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“That may be true,” I said, my hands out. I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t know how, so I settled for touching the air around her. “But I have to at least try. And you can too. Please don’t sacrifice yourself for him.”

Cal laughed.

“Do you call it a sacrifice when you spit out the pit?”

She held up her tablet’s light to the next nameplate and slapped the wall in victory.

“I know my purpose,” she said. “If you still feel like you need to find yourself, by all means, prove me wrong. Become a full-blown saint. Repent, heal. But don’t put your existential nasal drip on me. I’m not here for the key, or any promised escape. I am nothing if not familiar with consequences, and still I am here for one thing. To kill him.”





LILY





“THANK YOU FOR COMING all the way to New Hampshire to get me,” Lily said when Gavin picked her up from the local diner, his front seat stained from an ice pop that had dripped down the chubby wrist of his little girl, and warm all over from the long ride. “Where should we go now?”

Lily had relaxed some during dinner; just the act of eating until she was full was so novel, it made her a little high. But now she didn’t know what she wanted. The thought of a motel room turned her stomach; all that anonymity felt like a step backward.

She wanted to go home, but she didn’t know what that meant.

“Hello to you too,” Gavin said, adjusting his mirror.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stroking the hair behind his ear. “Hello.” But when she leaned in to kiss him, he didn’t meet her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Gavin laughed. It sounded unlike any of his other, more inclusive laughs.

“You weren’t thinking about that before you told Silas everything, so why ask now?”

Lily froze. She had never heard Gavin talk like that. Like he was acquainted with spite. But, she realized, she hadn’t even thought about what this would mean for him.

“Shit, Gav,” she said. “I’m so sorry. He saw your text. And I thought—because of all the conversations we’ve had—I guess I wasn’t thinking, really. I can tell him it was all me; I could tell him you—”

“Stop,” he said, shaking his head. “What’s done is done.”

When he said nothing else, Lily made a conscious effort to suck every meager drop of comfort out of those words that she could. Even after she ate her fill, parts of her remained hungry.

“Why did you text me?” she asked, after the silence started to hurt. “It wasn’t in the code we came—”

“Don’t pin this on me,” Gavin said as he flicked on his turning signal and pulled onto the road heading north, back toward the house. But then he softened. “You’re right; I’m sorry. I think it’s just being here.”

Lily opened her mouth to ask why but caught herself just in time.

“Of course,” she said.

It was too dark to see the woods, let alone the lake. But it was there. After a few minutes, he pulled over and turned off the lights.

“I know this isn’t the best time for you, but I can’t leave until I see it.”

“What, exactly?” Lily asked. She had never noticed how suffocating the night could be. She thought about turning on the AC, cranking it up all the way even though the air outside was that of a perfect New England summer. She wanted to turn on everything in that car, until it flashed and honked and screamed. But when he opened his car door and she heard his shoes crack the pine needles of the woods’ floor, she knew, and she went out after him.





PEYOTE





THE AIR IN THE room both smelled and felt like soup. Not fresh soup, but rather a bowl left out in the sink, with the membrane that clings to the edges. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The sleeping body in the bed was not what I expected. I expected a bull of a man with the kind of smile that leaves its target feeling defiled, even from across a room. The kind of man who turns boys into soldiers without a war. The kind of man who could make a daughter like Cal. But this man was something else entirely. He was closer to a sack of flour than any of those things.

I looked at Cal’s face, and I could tell she was thrown too. When you live outside of time, it can be easy to forget how it passes on Earth. But here was the proof, sagged in front of us. Melted by it.

But she didn’t hesitate for long. She pushed down the comforter, which was hiked up to his chin like a child’s, and reached into the soft dough of his neck. When she felt it, she pulled. The leather strap gave easily, without waking him up.

Once it was in her fist, Cal seemed surprised. As if she hadn’t expected to get this far.

“I could still take it to Jason,” I said, watching her as much as the key. For such a desired object, it was very plain. It was the color of aged silver and ended in a trefoil, each of the three leaves punched with a perfect hole in the center. I can’t say I didn’t feel a flutter at finally seeing it, but ultimately, like most sought things, once found, it proved disappointing.

But not to Cal. She let the key spin in front of her for a moment before guiding it into her open palm, and didn’t answer.

“Cal?” I said, but she just stared. I was about to say her name again when she turned to me.