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“In case you get thirsty,” he says.

I take it. Our fingers don’t touch. He made sure of that.

“Do you have everything you need?”

“I think so.” I hold the glass in both hands. “Merek. Thank you.”

He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out of it. He closes it again and nods, and when he does speak, his voice is low and rough.

“You’re welcome.”

The end of my braid is dripping down the front of his shirt. He looks at it, and then he lifts one hand, slowly enough that I could step back if I wanted.

I don’t.

He catches the braid with two fingers and lays it back over my shoulder, behind me, out of the way. His knuckle brushes my collarbone as he does it. It’s barely anything. I can still feel it after he’s taken his hand away.

He steps back.

“I’m across the hall,” he says. “If you need anything, knock. If you want to leave, the keys to the truck are on the hook by the front door. You don’t need to wake me up.”

“Goodnight, Merek.”

“Goodnight, Tara.”

I close the door. I don’t lock it. I stand there with my hand on the knob and think about that, and then I leave it the way it is and get into bed.

Billy Bob has the middle and all of the pillows. I take the ten inches he’s left me on the edge and pull the duvet up. The sheets are clean and cool, and the room is warm, and rain is coming down soft through the trees outside the window.

The collar of his shirt is up against my face. I fall asleep breathing it in.

When I wake up, there’s sunlight on the ceiling, and the ceiling is made of wood.

For a few seconds, I have no idea where I am. The ceiling in my car is gray fabric a foot from my nose. This one is high and pale, with light moving across it through the branches.

Billy Bob’s paw is in my face.

I move it. He doesn’t wake up.

Then it comes back to me in pieces. The knock on the window. Rain hissing on his shoulders. My arm around his neck, my hand on his horn, a basset hound in his other arm, the two of us being carried across a parking lot at four in the morning like groceries.

I look down. I’m still wearing his shirt.

I put my hands over my face.

My phone is buzzing on the nightstand, where I plugged it in last night with my eyes half shut.

The screen says 12:06.

Noon. Dez’s office. Lenart said noon, and I’m twenty minutes away, in the woods, in a demon’s shirt, with no car.

There’s a text. It’s from the number Lenart put in my phone on the sidewalk outside the Club, the night this all started.

Merek tells me you’re at his house. We need to talk. All five of us.

I read it twice.

He told Lenart. Of course he told Lenart. Sometime between leaving my door and this morning, Merek picked up his phone and told him where I was, and probably how he found me, and now all four of them know.