to tell me?"

And Lila Dane, who cried at my mother's funeral, who has a key to my house from before I ever moved to this street, says, "No."