an; here's a huge, messy chapter that I didn't spend a lot of time editing BUT ENJOY

Matt pulled himself from the elevator doors like he was walking through a pit of sinking sand. He'd had so much to drink, but drunk wasn't a state of mind he accomplished easily. It took a good splash of his dad's Yukon Jack to really do him in before the buzz wore off. To top it off, he never really liked the taste of liquor. Not after that party in high school, when he was dared to eat the worm wading around in the bottom of a Mezcal bottle.

He liked beer though. Beer was good, and he'd had a lot of it tonight. But he felt sick now and all he wanted was sleep.

He gave Jaylin's door a turn, but it'd been locked from the inside and no amount of knocking or jiggling the handle or throwing his shoulder to the door was doing anything to wake Jaylin up.

That was when he'd heard a soft sound and caught the single streak of light that bled from Tisper's room. He followed the light and gave the door a knock. It swung in on its own.

Tisper sat in the center of her bed, a bottle of wine in her lap. She'd traded her dress for leggings and a t-shirt, washed her face of her makeup until only a bit of black smudged around her eyes. She looked a little sick, just like him.

"Tisper?" He stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. "What's wrong? And did you steal that from the reception?"

She shrugged and brought the bottle to her lips, taking a drink larger than she could handle. He could tell by how she winced and wiped her mouth on her palm.

"How can people live their entire lives alone, Matt?"

He suddenly felt itchy in his suit. "What?"

"There has to be someone out there who's lived and died completely alone. No friends, no family, no lovers. Just them, and then... poof. Erased from history."

"What's going on? This doesn't sound like you." Tisper drank again, and Matt took a seat on the side of the bed. "Come on. This ain't gonna help you."

She let him take the wine from her and he set it aside on the nightstand. But when he looked back, Matt felt split with guilt. It was like he'd taken candy from a baby.

Her lip was quivering, her chin wrinkling the way it did every time a Sarah Mclachlan commercial played on television. Then she started to cry—outright, no stifling it or squashing it, but crying with everything she had. Crying like she just needed to.

Matt moved to sit beside her, running a hand down the back of her hair, still sticky with hair spray. "Tis, what's wrong?"

She wiped both eyes with her wrists, a bit of mascara still bleeding from her lashes. "What if mom was right?" She took a deep, shuttering breath, and Matt suddenly wanted to deposit the wine back into her lap. "'What are you going to do now? Who's going to love you now?' That's what she said the day I went to live with Sophie. What if she was right? What if Phillip was right? What if it would've been easier to keep pretending I was someone I'm not?"

Matt's stomach dropped. She'd never been one to doubt herself. All these years of friendship and not once did Tisper take her mother's words to heart until now. "Tisper, I can't imagine you as anyone but who you are."

He hadn't realized the pain in her eyes until they were cutting into him—so wet with tears, he couldn't see the color of her irises beyond the sheening. But it was the way she'd said it that put an honest pin in his heart. "You didn't want me because of who I am."

The words he wanted to say turned to a useless lump in his throat. Matt felt his own eyes sting, that terrible feeling peeling him apart at the ribs. "Tis, I—"

"You made me think it was possible." Her voice cracked. Matt felt like he was cracking, too. "And then you made me think it was hopeless."

Hopeless. Had he really done that? He'd been that shitty. He'd hurt her that badly. He had. He had done those things, but hearing her say it was like being knifed open from the inside. It was so long ago—he didn't understand back then, he'd been brought up differently.

Matt reached for her face and she shoved his hand away. "I tried to convince myself it was because we were friends and that would be too weird for friends. But I'm not an idiot, I know." She wasn't yelling. She didn't sound angry. Just unbearably sad—the kind of sad that made him feel helpless. A man in a boat with no paddle.

He'd made her feel this way. God, what if what the old witch had said was really true? What if he was dying? He was going to die and this was how he'd left her to feel.

"Please, Tis." He could hear the ugly sound in his voice—that pressure, balancing there at the edge of a sob. "Please don't let me be a reason for this. You know I regret all of that, every bit of it. You know that."

"Because it hurt me," she cried, "that's why you regret it. That's the only reason."

"No," Matt said. He reached for her face and this time, Tisper didn't push his hands away. "It's not," he assured her, wiping a wet tear from her cheek. "It's not. "

She took in a breath and Matt felt her palms touch his cheeks, felt the fine tips of her nails in his hair. She leaned in and he let her. Maybe that wasn't right of him, but he was an idiot to pretend. To pretend he hadn't thought about kissing her damn near every day. So Matt welcomed her lips, felt them brush soft against his own. He pressed back into the kiss, deeper once he'd tasted the wine.

So many times, he'd imagined kissing her. He hadn't tried, only because she hadn't wanted him to. And this thing he wanted all this time, he had it now.

But there was something wrong.

She kissed him again and he let her, because he couldn't understand it. Why kissing Tisper felt a lot like kissing Jessy. Why it felt almost like nothing at all. It was supposed to feel like everything, wasn't it?

She must have known something was wrong too, because she pulled back and her eyes swept him—looking for something in his posture, his expression. And when she couldn't find what she was looking for, Tisper asked, "Did you feel... anything?"

Matt hesitated. That was his mistake—that slight hesitation. That half a second where he said nothing—where he should have said everything.

Because once she realized what that hesitation meant, Tisper took in a sharp breath. She shoved herself up from the bed.

He hadn't felt anything.

"Tis, wait—" Matt pleaded, leaping to his feet. "Tisper."

"It's fine," she said, gathering her jacket. He could hear the struggle in her voice and Matt knew it wasn't fine. "If you didn't feel anything, then that—it's fine. It's good, I know now."

"Tisper," he caught her, just as she'd swung the door open. But he had no idea what to say and Matt stared at her, mouth open, searching for the words. All he could manage was, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine, Matt." He voice shook. It wasn't fine. "You've been asking me out for a year now. If even you felt nothing, then it's me. It's me and I know that now."

Again, he was speechless, and again, she had her back to him, wrapping her jacket tight around her.

Matt wiped a second tear from his cheek, watching the distance she gained. "Tisper."

"I just want to be alone, Matt," she said, turning her head so he could hear her, but not looking back. Her broken voice was what dug so deeply into his heart when she said, "I'm sorry I did that."

He stood there for a long time after she'd left, feeling that wound in him. He'd hurt her—the most important person in his life, and he still couldn't understand how.

He felt twice as numb now as he found his room—the one he was originally meant to stay in. He knocked his fists against the door twice and then shoved his way in. Whatever deviant festivities were in play would have to be rescheduled for a later date, when Matt didn't feel like fist fighting someone until his knuckles were dust.

But when he stepped inside, there was no one pinned to the bed or pressed up against a wall or already asleep beneath dirty sheets. The bed had been serviced, chocolates still laid on the pillows, and Bailey was only a dark shape, hunched on the railing of the balcony—a cap sitting backward on his head. Come to think of it, he was the only one Matt hadn't seen at the reception.

He pushed open the glass door and stepped out beside him, overlooking what was left of the courtyard below. Cooks were gathering up their equipment, roses and crowns plucked from the ground by the tired, young witches from Devi's coven.

"What do you want?" Bailey asked. Matt turned to him, noting for the first time the book propped on his knee. Pale beige pages, covered in fine black charcoal markings. He only caught a glimpse of it before Baily shut the page, but Matt knew those wide, bullet eyes like the back of his hand.

"An owl?" he asked.

Bailey roll a piece of charcoal between his fingers. "She's been watching me. Straight ahead. There."

Matt peered out at a tree straight across from them. He could only catch those large orange eyes, but it was there. Watching, just like Bailey had said.

Bailey turned his sketchbook back to the page he'd been on and went back to shading the detailed ridges of its feathers. "What is it?" he asked again, sounding every bit as inconvenienced as the first time.

"Cora says I'm dying."

Bailey didn't look up. He dug his charcoal into the paper. "Blows."

"That's not even the worst part of my day," Matt said.

Bailey acknowledged the comment with a grunt and nothing more. And observing him then, Matt recognized the hat he wore. His hat. The one he'd bought from the gift shop at Meadowbrooke Grange—the farm they'd taken a field trip to for FFA class. That was the first time he'd had the courage to touch a horse. He remembered coming home and boasting to Jaylin about how he'd overcome his fear and ridden bareback. Jaylin laughed for hours. To this day, Matt didn't know why.

"Where the hell'd you get this?" Matt asked, prying it off by the bill.

Bailey scowled and touched a spot on his head. "You left it along with the rest of your shit."

"So you stole it?"

"I was borrowing it. Why the fuck would I steal something that stupid?"

He was about to scoff to that when Matt noticed the bandage that had been fastened against the side of his head—a make-shift pad, taped in place with scotch tape strips that would definitely hurt to rip off. Beneath it, blood matted his hair.

"To hide that, you mean? What'd you do? Jump out of a moving car?"

His charcoal went black against the paper. "It's from a fight, you fucking yeehaw."

"With who?" Matt asked. It wasn't that he cared what came of a dickhead like Bailey, but he was curious. "What dumb shit did you get yourself into?"

Bailey shot a sharp look at him and growled, "How about you fuck off?"

"Fine, I'll ask Bronx," Matt mused.

"Don't," Bailey snapped. He said it not with a growl or a snarl or even his typical surly grunt. But a kind of desperation that piqued at Matt. The owl crooned a distance away.

"Ahhh," Matt nearly purred. "He doesn't know. And I bet if he knew you'd be in some shit, huh?"

Bailey turned his eyes back to his paper. Quietly now, he grumbled, "Don't."

For some reason, Matt reached up and shoved the hat back on Bailey's head. "Just don't lose it," he said. "I want it back." He didn't. Not really. He could care less if Bailey lit the old thing on fire, but saying it made him feel a little less charitable.

Matt took one last look at that owl—every detail dug into the paper, down to the moonlight in its eyes. I'm sleeping in here tonight," he mentioned, shoving the sliding door open.

"You could turn wolf," Bailey said. Matt still heard the abrasive scratching of his charcoal. He paused there in the doorway. "I know a biter," Bailey said. "You're dying anyway."

"Maybe," Matt conceded. "She didn't say how. Just that I was."

The owl in the distance puffed out its wings, and Bailey caught it with the sharpness of a fetal cat. He put his charcoal to paper again. "Turning cures us of diseases. Cured me."

"And what if it's not a disease?" Matt asked, watching his hand move against paper.

Bailey's voice was deep—it always was. The kind of deep that left a rumble in his wake. But it was deeper yet, when he said, "What's it matter? You're dying anyway."

Matt went inside after that and crawled into the left-most edge of the bed. Surprisingly, he slept until noon.

When he woke, Bailey was nowhere to be found—the chocolate still resting on his pillow. It was none of Matt's business why or where he'd gone, but admittedly, he did glance around for that sketch book. Those owl eyes still stuck to him like a bad omen.

Izzy had sent them each a text to meet at the fountain out front, and once he'd dressed—in casual clothing like she'd requested—he made his way down and through the revolving doors. He wasn't surprised to see Tisper there, wearing sunglasses twice the size of her face. She'd tossed any effort at dressing fashionably and instead lounged there in jean-shorts and a t-shirt with a cat on the right pocket.

He wanted to acknowledge her, but Matt slouched down beside Sadie instead and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Heard you met a pretty girl last night."

"Aster." Sadie kicked her legs a bit. "She wants me to join her coven."

"You gonna?" Matt asked.

Sadie gave a deep sigh and bit her lip.

"She's straight," Tisper explained for her. "But that's alright, there's always next time." Matt couldn't see her eyes, but he could almost feel them pass over to him, nudging him for support. "Right, Matt?"

Matt clapped a hand down on Sadie's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "You should join their cult, maybe you'll meet someone."

Sadie snorted and gave his hand a gentle pat. "It's a coven, not a cult, Matt. But you're cute."

Then he heard the subtle footsteps as Izzy skipped into view, dragging a tired Jaylin at her heels. "I finally managed to wake him up," she said. "He won't tell me what happened last night, but he launched up from his sleep yelling 'no' like he'd just dropped a brick on his foot."

Tisper tugged her sunglasses down to leer at him from above the lenses. "Jaylin Maxwell, what did you and Quentin do last night that's cause for such regret?"

"What? No—nothing," Jaylin sputtered.

"Mhmn." She nudged her sunglasses back up with the tip of her finger, but the shades didn't do much to hide the judgment on her face. "Filthy," she said and Jaylin went all pink beneath the neck.

"We didn't!" he groveled. And then he turned and dropped on the fountain's edge beside Matt, looking sunken and tired and a tad bit disappointed. "But I wanted to."

With his other hand, Matt clamped down on Jaylin's shoulder—giving both he and Sadie reassuring squeezes now.

"So what's the deal?" Tisper asked, leaning back into the fountain's mist. "Why are we here?"

"Quentin asked me to take you guys out," Izzy said. "He thought you might be a bit uncomfortable with all the uh..."

"Sex?" Matt asked.

"It's not just that," Izzy said. "The atmosphere at the exposition—on the night of perigee, I mean. It's a little intimate. It's like uh... prom night. Only everyone's definitely getting laid."

"And you?" Tisper asked, lips curling into something kittenish. "Where's your date?"

"Izabella's a bit of a God-fearing catholic." The purr of his Scottish accent rolled out from the right, and Felix strode toward them in battered jeans and a frayed jacket. He tousled Izzy's hair as he swaggered past. "Abstinence is a bitch, aye?"

Tisper's smile flopped into a frown and Izzy smoothed down the disheveled locks. Side by side, she and Felix could be siblings.

"No sex until marriage?" Matt asked. Izzy propped a hand on her hip and sighed, but Matt went on, "Just sayin', sounds like a drag."

"How would you know, Matt?" Jaylin asked, too much damn humor in his laugh. "You've had sex like twice."

Matt flustered. "And how much've you had, huh?"

Jaylin had that playful grin on his face, and Matt was partly relieved to see him back to his old self, but the rest of him flared with regret. Matt didn't know if it was his soft looks or his level-headed demeanor, but Jaylin always had it easy with the girls.

"I'll count them on my fingers," Jaylin said, and held up a hand. "One, two—" Then he smacked Matt on the cheek. "More than you and that's all that matters."

Matt rubbed the pain. "That's not fair, you've been to college."

"Besides that," Felix commented, "if ye can count them on your fingers, it's not much of a feat."

"You aren't a part of this," Matt said, pointedly. "Not when your kind throws week-long sex parties in luxury hotels."

Felix tilted his head back, sharp white grin bared down at them all. "Ahhh, yer only mad cause you're losing. I've got pointers if ye' want'em."

"Fine," Matt said. "What's your advice."

"Be handsome and Scottish."

Tisper sighed and turned to Sadie, those glasses still wide, alien-eyes on her face. "Sadie, what's it like being a lesbian?"

"It's like sunshine and strawberries," Sadie returned blissfully. "Why?"

Tisper leaned back and looked to the sky, the clouds reflecting in her glasses. "I've been seriously weighing my options."

The Wrangler had become their obvious mode of transportation—not that Matt ever had a say in it. Felix drove like always, ninety minutes to a beach where the sand was as white as salt and you could hardly tell sky from water. It was all a lucid blue, down to the seashells beneath the shallow tide. Izzy had brought everything; sunscreen, sandwiches, a first-aid-kit and enough towels to dry a wet village.

The sun was the blistering kind of hot that he could feel against his forehead, and with the Wrangler parked on a sandy dune, Matt wiped the stinging heat from his hairline and shoved his cap back on. "You didn't say anything about a beach and I sure as hell didn't bring a swimsuit."

"Who needs one?" Izzy said, and she pulled her shirt off over her head. It was a lost cause, keeping his eyes from the delicate cotton bralette beneath—but it wasn't like he'd never seen the sentinels naked before. It was just different when they were covered in blood and fending for their lives; times like those, he wasn't all that interested in the finer details.

Jaylin was next to him in no time, shoving his t-shirt off over his head and his shorts to the ground. "Are you serious?" Matt asked, and Jaylin tugged up the waist of his boxers.

"Learn to live a little, Matt."

Then he took off with Izzy toward the water's edge.

But Matt wasn't a fan of the beach. He didn't like the fizzy salt water and the one time he'd dared to venture into the waves, the thought of sharks had near made him piss himself. He liked rivers and lakes where he could fish boot-deep in the gut of the forest. Everything was closed in around him. Isolated, but smothered in earth—that was how he liked it. Not like here where the ocean was an endless, terrifying place.

So he watched from the sand as Izzy and Jaylin took turns trying to drag Felix beneath the water. The man was like a tree with no give, and shoved them both easily into oncoming waves. Tisper and Sadie lounged on towels, basking in their bras and shorts beneath the heat of the sun. Matt thought once or twice about joining them, but decided it was best to stay where he was—rested up against a big chunk of drift-wood.

After some time, Jaylin sat beside him with a sandwich, watching as Felix dug a pit for a fire. Matt took his offering and bit into a chunk of unsavory deli ham. Organics, that's right. Everything these damn wolves ate tasted a tad bit off.

Jaylin gave him a poke. "What is it, Matt?"

"Who the hell puts onions on a ham sandwich?"

"Not that," Jaylin said. "What's bothering you?"

Matt shrugged. He watched Tisper, her eyes shut, her skin a shade darker than usual. "What's it like when you kiss Bronx?" he asked, brushing a bit of sand from his legs.

"Why?" Jaylin bit off the crust of his bread. "You thinking about kissing Quentin?"

"Shut up," Matt said. "No. But you love the guy, right?" Jaylin looked for a minute he might choke, but his eyes rolled off to the horizon and he let Matt continue. "Do you feel anything when you guys kiss?"

"Yeah," Jaylin admitted. "Like... I guess like electricity. It's like all you can think about is kissing them again."

Matt had thought about kissing Tisper again, but only to see if it was different this time. God, the guilt he felt for not actually wanting to.

In the distance, Felix stalked silently to the towel where Tisper laid. He knelt and there was a flash of panic on her face as he hooked her under the legs and heaved her up in his arms.

"The hell are you—no!" she protested, flailing as he carried her off towards the water.

Sadie shoved herself up and pranced after them. "I got you, Tis!"

And just as Felix had taken her waist-deep into the ocean, Sadie pounced at his back and all three of them went down into the waves. When they popped to the surface again, Tisper squealed out at the chilly temperature—but it was only a blink before she was grinning, wading after Felix in retaliation.

Matt watched them the whole time, mindlessly picking a hole into the sand. "Always heard it was like fireworks."

Jaylin shrugged a bit. "I don't think so. I think it's more like—it's like that feeling when you're at the tallest peak on a roller coaster. When you're up so high you can't catch your breath. And then you drop, and it's that. It's that feeling."

"I didn't feel that when I kissed Tisper."

Jaylin was mid-bite into his sandwich when Matt said it. He turned to him. "She didn't tell me you—"

"Probably because it turned out so bad. I didn't feel anything, Jay. Not anything."

To his surprise, Jaylin replied, "Good," and stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth.

"How's that good?" Matt asked, once he'd finished chewing. "I hurt her."

Jaylin shrugged and in the distance, Tisper launched herself at Felix's back. Her arms locked hard around his neck and he was wrenched under the waves with a yelp.

"Maybe things can finally go back to normal with you two."

"I don't know," Matt said. "After the way she cried last night, I don't know."

"Look at her, Matt."

He did. He watched her in the distance, hanging onto Felix's shoulders as he popped back up above water, bracing her beneath the knees. She wore the kind of dazzling grin he thought he was in love with a day ago.

"She's tough. Tougher than us. She'll be okay."

Matt bit his lip, trying to squelch that jealous feeling, sticking around inside of him. Seeing her there, clinging to Felix for fear of touching the ocean's bottom—it still left a burn in him. It was time to let that fire go though, and he knew it.

"What does this make us?"

"Don't be an idiot," Jaylin said. "It makes you friends." Then he stood to his feet and gave Matt a squeeze on the shoulder. "Don't make her cry again, though. I'll eat you."

They stayed until well after the sun set. And once Izzy thought it fitting, they piled into the Wrangler—sandy and wet and stinking of sea salt. Within those ninety minutes, Tisper fell asleep on his shoulder—and the whole time with the dead-weight of her pulling him down, Matt revisited Jaylin's words. Maybe he was broken. Maybe that roller coaster wasn't something he was capable of feeling. But love was and he'd found it in Tisper either way—and if that love meant friendship and nothing more, then maybe fate had other plans for them both. Whatever those plans were, he wanted to stick around for them.

When they returned to the hotel and he found Bailey sitting outside again, his charcoal and his sketchbook in hand, Matt stood beside him and watched the empty courtyard below. The witches had packed up most of their things. Maybe they'd be leaving before the exposition was over.

"What happens if it doesn't work?" he asked. "If I don't have the blood for it or whatever."

"Some get sick," Bailey replied. "Some die."

"If I'm dying anyway, guess it won't matter."

"Or she could be wrong," Bailey said, charcoal smeared on the curl of every finger. "You could be immortal for all you know." He looked to Matt, a slight grin on his face. Just slight enough that Matt could see every sharp cut of his canine teeth. "Turning could be what kills you."

"Or it could save me." Matt crossed his arms over the rails and hunched forward to rest his chin on top. "Shit, this sucks."

"Glad I'm not you," Bailey said, closing his book. He stood to his feet, brought a blunt to his mouth that Matt hadn't noticed the stench of until now. Being the only substance they could smoke, the wolves almost always wore that funk on them. Maybe he was becoming as accustom to it as the smell of cigarettes.

As Bailey's towering frame ducked in through the sliding door, Matt followed behind him like an eager shadow—swatting away the smoke he passed through. If Bailey was going somewhere, there was a good chance Matt wouldn't see him for another day. He needed answers now.

"If I decide I wanna do it, you'll take me to 'em?" he asked. He felt like he was stumbling his own feet as he tailed Bailey to the door. "Who is it? The biter. Jay said Nicon's turned folks, is it him?"

"Nicon uses a ceremonial turning. That takes too long," Bailey said, stopping there with grip on the handle. "Biting's faster."

"Okay," Matt said, searching his eyes for further explanation. They were cavernously dark and ultimately gave him nothing. "So? You know a guy? Where do we find him?"

Bailey shoved the door open and stepped out into the light. "A place called the Den."

Then he slammed it shut behind him.