“Do you really think I could get into college?” I ask Church as I set my books aside and look over at him, bathed in the dim light from the lamp next to his bed. We each have wall-mounted electric fireplaces on the walls at the end of our beds, burning cheerily to ward off the cold weather outside.

While I work on Mr. Murphy’s stupid English assignment, Church has blown through his homework and moved onto Jenica’s journal pages. He tackles them like he does everything else in life: like he’s on a life or death mission. In this case, however, it’s pretty damn literal.

“Name the college, and I’ll see that you get in,” he murmurs, circling things on the screen of his iPad. He’s scanned all the pages in, so he can play around with them and make notes. The real ones are tucked back in Jenica’s journal and stored in a small safe in Ranger and Spencer’s room. Church pauses briefly to look up at me, sitting on my bed in my glasses and paint-spattered sweats. The boys keep trying to buy me new pajamas, but what they don’t understand is that I like these ones. They’re comfy, and they’re lived-in. When I put them on, I think about my aunt Elisa, and how she lured me over to her house with pizza and light beer to get me to help paint her living room wall purple. Money can buy new pj’s, but it can’t give me a flood of happy memories the way these sweatpants can. “Provided, of course, that you keep your grades up.”

“I don’t want to buy my way in,” I say, wondering what his plans are for graduation, wondering how it’s going to feel to give back this ring and disappoint his parents, his sisters … myself. I exhale and stand up, moving over to sit down on the end of his bed. “Let me guess? You’re going to Harvard or Stanford or Oxford or something. Old money, fancy school.”

Church doesn’t bother answering. Instead, he just gives me another one of those blinding smiles, the ones he learned from his family.

“Maybe. Why? Is that where you want to go? As husband and wife, we should probably attend the same university.”

I grab one of his discarded, fancy-pants pillows, and smack him with it.

“You’re impossible, you know that?” I sigh and tuck the pillow close to my chest, eyeing the Jenica notes and wondering if there’s anything new there that he hasn’t told us. Sometimes, I get the idea that he tries to do a lot of things alone. “When are you going to tell them?”

“Tell who, and what? Do we need to talk about clarifying subjects, my darling?”

My eye twitches, but I’m not going to be phased by a little verbal whiplash.

“The boys. Your fellow Student Council members.” At least, Student Council members for now, maybe not at the end of the quarter, and after the stupid elections. “When are you going to tell them about being adopted?”

“I wasn’t planning on telling them at all,” Church says, circling a name on the screen. Libby. Who the hell is Libby? I mean, besides the awful girl that carried around a stone with a cult symbol on it, and bullied poor Jenica. “You’re the only one I want to tell. I love the boys, but there are just some things a man should share with his wife and no one else, don’t you think?”

My cheeks flush, but in that small room, with the roaring fireplaces, and the storm outside, it feels awfully cozy and intimate; if I give into my embarrassment, I may very well shrivel up and die. So I try humor as a deflection technique.

“If we’re really going to be husband and wife, then why haven’t you put the moves on me yet? I mean, we are sharing a room and all. The opportunities for seduction are ample.”

Church sets his iPad aside for a moment and looks me over, studying me with such careful precision that I’m surprised he didn’t figure my secret out sooner. He doesn’t miss a damn thing.

“When your father was writing me up and, might I add, tarnishing my perfect academic record, he made sure to let me know that if I laid a finger on you, he’d expel me, and that he didn’t care who my parents were.” Church’s mouth lifts into a smile. “He cares about you, you know that, right?”

“Then why is he such a goddamn dick all the time?” I groan, hiding my face in the pillow.

“He wants to protect you, but he doesn’t know how. And I don’t just mean with this cult thing, I mean in life.” Church sighs and scrubs a hand over his face as I look up, reaching out to pull the iPad toward me.

Next to the circled Libby, is the last name McConnell.

It’s a name I’m really, really starting to dislike hearing.

“Libby is Selena and Gareth’s sister?” I ask, switching the subject the way Church usually does, from personal to business. He glances over at the iPad and frowns, that ice creeping back into his expression again.

“She is.”

“So … could Selena be our female attacker then?” I venture, wondering if all the clues add up. “I mean, that’s a lot of coincidences—her brother running for Student Council, her sister being mentioned in the journal, and her showing up at the hot springs.”

“I’m leaning more toward Aster, to be honest with you.” Church sits up, crossing his legs in front of him. My eyes rove a bit past his ankle to the bit of calf muscle showing beneath his pants, making me feel like some sort of Victorian pervert. Dear me, I saw a flash of ankle! How scandalous. “But mostly because they’re both connected to Mark. The twins are right: he’s guilty.”

“Are we saying that because he’s a total waste of life? Or because you know something you’re not telling me?”

“It’s just a hunch,” Church says, reaching over and shutting the screen of the iPad off. After a brief pause, he leans in and brushes a gentle kiss across my forehead. “Now get to bed. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

I slink back to my own bed, but not without wondering what Church might do if I tried to crawl under the covers beside him.

I decide I’m too scared to risk rejection and end up falling asleep to dreams of amber eyes, aristocratic fingers, and smiles that are just for me.

“Girl,” Ross starts, eyeing my costume with a twitching brow from his position on the other side of my phone screen. I decided after much thought that instead of going with the usual short skirt, crop top, racy Halloween garb I’ve worn in the past, that I’d rather go as Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher. Ross gestures up and down, indicating my padded shoulders, long gray wig, and faux beard with a quirked lip. “You had a dramatic coming out of the closet moment to go from boy to girl, and now you’re all dressed up as a man with a big dick?” Ross leans in and squints at the screen, pointing in the general direction of my crotch where, of course, I’ve stuffed the packer penis. We’re close now, me and this floppy silicone dick. “All I can say is—I approve.”

He leans back and smirks at me, lips curved up beneath the red-brown hairs of a faux mustache. Ross McCubbin, former assistant to the Adamson Student Council boys, rainbow unicorn extraordinaire, and surprising new friend of mine. He graduated last year and is now going to school in California while dating his new online love match, Andrew Payson (who’s actually still a senior in high school which totally makes Ross a perv).

They’re living it up in SoCal, dressed up as Darryl Whitefeather and Josh Wilson (aka White Josh) from the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for Halloween. I accused Ross of making the costumes too easy—he’s essentially wearing a suit and his boyfriend Andrew has on a tank top, board shorts, and flip-flops for crap’s sake—but he shut me down quick and said their costumes were more about character than appearance.