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"I'm a Byrne soul. Apparently that makes me the most expensive thing on the continent. Danika told me that when I was fifteen, and I thought she was full of shit."

The shine that appeared in Sissily's eyes made me wish she'd stayed angry. She folded her arms tightly across herself and took a breath that didn't seem to help.

"Tell me the rest."

"Sissily…"

"You've got a whole speech. I can see it sitting behind your teeth, so let me hear the rest."

I wished she didn't know me well enough to see it. But she did.

So, standing in a kitchen with hundreds of dollars' worth of Amber's pastries under dish towels and a nine-year-old's crayon drawing taped crookedly to the refrigerator, I told my best friend that I was going back to Cleveland on Sunday. I told her I intended to offer Danika a straight trade: my soul for her contract, with the sanction against the Greywoods lifted in writing and the Council forced to witness the agreement. Danika was running out of time, which meant for once in my life I had something my grandmother desperately needed and not enough days left for her to spend a month manipulating me to get it.

I told Sissily I'd worked out the terms in the truck. I told her it could work for the greater good.

When I finished, she stood there so quietly that I could hear voices outside through the closed kitchen window. Then she wiped beneath one eye with the heel of her hand and looked at me with an expression I had no idea what to do with.

"You know what the worst part is?"

"Enlighten me."

"You're not even doing it to be noble." Her voice cracked, and she stopped long enough to swallow before continuing. "You're doing it because it's efficient. You looked at everything that's wrong, figured out what all of it costs, and decided you were the cheapest way to pay."

The answer I'd been preparing died halfway through her tirade.

"I've watched you do this since we were kids, Hazel. Every time something goes wrong, you start looking around for what you can throw at it. Money, shoes, blood, whatever you happen to have. And when none of those things are enough, you offer yourself."

"Sissily…"

"I'm not finished." She lifted a shaking hand between us, then seemed to notice it was shaking and closed her fingers into a fist. "You always think there'll be more of you afterward. That's the part that scares the hell out of me. Because one day there won't be, and I'd very much like not to be standing here when you finally discover that."

For one horrible second, I saw myself the way she did.

Not noble. Not brave. Not even particularly selfless. Just somebody who couldn't stand looking at a problem without reaching into her own pockets to see what she could tear out and throw at it. It made me sound pathetic.

I looked away first.

Before I could find anything worth saying to change the subject, a male voice rose somewhere outside.

Alex Greywood didn't shout. I'd seen him furious enough to frighten people twice his size, and he rarely needed anything louder than a normal speaking voice to accomplish it. But there was an octave that male could drop into that traveled through walls, and we felt it through two of them and a closed window. Every dish in the drying rack rattled once in its slot.

Sissily and I turned toward the sound at the same time.

"That'll be River," I told my best friend.

Her attention snapped back to me. "What did he do?"

"Something he should have told Alex long time ago."

She waited for the rest.

I reached for her abandoned mug and took a sip, immediately regretting it. Whatever had been inside was cold, bitter, and possibly not intended for human consumption.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"It isn't mine to tell." I put the mug back where I'd found it. I was grateful Sissily didn't press for more.

Alex found me an hour later sitting on the back steps.