Graves crunched along behind me. I tried to ignore him. Good one, Dru. What the hell do you need him along for? He’s only going to drag you down. Or you’re going to drag him down.

But he caught up with me as we reached the end of the block, and I didn’t step away or try to keep ahead of him. He didn’t say another word for a long time, and while that was okay, I kind of wished he’d talk to me.

It might have stopped me from thinking scary, scary thoughts.

The coffee shop was one I’d never been in before, and it was jammed with people in heavy winter coats, the windows fogging with collective breath. I watched the street for a bit, Graves sitting across from me and fiddling with a paper cup, his legs stretched out and his knee bumping mine every once in a while until I shifted.

“All right,” I said, finally, when I’d watched the traffic moving on the street for long enough. I took a gulp of my hot chocolate, found it was cold. “We go over it again. I’m going up to that pay phone. I’m popping in the change and dialing. I’ll see who answers and play it by ear. As soon as I hang up, you get up and meet me up at the corner. If I walk up on the building side, you peel away, take the 34 bus, and meet me at my house in a few hours. If I walk up on the street side, it’s safe to act like you know me. Got it?”

I got an eye roll and a shrug in response. “I got it, I got it. Very James Bond. You really have been doing this a while.” He didn’t look at me, staring at the line going up to the counter. His face squinched up as if he tasted something bitter. “This place really reeks.”

I shrugged. It was just a regular chain coffee outlet, with hordes of overpriced crap crowding the shelves and rickety tables, the kids behind the counter scrambling to keep up with the nonfat, soy chai, double shot, sugar-free, dry foam, drip please, do you have a sugar substitute? People shuffled up to the counter, got their froofy java, and shuffled out the door, usually jabbering away on cell phones about something useless or meaningless.

None of them knew about the Real World. None of them were so scared their bones felt like water.

“They don’t have a clue.” I scooped up my not-so-hot-anymore chocolate and scraped my chair away from the table. My back still hurt, twinges running down either side of my spine like a river.

A lady the size of a pickup truck in a massive blue parka—so large she looked practically square from the back—manhandled her kid up to the counter. The poor kid looked about five, bundled up against the cold, a wide slick of snot running down his upper lip, which he kept wiping at with a crusted sleeve. He stared raptly at the wall below the counter as his mom jabbered at the tired-looking blonde girl behind the counter. The curve of the wall seemed to fascinate him, since it bulged out to hold the coffee machines off to their left, and he ran his mittened hand along it until his mother jerked him back like she wished she had a choke collar on him. He let out an indignant sound and she shook him the way a dog will shake a puppy, but without a mama dog’s gentleness.

My stomach turned into a cold lump. “Not a single goddamn clue,” I repeated, and tossed my still-full cup into the trash on my way out the door.

The cold was full of exhaust and a bitter metal tang that probably meant more snow. I crunched down the sidewalk—a sheet of deicer pellets that looked like blue rock salt lay unreeled in front of every downtown business—toward the pay phone. I was pretty sure it worked; it’d given me a dial tone earlier when we walked past toward the coffee shop.

I dug in my pocket for quarters and the number, copied onto a blank anonymous scrap of notepaper. I ran over the plan again, trying to look for weak spots or angles, anything I’d missed, and I suddenly wondered if Dad had ever felt this way. This responsible. Throat dry, stomach churning, worry like a diamond-eyed rat chewing inside my head with bright, sharp teeth.

When I was little, I used to think he could do anything. He’d show up at Gran’s every few months, sometimes with bruises or walking a little slow, and Gran would bake a cake, lay out a supper with everything he liked. It got to where I could tell when he was coming in by how early Gran got up and started cooking in the morning. She always knew before he would come bouncing up the washboard driveway, even though the house had no phone.

I remembered him picking me up and whirling around until I was dizzy while I shrieked with laughter in the front yard, a field of daisies and grass Gran hacked at with a machete every once in a while. Or him taking me out into the woods a little later and teaching me to shoot—first plinking with a BB gun, then with a .22 rifle, and last of all with a pistol and a shotgun. That was my twelfth summer, the one before Gran died.

I shook the memory away and stepped up to the half-booth. The mouthpiece slipped against my gloves, and I consoled myself that not a lot of germs would be able to live on it when it was this goddamn cold. I plugged the quarters in and dialed, then stuffed the paper back into my pocket. Leave no trace, Dru girl. Think about what you’re doing.

I waited, heart pounding, a nasty sour taste filling my throat up to my back teeth.

Ringing. The phone worked, at least. Two rings. Three. Four.

Someone picked up.

They didn’t say anything, though. Instead, there was the peculiar not-quite-dead sound of a line with someone breathing on the other end. I listened, counting off the seconds. There was faint, indecipherable noise in the background, like traffic.

One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.

There was a hissing sound, breath escaping between tongue and teeth, not quite whistling.

Six one thousand. Seven one thousand. Eight one thousand.

“Don’t hang up, little girl.” Male. Sounded pretty young, too, but something in the spacing of the words was off. Like an accent, and unlike.

My entire body flushed hot, then chilled. I tasted wax oranges and salt, but faintly. Nine one thousand. Ten one thousand.

“Quiet as a mouse.” There was a short, bitter little laugh, as if the guy at the other end had a mouthful of something foul. “Fine. When you’re ready for more answers, come find me. Corner of Burke and 72^nd. You can just walk right in.”

Fourteen one thousand. Fifteen one thousand. I jammed the receiver back down in its cradle and stepped back, breathing heavily, all my muscles threatening to turn into noodles. Jesus. Jesus Christ.

I glanced around. The dangerous taste of oranges intensified, coating my tongue. Shit. What now? My legs took care of moving me away from the phone, hugging the building side of the walk. There were even dry patches where the building overhangs kept the snow off.

I didn’t wait to see if Graves peeled off and headed for the bus. I hoped he’d be smart.

Burke and 72 ^nd. I had to find a map. The transit center would have one, and it was a good place to lose a tail. I wasn’t sure if someone was following, but the thick, clotted citrus filling my mouth warned me. Sometimes Real World baddies can get a lock on you even over the phone line, Dad said—hey, they were psychic, too. It was why we bothered being cautious about phone numbers—and my best bet was getting enough distance to confuse whoever it was.

There hadn’t been an inked cross, so it wasn’t a safe number. But he, whoever he was, might not know for sure it was me. Hopefully he wouldn’t know if Dad had given the number to another hunter, if there had been a backup, or just who I was.

Too much you don’t know, Dru. This might have been a mistake.