“You told me you ran away when you found out you were a wolf. Is that why you left?”

“Part of it, yeah.” He looked up and away, out toward the city.

He was quiet a long time.

“Why do I get the sense you’re not telling me all of it?”

It took a minute for him to look back again, and when he did, there was sadness in his eyes. “I like you, Lily.”

I looked away, expecting the worst.

“I’m not human,” he finally said. “I know you saw me transform, but it’s not a full moon. If you’re there, you’ll get hurt.”

“Hurt?”

“As the moon grows larger, my control gets weaker. I can be around friends, at least until the moon is full. That’s when we run.”

“Friends?”

His eyes shifted from blue to green and back again, and my heart tripped in time. “I have feelings for you, Lily. I shouldn’t. Not when I could put you at risk. There will be a girl. A wolf my parents will choose for me.”

My head began to spin.

“That’s the real curse,” he said. “Not the fact that I transform, not even the fact that I lose control when the moon is full. The curse is the loneliness. The separation. Never really being anything except a wolf, because being something else—being human—puts everyone else at risk.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“I need you to say something.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

He dropped his forehead onto mine. “Tell me it doesn’t matter.”

I blinked back tears, but what could I say to this boy? This boy with the spring blue eyes? “I guess the lesson I’ve learned over the last few weeks is that life is rarely what we think it’s going to be. So you do the best you can. Right?”

“Does that mean we’re still on for Sneak?”

I was quiet for a minute, considering my options. Best-case scenario, we just spent time together and didn’t waste time worrying about the future.

Worst-case scenario? I fell for a boy I couldn’t have, and lost my heart completely.

But I wasn’t even sixteen yet, and the future was a long way off. With all the crazy in the world—especially in my world—why not enjoy it, right?

“Yeah,” I finally said. “We can go to Sneak.”

With a victorious groan, he pulled me tightly into his arms, his body smelling of sunlight and springy cologne. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

We held hands as we walked back to St. Sophia’s, but we didn’t speak a word. He stopped in front of the gate and embraced me again, then dropped his head to press a kiss to my lips.

After he left, I glanced back at the school. I wasn’t ready to head back inside. I looked out over the city again and spied the familiar orange moon of a coffee-house down the street.

“There’s nothing a little overpriced latte can’t fix,” I quietly said, then headed back down Erie toward Michigan Avenue, trying to clear my head.

He was cursed.

Let me repeat that. He was cursed. And when the full moon came, if I was around, he’d rather rip me into shreds than kiss me. It did tend to discourage dating humans, I guessed.

Why did stuff like this have to happen just when things were looking so promising? When I was starting to like a boy with blue eyes who, at least until a few minutes ago, hadn’t been trying to kill me. There was a pretty big nasty in the closet, and the burden fell on me to deal with it. What was I supposed to do? Tell him it didn’t matter?

Or worse—lie to him? Tell him we’d find a solution that thousands of years—and probably thousands of wolves—hadn’t revealed.

Tears stung at the corners of my eyes.

I crossed the street at the light. I’d dealt with getting dropped off in Chicago, with firespell, with a best friend with a magical secret, with constant doubts about my parents.

This was the straw that broke the Adept’s back.

It might be time to skip the latte and go straight for the triple hot chocolate.

“We keep running into each other.”

I glanced up. Sebastian stood in front the coffee-house, orange paper cup in hand. He wore jeans and a dark blue fleece jacket that almost perfectly matched the color of his eyes.

I swiped at the tear that had slipped down my cheek as casually as possible. “I assume it’s not a coincidence you’re a block from St. Sophia’s?”

Frowning, he held up his cup of coffee. “It is, actually. My parents have a condo.” He gestured toward the tower above the coffee place. “I was visiting.”

It took me a second to remember that Reapers, whatever their motivations, were people, too. With parents and condos and lives beyond evening battles.

But still . . . “We aren’t going to be friends, you know.”

His eyes seemed to darken. “I didn’t expect that we were.”

“Good.”

“Friendship is a lot simpler than what we are.”

I looked over at him. “We are not anything.”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

I looked away.

“The world isn’t black and white, Lily. Ambivalence rules the day.”

I looked up at him. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning what I’ve been telling you. Meaning things are rarely as simple as they seem. Sometimes you don’t figure out how the story is supposed to end until you’ve read it.”