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Arsdale didn’t look up.
    “Why, thank you, son.”
    Jasper poured his dad’s coffee, then made himself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the table. A tall glass containing a single purple daylily sat in the center of the table—a slightly incongruous detail in what was obviously a bachelor pad, and a rough one at that. It made more sense, however, when you realized the elder Van Arsdale bred Hemerocallis varietals and sold them to the second-homers who made the two-and-a-half-hour trek up from New York City on the weekends. Jasper knew he was supposed to comment on the flower, which was not only the first of the season, but one of John Van Arsdale’s own creations besides. Hemerocallis “Amelia V.A.”
    Jasper stared resolutely at the purple, gold-fringed petals as his dad’s chair scraped back from the table. The rubber soles of Van Arsdale’s Bean boots squeaked on the linoleum, and then there was a clunk as his dad set his cup of coffee on the counter. He opened acabinet, pulled down a bottle, poured a finger of applejack into his Folger’s. Faint clinks as he stirred the liquor into his coffee as though it were milk.
    Jasper waited. A sip. A sigh. Then:
    “Cold out today. Wet. Need a little something to warm me up.”
    “There we go.” Jasper stood up so suddenly his chair tipped backwards and the flower wobbled in its glass. The glass didn’t fall but the chair did, and Jasper kicked it out of his way.
    “What the—” Van Arsdale almost spilled his coffee, but didn’t. “What the hell’re you shouting about?” He put one hand on the counter, shielding the unlabeled bottle filled with ruddy brown liquid.
    “‘ Cold out today .’ God, you don’t even try anymore.”
    “Jap?”
    “Don’t call me that!”
    Jasper kicked the back door open and grabbed the pair of mud-encrusted running shoes on the top step. The wet grass was cold and slick beneath his bare feet, and he slipped more than once as he made his way down the hill. But he didn’t stop to put on his shoes.
    He waited for the screen door to slam behind him. It didn’t.
    Fuck you, Dad, he thought. I’m not turning around.
    “I’ll be in the field if you need me,” his dad called after him finally. “I picked up some cold cuts for lunch. They’re in the fridge.”
    As opposed to the linen closet, or the washing machine. No, Jasper added to himself. Those were good places to keep bottles of liquor, not lunch meat.
    “Cakes said she saw a suit at the Thrift might fit you,” Van Arsdale spoke into his son’s silence. “For your graduation. Said she put it on hold if you want to try it on.”
    Great. The perfect cap to a perfect fucking morning: Cakes. His dad was dating a forty-seven-year-old peroxide blonde who called herself Cakes—who was now, apparently, picking out secondhand suits for him to wear to his own graduation. Cakes , for God’s sake.
    As he stepped into the dusty air of the barn, the screen door finally slammed. In his kennel Gunther barked once, and then therewas just the rain, throbbing on the zinc roof. Jasper dropped his shoes on the ground next to one of several wooden barrels:
     
    Van Arsdale Home-Brewed Apple Brandy
    Distilled from His Own Orchards
     
    There was a slug in the right shoe, and it exploded around Jasper’s toes when he shoved his foot in. Jasper would think of that slug just before he died—the coldness of its innards, the antennas feebly twitching—but that was still a long time in the future. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning, and, if Q.’s $29,000 watch had been right, he still had ten more hours to live in his mother-born body.

5
    I leana checked her pulse as she walked after her target. It was her first hunt in more than a year. More importantly, it was her first hunt on her own, and she was going to play it by the book. Every time she complained that the Legion was taking too long to come up with a new partner for her, she was told someone was “looking into it.” It was