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My mouth curled bitterly into an admission of truth “No, but I would’ve found it Mrs Fletcher still owes us five hundred for doing her roof We could’ve hit her up for—”

“Mrs Fletcher doesn’t have a pot to piss in,” said Chase “Sweet old lady, but she’s broke and you know it”

I shooktogether Or one to see him, or—”

“Going to see him is a bad idea,” Chase spat

“Why?”

He finished his water and fired the glass across the s the rest of the debris in the center of our living room

“Because the next ti face off,” Chase spat

Twenty-One

MADISON

“So yeah, this is why she doesn’t sleep alone,” said Julian “Not anyreed?”

Noah and Chase nodded their heads quickly and definitively, after the stone over the events of last night Detailed everything frohttime visitor, to our failed foot-chase

“And that’s where he — I mean it — disappeared?”

Chase was pointing directly into the forest Julian had led us out here, to the edge of the field Right at the spot where the intruder had vanished into the trees

“I chased it a good hundred yards through there, until the path disappeared,” Julian acknowledged “It was dark I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t fit”

My other two lovers peered curiously into the dense undergrowth Even in the daylight, the forest was thick with shade and shadow