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Callie and I looked at each other. A new wave of anxiety made the room feel too small.

“Comforting,” she said.

“And coming out?” I asked.

Damian paused. Kai grabbed another cord and started threading it.

“Same gully,” Damian said. “The beach pinches against the bluff as the water comes up. Past a certain point the gully’s the only exit.” His thumb found my wrist. “So leave when the tide says to leave.”

I swallowed. Callie had her thumb nail in her mouth.

The plan suddenly felt at least twice as complicated as it did half an hour ago.

“Now codes,” Kai said, resuming his lean against the counter.

“Codes?” Callie raised an eyebrow.

“For the drive up. They take our phones at the gate, so anything you get from us comes before that.” He counted them off on the counter. “‘Running late’ means the schedule’s slipped and you’ve got longer than you think. ‘Almost there’ means it’s moved up and you don’t. ‘Call you after’ means we’re blown and you get out of there immediately.” He stopped. “‘Call you after’ is the worst sentence in the English language.”

“And after the gate?” I said.

“After the gate, nothing’s coming,” he said. “You’ll be on your own clock in a hole in a cliff. Whatever happens up there, you won’t hear about it.”

There was a horrible quiet moment.

“So how do we know when he’s feeding?” I said, a hollow sinking beneath my ribs. “The whole point was to use these women as bait, not sacrifice them.”

“You don’t,” Damian said, flat and even. The voice he used for terrible truths. “Nine-thirty is the fallback. If you’ve heard nothing by nine-thirty, you start.”

“So we start blind,” I said. “In a dark cave.”

“You start knowing that we’ve done everything we can to delay if they’re running ahead of schedule, even if it means annoying the shit out of Aurora,” Kai said.

I looked at Callie again. The color had drained out of her face.

“Whatever happens up there,” Damian said, looking at Kai. “We’re not coming down that strand.”

Kai nodded, his gaze on Callie.

We all hated the plan. And it was the only plan we had.

Damian walked me to my car.

“We need to go to Branwen’s tonight,” he said, resting his hand on my hip. “I’ll be in the truck, same place as before, six o’clock. They all need to be there.”

“All of them?”

“She wants to talk to them. Tell them to be at Bayshore, north end by the garden center, six-thirty. We can pick them up in the parking lot. Everyone parking at your place draws attention.”

I drove back to work ignoring the reeds and the egrets and leaden sky. Tomorrow suffocated everything else. The more I thought about it, the more my body reacted as if it had already happened. I was already wearing it in my jaw, my shoulders, the hollow space beneath my ribs.

meet me at Bayshore at 6:30, I typed into the group chat.

Priya: you seriously want to go to Kohl’s right now

I never want to go to Kohl’s. look for an old white truck. we’re going to Branwen’s.

Callie: did they sign up