Rough hands grabbed him by both arms and dragged him over to a chair in the middle of the dining room. Sebastian stood before him, his face white with anger. His eyes glittered like twin flames.

“Where were you, Johnny? His hideout?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What were you two doing? Giggling and shoving them in your mouth as fast as you could?”

Jonathan looked desperately around at the other faces. They all looked nervous. Walter held his hands up in a little shrug and crinkled his eyebrows sympathetically.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sebastian, really—”

“Oh, cut the crap, Johnny. I know you were with him. Tell us where he is. Or it’s gonna get ugly.”

Jonathan opened his mouth to argue. Then closed it. He looked steadily into Sebastian’s eyes. “What happened?”

“Like you don’t know!”

Jonathan kept his voice calm. “What happened?”

“Fine. Let’s all play a little game of pretend with Johnny.” A rotten, ugly half smile rose to Sebastian’s face. “We’re all eating lunch. You, too. And somehow, while we’re all down here, all the chocolates just—disappear! All my chocolates. And I find this in the basket.” Sebastian fished in his pocket and pulled something out and threw it on the ground at Jonathan’s feet.

It was a little paper crane. Carefully folded. And all crumpled up.

“And I come back down here and, surprise, Johnny’s gone! And what do we find under his pillow?” Sebastian rummaged through his other pocket and threw something else to the floor. Without looking, Jonathan knew it was his parents’ letter, folded neatly into a perfect bird.

“So, Johnny, you tell me … how stupid do you think I am?”

Jonathan looked back and forth between the two paper cranes, then back up at Sebastian.

“I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re mad. And I think you’re right. Colin took your chocolates. I know you’re right. But I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth.”

“You already told me that if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me.”

Jonathan nodded and pinched his top lip between his teeth. He looked away, out the window at the storm clouds piled atop one another above Slabhenge’s crumbling walls.

“Yeah. And I wouldn’t.” Then he looked at Sebastian. “I won’t. But I haven’t seen him. I promise.”

Sebastian licked the angry spittle from his lips. He blinked and blew out a breath and looked away. He opened his mouth to say something, but Benny butted in first.

“You can’t trust him, Sebastian.”

Jonathan’s hands balled into anxious fists. He didn’t like the eager edge to Benny’s voice. The way his eyes were shining and his mouth opened and closed. Like a snake coiled and about to strike.

“Shut up, Benny, I—” Sebastian started to say.

“You can’t trust him,” Benny said again. “I know why he’s here.”

Sebastian’s head turned slowly to look at Benny. His eyebrows scrunched together.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t,” Jonathan said quietly, his eyes locked on Benny’s.

“I peeked at his papers. In the Admiral’s office, when he first got here,” Benny said. His eyes stayed with Jonathan. The corners of his pudgy mouth teased toward a smile. “You can’t trust him, Sebastian. Do you know what he did?”

“Don’t,” Jonathan pleaded again. He rubbed at his arms with his hands.

“What?” Sebastian asked. The whole room hung in waiting silence. Only the windows shook and spoke, straining to hold back the storm that fought to rush inside.

“I know why he doesn’t like fire,” Benny said, his smile ripening into a sickening sneer.

Jonathan shook his head.

“Little Johnny here,” Benny said, savoring every bloody word like a vampire, “is a murderer.”

Jonathan’s jaw clenched down to steel.

“No,” he said through his teeth.

“Oh, yes. A murderer. And do you know who he killed?”

Jonathan tried to stand up, but hard hands on his shoulders held him down.

“You shut up,” he said, his voice cracking. Already, Benny was blurred, standing before him.

“He murdered his little sister. Sophia. Set a fire and burned their house down, with her trapped inside.”

“Shut up!” Jonathan screamed, fighting at the hands that held him down.

“It’s true!” Benny shouted back, stepping toward him. “Show them your arms!”

“No!” Jonathan howled. “Don’t!”

“Pull back his sleeves! Look at his arms!” Benny crowed.

Jonathan, totally blinded now by his tears, felt his sleeves yanked back to his elbows. The room gasped, then hushed. The hands let him go. He closed his eyes, his body racked by sobs.

“God,” Sebastian said. His voice was hollow, shocked.

“No,” Jonathan tried to say, but he wasn’t sure his voice made it through his choked throat.

He rubbed at his sightless eyes with his arms, forgetting that his sleeves were pulled up. The scarred and hardened tissue of his burns and scars scraped roughly on his face.

“Leave me alone,” he managed to gasp, his voice echoing in the still chamber. “You don’t know how much I loved her. How much I love her.” But he couldn’t tell anymore what he was saying from what he was merely feeling. It could have been that the words he meant to say only echoed, unheard, in the dank dungeon of his harrowed heart.

“I saw,” Benny said, his voice low and stained with a stinking smile. “I saw the psychiatrist’s report about your therapy. About your guilt over the burning death of your sister. I saw the doctor’s report about your burns. And I saw your sentencing papers. For arson.”

Jonathan just shook his head and kept his eyes closed.

“God,” Sebastian said again, his voice dripping with disgust. “You’re a freak. No wonder you want to stay here.”

The windows shivered in their panes. The cold and endless dripping of water filled the edges of the silence.

“You better tell us,” Sebastian said. “I want him back. He’s a rat.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Jonathan sniffed.

“Fine. Whatever. But you’ll find out. He’ll try to talk to you. And then you’ll hand him over.”

Sebastian turned and walked back toward the stairs that led to his room. His feet sloshed slowly from one puddle to the next. The tip of the sword dragged with a jagged scrape along the stone floor. He stopped at the bottom stair.

“You have until tomorrow night. If you don’t give him to us by then, you have to go after him. And you can’t come back without him. You can starve out there with him and the other rats.” Sebastian coughed out a nasty little laugh. “The freak and the rat. Best friends in the nuthouse.”

His steps receded up the staircase.

Everyone else stood in damp quiet.

Then, one by one, they turned and walked away. Walter was the last to go. He took a small step toward Jonathan, his eyes wide, and then stopped. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something. But then he shook his head and turned away, leaving Jonathan sitting alone in the hard chair, tears running unwiped down his face like the rain on the dark windows, his horrible scars exposed.