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with Cade to even make any innuendo-laden comments about it. Which is just sad. With “hot Italian sausage” in the name, the jokes practically write themselves. Maybe I was coming down with a cold. I needed to eat, but I didn’t have much of a stomach for it. Ryan didn’t seem to notice, babbling on about … well, I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was babbling about. I was eyeing my pickle and wondering how horrific my breath would be after I ate it, and then wondering why that made me want to eat it even more. Are teenagers naturally contrary and instigative, or was it just the firebug in me, drawn to friction and heat?
    â€œSo, do you wanna go?”
    Ryan’s face was all pleading, hopeful puppy dog. I was tempted to just agree and figure it out later, but that could land me in something I hated or, worse, interfere with my Coterie life. How on earth did other people manage double lives? Batman must be tired all the damn time . Of course, Batman also had Alfred to keep his shit straight for him. I had a sudden image of Cade as Alfred and Sylvie as my hyperactive Robin, and almost choked on my soda.
    I stabbed my sandwich with a sword-shaped toothpick. “Sorry, Ryan, I haven’t been paying attention. I guess I’m a poor lunch companion today.”
    He grinned and swiped my pickle without asking. If it were anyone else, I’d have stabbed their hand with a fork—I like pickles. And manners.
    Normal girls, however, do not stab their boyfriends with forks over a pickle—or cremate them with their supersecret mind powers, as I also considered doing—and since I was going for normal, no stabby-stabby or burny-burny. Some days are just no fun at all.
    I made a mental note to tell Cade about this. I didn’t stab him when he stole my pickle! And you say I’m not gaga for him! On second thought, that might earn me a lecture on violence. Or pickles.
    â€œI asked if you wanted to go into Boston this weekend. Then I said I had amazing things lined up guaranteed to knock your socks completely off. And yet here you sit, socks still firmly on and mind totally not blown.”
    My immediate response wasn’t just no, it was hell, no . Extreme no. No ad infinitum, ad nauseam, with trained No! dancers doing a routine in sequins on top. If the Coterie were a human body, then Boston would be its whole central nervous system. That’s where Venus was based, for crying out loud. No way was I voluntarily going anywhere near her evil lair. I might not have had a choice in working for Venus, but that didn’t mean I had to spend my downtime hanging out around her and her flying monkeys. But again, since I was playing a normal girlfriend, I couldn’t just toss the table over and run screaming from the café. I would have to find something reasonable to calmly object to. What I needed was more information. Unfortunately Ryan didn’t seem to have anything else to say on the subject. I rolled my eyes. “To do what?”
    â€œThere’s a theater doing a foreign horror movie marathon. Totally blood, guts, and gore, but with subtitles so we can pretend to be highbrow.” His grin was all boyish charm, and he grabbed one of my hands with both of his. My heart gave a dramatic little swoon. My brain rolled its eyes in disgust. It was like my hormones wanted me to gush all my feelings for Ryan in some ridiculously overblown Bollywood-style dance montage, while my brain was leaning toward black-and-white art cinema. Problem.
    I didn’t know all of Boston, but I knew the area around the Inferno pretty well, and that was usually where Venus lounged about while she managed operations. It was a Coterie-owned, money laundering, restaurant/dance club that also served as Venus’s evil lair. To my knowledge, there were no movie theaters in the vicinity. As long as we didn’t wander around the city, Ryan’s outing might be safe. I still