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I turn and climb my stairs, keeping one eye on him to make sure he doesn’t follow me. Sensing my stare, Sasha makes a show of crossing his arms and dropping back to lean against my house.

“I found the cookies,” Leo announces as soon as he sees me. He’s got crumbs all around his mouth and on his shirt, my table, the floor … and he’s already made his way through half of them.

“Pace yourself, or you’ll be too sluggish if you’re attacked.”

“Are you going to attack me?”

“You never know.”

He huffs and shoves a hand in the jar for another one before jumping off the chair. “Who were you talking to?”

I chew the side of my cheek as I grab a glass and fill it from the water in my fridge. “A … person.” I can’t exactly call him a sitting target in front of Leo, can I?

“What’s their name?”

“Sasha.”

“What’s their favorite knife?”

I think of the one Sasha stole when he first crept into Wilde’s End. “The cleaver.”

“What’s their favorite color?”

That makes me bristle and turn around. Leo’s standing there, munching on the cookie, looking mildly curious as he always does, but the odd question has thrown up alarms. My cubs don’t care about mundane things like that. Is it really Leo? Or did a mimic somehow infiltrate my home? I glance back over at the open doorway and where the salt line is still intact. “Why do you ask?”

“My favorite color is green. Do you think he likes green? Or maybe orange. Nixon likes orange, and all of his T-shirts are orange …”

The more Leo talks, the looser my suspicion gets. Not even the most sinister fairy can talk so much about nothing the way a five-year-old does. “Go ask him yourself,” I say, cutting Leo off before he can ask something as useless as my favorite color.

Which is a pointless thing to have anyway.

“Can you come with me?”

I almost sigh. For all the training I’ve done to make him self-sufficient, he’s still skin-chillingly needy. I’m obviously not going to leave him alone with the outsider, but he shouldn’t be asking for protection. “Fine.”

Sasha’s still waiting where I left him, and he takes the water without a word. Doesn’t even think to ask if I’ve poisoned it, just greedily drinks it down.

“You’re going to die,” I point out.

He chokes on his sip, and when he lowers the glass, his eyes are daggers behind it. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. It’s a prediction.”

“Some prediction. We’re all going to die.”

“Yes, but most of us at least fight to live.”

Those unnervingly bright eyes meet mine. “What makes you think I don’t?”

“You trust people. It’s a terrible habit.”

“Maybe I can just read them really well.”

Considering he’s still here talking to me, I doubt it. I break eye contact, shifting my weight to the other leg as my hand closes over the machete handle. It feels good. Centering. Like the world is right again.

“What’s your favorite color?” Leo asks, catching up to me. “And do you like chocolate? We don’t get it very much, but Nixon always asks Rooney for it. I think Nixon likes chocolate too much. I like it a little bit, but I think strawberries are better.”

“I like chocolate,” Sasha answers, tone wary with suspicion. “And the color red.”