What would Tillie do?

I blinked at my reflection, hating the way my gunked-up eyelashes weighed down the lids. The offensive amount of mascara matched the loud scarlet on my lips.

This. She would have done this, one hundred percent.

I closed my eyes and drew myself up taller, searching for the confidence she would have carried.

As with every other time I looked inside myself, I found nothing.

Someone knocked at the front door, and even though it was softened by the distance to the bathroom, I still jumped. Donovan. It had to be.

I grabbed my phone from the kitchen counter as I raced by. Seven o'clock. He'd never said what time he'd pick me up for the bonfire, or even if he would, but I had to hope. No one had ever told me where it was.

"I'm ready," I said as I opened the door.

Clarissa arched an eyebrow at me. "Are you?"

I flushed. She wasn't the kind of person who had to look you over from head to toe. She took everything in at once and somehow never missed a detail.

"Bonfire?" she asked, stepping inside.

She strode to the middle of the kitchen and turned back to me, so calm and professional and well-dressed that I wished Donovan had at least given me the option of a bra.

"Bonfire," I confirmed.

"Perfect. That's what I was hoping."

"You were?"

On the one hand, I loved her for coming here all businesslike, keeping the breakdown she'd witnessed out of the open air. On the other, I hated her for breaking her promise that night.

"I figured Donovan might ask you, and even if he didn't, you'd probably end up there...somehow."

I didn't ask if somehow involved Ciar. I didn't want to know what she thought about that.

"Well he might come any minute, so you might want to cut to the chase," I said.

"Okay." She leaned against the island, rummaging in her pocket. "I'd like to take a second shot at what we tried in Provincetown."

I swallowed. "Like, spy?"

You idiot, that's literally what you came here for.

"I mean...sure. I'll try harder this time." I held out my hand, but Clarissa only showed me what was in hers, making no move to transfer ownership.

It was a hair clip, encrusted with stones that glinted a deep ruby. Subtle, but still not something from Donovan's bag. I wondered if it would fly as an accessory tonight.

Before I could bring up Donovan's arrangement, Clarissa closed the distance between us. My mouth popped open as she gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and held it there, her palm cupping my cheek.

"You can do this, Maisye. All right? Don't forget that." Her dark eyes widened, waiting for an answer.

I forced a nod. I couldn't bring myself to let her down again.

In an instant, she was Clarissa the FBI agent again, clipping my hair back and stepping back to check her handiwork.

"You look just like her," she murmured.

I looked at my feet. I knew that. I was counting on it. And yet it felt like a layer of dirt on my skin, something I couldn't wait to jump in the shower and scrub off.

Get used to it, or you'll lose Donovan in a heartbeat.

Clarissa's hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing lightly, and I listened to her heels rapping the wooden floor until the front door clicked shut again.

Silence. Alone.

My throat closed. What if Donovan didn't show up? What if he'd changed his mind?

Shut up and find something to do, before you go even more insane.

I trudged upstairs and slipped into the darkroom. The photos I'd developed a few days ago still hung from their clothespins, forgotten. I took them down one by one. Ciar at the lake, the bridge, assorted shots from the streets. As I unclipped the last one, I stopped.

In the foreground of the shot, a woman stood in profile. I didn't know how I'd missed her the first time. With her hoodie up, she stared toward the sky, searching.

In the bit of her face that stuck out of the cradle of her hood, I recognized the curve of my own nose, my own lips, and the glint of my eye just barely visible.

I hadn't taken this photo. Someone else had been with me that night.

Who?

No one had known I was out except for Ciar. Mark would have, too, if he'd bothered to pick up the damn phone. But even Ciar hadn't acted like we'd seen each other the night before. You sounded like you were having a hell of a time. He obviously hadn't been part of that time.

Was I stumbling drunk around a city I didn't even know, posing for strangers? Was that how low I'd sunk?

I closed my eyes and willed that night to replay itself on the inside of my lids. Remember.

Nothing. It was blank.

A creak behind me had me spinning around, my hair fanning in an arc before settling back around my shoulders.

It's just a creaky old house. Why are you so worked up?

Because this wouldn't be the first time.

Donovan's reaction to the break-in in Provincetown, though, had been to assume the intruder was after him, which made sense when the other two times, I'd been in his house. But why would they come here?

As I stepped toward the sound, Ciar's voice echoed in my head.

Death wish.

So what? I asked back, ignoring the pumping of my heart against my ribcage. I was only scared because I lacked control. If I confronted the stalker, I'd take it back.

"Hello?" I called.

The unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs pulled my feet in that direction. Two of the steps halfway down always creaked, each with slightly different pitches, and I heard them both now as I rounded the corner.

I caught a flash of blond at the bottom of the staircase and pounded down, taking them two at a time and nearly falling down the last five stairs. As I grappled with the railing, a tiny swish floated from the bedroom. Without thinking, I followed it.

All I found was an open window, its screen sitting against the wall below it.

Kind of them to leave it for me. It looked undamaged, and I wondered how much care it had taken to dislodge it so quietly and then pull it back inside.

I leaned out the window and peered into the tree that stood beside it. Its leaves fluttered innocently, busy photosynthesizing and minding their own business. Or possibly hiding someone in their depths?

I stuck my head further out and looked down. No one leaning flat against the siding, hoping not to be spotted.

I blinked, second-guessing everything. The creaks could have been the old house settling. God knew it did that every night. The flash of blond—a reflection of my own hair in the mirror at the foot of the stairs?

Hell, I wouldn't eliminate hallucinations as a possibility at this point. Whatever my feelings toward Mark right now, he had one thing right: my head wasn't screwed on straight.

A sharp rap shattered the silence, whirling me out of my thoughts as one word took over.

Donovan.

As quickly as I'd run after the ghost stalker, I raced for the door. If I'd been in my right mind, red flags might have sprung from all corners as I dropped everything for him.

But there was nothing. Only his blue eyes as they met mine, his blond hair styled into a perfectly windswept upswing.

He looked so goddamn much like Mark.

I wanted to reach out and touch him and take back the year and a half spent in Laurel Valley, the six months post-asylum as I refused to speak to him without lawyers present.

His wandering gaze stopped me. I twisted my hands, the threshold separating us as I waited for his approval. He did a full-body sweep, and then he stared into my eyes for a long moment before tapping his head.

I frowned, finally stepping cautiously out onto the porch. He hadn't told me to take a hike yet. As I pulled the door closed behind me, I thought that he ought to at least appreciate the fact that I hadn't decided to add my own bra to his macabre ensemble, as tempting as it had been.

Hell, I was even wearing her underwear.

A tiny flame caught the tinder deep in my belly. Her underwear. That meant he expected to see them tonight.

His hand brushed my hair, startling me, but his other one settled into the crook of my neck, holding me still. Something tugged at my scalp, and then he held up the ruby clip.

"What's this?"

"It..." I swallowed. "It matches the outfit. You don't like it?"

"It's not that, it's just—"

He pressed his lips together before he could finish the thought. It didn't matter. I already knew the end of it.

Don't let him leave that clip behind, Clarissa's voice ordered, as clearly as if she'd given me one of those fancy earpieces from every spy movie.

"Say it," I said. It was soft, intimate in our proximity, but it was also a challenge.

He looked down, maybe at the dwindling space between us, maybe making sure I'd gone along with his ridiculous bra-less dress code.

"Go on." I brought my thumb to his bottom lip, tracing its outline. "I already know. It's not going to change anything."

He finally raised his gaze again, and it glimmered with something like gratitude. I tilted my head. Had he really thought he was subtle? I had no illusions about who I was to him. Not Maisye. Tillie.

And maybe I didn't care, because a little bit of him was someone else to me, too.

His fist closed around the clip. "It's not hers."

Clarissa's voice gave me an imaginary slap between the shoulder blades. Wear. It.

I took his hand in both of mine, not quite prying his fingers apart but letting him know that I would. "It's new. No one has seen me wear it but you." And Clarissa. And possibly a stalker. "You're telling me she never bought new things?"

His eyelids fluttered, conflict flickering in the gaps. Logic battled lust and nostalgia. Unasked questions filled the night between us. Did he risk losing me over a silly hair clip, when the rest of me was Tilda? Or did he demand I become her—all of me, all of her, nothing more and nothing less?

One finger at a time, he opened his hand, until it lay flat in mine, offering the clip like a sacrifice.

The look in his eyes almost made me refuse to take it—the betrayed, mournful stare of a wounded animal—but the Clarissa in my head demanded that I stick to my mission.

He studied me as I fastened it again, somehow making me feel like the villain. As he took my hand and helped me down the steps, I had to remind myself that he was the one wanted by the FBI. He was the reason an agent was dead.

Hacking might seem like a clean desk job, but there was blood on his hands.

He opened my door for me, then closed it again after I had settled into the passenger's seat. I watched him through the windshield as he crossed the front of the car, sat down beside me, and smiled.

"Ready?"

Not in the slightest.

I nodded.