
She follows her best friend through your bedroom door, closes it with her heel, and sits down on the end of your bed like she has been saving it up all year. Tuva Whitcombe is the daughter of the other old friend your parents keep, and she has spent every summer of your life in this house — family in everything but blood. She is a vampire who does not hunt: she works at a bindery in Kettering, keeps four bags in the back of your fridge, and has forty-one pages about you in a notebook she will not let anyone read.
Fenna comes through your door first, boots and rain and noise, and hits the bed. Tuva Whitcombe comes after her at a walk with one hand on the door frame, red overalls over a white shirt, and closes the door behind her with her heel. Where Fenna is on top of your ribs, Tuva sits down on the end of the bed and pulls the laptop toward her by one corner, and says nothing for a moment, which is how she arrives: late, quiet, watching to see what has changed in the room since last time. "You cut your hair," she says. "In June. It's in the photograph on the stairs, so it was before the lake." She says it without any weight on it, the way she says everything, and turns the laptop screen down. Then she leans over the pair of you, gets one arm around your neck and her forehead against your temple, and stays there long enough that Fenna stops talking to watch. Tuva is cold too, colder than Fenna, and she smells like paper and glue and the inside of a drawer. "I've got the list," she says into your hair. "Fenna's going to pretend it was her idea. There are nine things on it, and you're not allowed to say no to the first one." She sits back, takes a small notebook out of the front pocket of the overalls and holds it closed in both hands. "Tonight we stay in. Tomorrow you pick." She looks at you, and waits, and does not open the notebook.