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pastries, a Linzer torte, coffee, tea, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Phoebe found herself touched at the sight of it all. From what Lauren had told Phoebe about her mother, Diana had never been one to equate food with love—her wavelength was more handbags and jewelry—but right now luxury goods weren’t going to cut it.
    Lauren sat down in the breakfast nook and smiled weakly at Phoebe and her mother. “You know something? I’m actually hungry. For the first time in days, I’m hungry. I’d better eat, before the feeling goes away.”
    Phoebe knew what this was like, the feeling of fear-induced nausea that was so constant that as soon as it went away, you tried to get a little food down. Lately Phoebe’s stomach had been in knots as well, and so instead of trying to control her hunger as she might before a big night out, she found she was actually grateful to be able to eat a few bites without feeling sick.
    The two of them dug in, asking the cook to pile their plates with eggs Benedict, quiche, and pastries. Diana asked them if they’d like mimosas, but they both declined. There was something about the Society that made them not want to drink too much—it was the drinking, after all, that had gotten their friends into so much trouble. Jared at Cleopatra’s Needle, freezing to death and dying of exposure after a night of bingeing. Alejandro, making a fool of himself at a club in the Hamptons, and then, of course, overdoing it that night at Prohibition, the club on the Lower East Side where the Guardians had kidnapped him.
    No, Phoebe knew, and she sensed Lauren did, too, that staying sober and aware would be the best policy, at least for the next few weeks.
    Lauren was silent as she took small bites of her food, and Phoebe resisted the urge to check her phone, which kept buzzing in her purse. It was probably Nick, but she felt it would be rude to answer. Her relationship with Nick had gone so well during all of this that she wondered what they would do if they weren’t facing an external crisis, if they didn’t have the constant outside stimulation to keep them going. They had started dating at Thanksgiving and had made it through the stress of exams, the aftermath of Jared’s and Alejandro’s deaths, the Society retreat, and Patch’s disappearance and initiation. Though it had only been a few weeks, Phoebe did worry a bit about whether things, once they settled down, would seem slow.
    After eating, Lauren assured Phoebe that she really didn’t need her to stay, that she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and was going to take a nap. Phoebe gave her friend a hug, said good-bye to Diana with a double air kiss, and let herself out.
    She wasn’t going home, though, to the town house where she and her mother were living on Bank Street.
    Via text, Nick had asked her to meet him in Central Park, at a location she remembered all too well from the fall: the chess tables.

Chapter Five
    S omehow, this felt appropriate,” Nick said. He was sitting on a bench near one of the chess tables outside the Chess and Checkers House in Central Park as Phoebe approached.
    “You couldn’t have picked a place that wasn’t freezing?” Phoebe said, giving him an anguished grin. It was late in the afternoon, and the Chess and Checkers House was closed. He handed his scarf to Phoebe, who wrapped it around her neck. In an attempt to warm up, she stomped her shoes against the ground as they sat on the ice-cold bench.
    Nick gave her a big bear hug, but it didn’t seem to help. “Sorry,” he said, slightly embarrassed at not having realized how cold it would be inside the park. “We can keep walking.”
    Phoebe gave him a kiss on his ear. “Hey, it was a valiant effort. I feel like I haven’t been inside the park in weeks.”
    They looked around. The wisteria, so lush in the summer, had gone dormant. No one was playing chess. Nick remembered back to that night several months ago when they had been challenged to