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wilderness survival. There was some correlation, I supposed, between what happened to Sunshine last summer, and her need to stare Mother Nature in the face. But she never spoke about any of it, not to me, so what did I know.
    We sat on logs to keep ourselves out of the snow, and talked about little things like constellations and scary campfire stories from our childhoods. Our backs faced the dark and shivered, while our fronts faced the fire and glowed with warmth.
    I pulled out Freddie’s diary and started reading. Luke asked me what the hell it was, mainly because he was bored and probably hoped it was some torrid romance he could tease me about.
    â€œIt’s my diary,” I told him, making sure to meet his eyes so he wouldn’t think I was lying. “Oscar Wilde said he never traveled without his because one should always have something sensational to read.” I paused. “It’s mainly a series of sonnets and free verse about my feelings for River . . . how our first kiss felt and how much I loved it when he held me in his arms. Things like that.”
    Luke squinted his eyes and folded his mouth into an expression of pity mixed with disgust. And then he dropped the subject.
    Neely knew I was lying, but he didn’t flinch or wink or do one damn thing to give me away, bless his heart.
    I’d shown Luke Freddie’s letters last summer, after everything had quieted down. And it had kind of destroyed him for a while. I hadn’t guessed how much he’d relied on her being everything he thought she was. He marched around the house and sulked for a good week. He even put away the small portrait he’d done of Freddie three years before she died. The one he’d always kept in his bedroom.
    But at the end of the week it was back up again.
    No, I wasn’t going to tell him about the diary.
    Before we went to sleep we crawled into the car so we could listen to
Stranger Than Fiction
with the heat cranked. But there was nothing of interest—an update on the teenage grave robbers in California, and two boys in Alaska who said their mother was in love with the ghost of a gold rusher who haunted their house.
    â€œI’d rather be in California, looking for some corpse stealers,” Sunshine said, after I turned off the radio. “It would be warmer. And there would be wine. California is full of wine. Besides, grave-robbing is more interesting than dream-stealing mountain boys.”
    â€œRobbers or devil-boys, what difference does it make?” Luke tugged his wool coat tighter across his big, stupid pecs, and buttoned it up to the top. “It’s just lies, anyway. All we’re going to find in Inn’s End is some backward town with no plumbing where the prettiest girl is the one with all her teeth. Count on it.”
    Neely grinned. “You know, I once heard a story that kids in a town named Echo were hunting the Devil in the local cemetery.”
    â€œI heard that story too,” I said, staring Luke down, rubbing it in. “Turns out it wasn’t really a lie.”
    My brother’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer. He opened the car door and got out. The cold wind burst in and I shivered so hard I bit my tongue.
    We left the fire blazing when we went to bed, and I huddled in my sleeping bag, watching the flames dancing outside the wall of my tent because it was too damn cold to sleep. I had thick wool socks on and black tights under a wool skirt and a cardigan, plus my scarf and mittens. The sleeping bag was Sunshine’s, and it was high-tech and built for low temps, and
still,
I was cold to my bones. The snow underneath the tent seeped up and into me like icy fingers pushing at my skin.
    I opened my mouth and watched my breath fog in the air.
    And then the howling started.
    Wolves. Or coyotes. But probably wolves.
    They sounded close.
    There was a light on in Neely’s tent and he was sitting up when I unzipped the front