Trey was glad he’d never been put through a test like that He knew: He’d fail.

Trey glanced up again at the hulking monstrosity of a house where Mr. Talbot lived. He wasn’t dangerous, Trey reminded himself. Mr. Talbot was going to be their salvation. Trey and Nina and a few of their other friends had come to Mr. Talbot’s so they could dump all their bad news and confusion on him. So he would handle everything, and they wouldn’t have to.

Trey peered toward the front of the car, where his friends Joel and John sat with the driver. Or, technically, the “chauffeur,” a word derived from the French. Only the original French word — chauffer? — didn’t mean “to drive.” It meant “to warm” or “to heat” or something like that, because chauffeurs used to drive steam automobiles.

Not that it mattered. Why was he wasting time thinking about foreign verbs? Knowing French wasn’t going to help They in the least right now. It couldn’t tell him, for example, whether he could trust the driver. Everything would be so easy if he could know, just from one word, whether he could send the driver to knock on Mr. Talbot’s door while Trey safely cowered in the car.

Or how about Joel or John? Granted, they were younger than Trey, and maybe even bigger cowards. They’d never done anything brave. Still—

“Trey?” Nina said. “Go!”

She reached around him and jerked open the door. Then she gave him a little shove on the back, so suddenly that he was surprised to find himself outside the car, standing on his own two feet.

Nina shut the door behind him.

Trey took a deep breath. He started to clench his fists out of habit and fear — a habit of fear, a fear-filled habit— and only stopped when pain reminded him that he was still clutching the sheaf of papers he’d taken from a dead man’s desk. He glanced down and saw a thin line of fresh blood, stark and frightening on the bright white paper.