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fingers. Could demons develop the same powers?
    Or was Gregory influencing Beth’s mind, getting her to speak for him, beating Ivy to the punch when it came to telling Will about the glass? Now that Beth had suggested that Ivy, under Gregory’s influence, was playing games with her, it would be nearly impossible for Ivy to persuade Will that, in fact, Gregory was inside Beth .
    No matter how Gregory did it, Ivy thought, as she walked back to the cottage, he’d won this round. He’d succeeded in turning her best friends against her.

Six
    THE SCAR, SLICING ACROSS TRISTAN’S THROAT JUST beneath his jaw, was mostly covered by his beard now. His bruises were gone. Last night, he had spent hours hacking at his thick, wavy hair with a fishing knife stolen from a campsite. The ragged remains could barely be seen under a baseball cap he’d found on a path around Flax Pond. He wore a faded Red Sox T-shirt taken from a camp clothesline and looked like a lot of other guys on Cape Cod; still, as Tristan got in line at the hospital cafeteria, he felt as if the word WANTED was blazoned across his chest.
    Yesterday, after Lacey had gone, Tristan had done a lot of thinking about the person who had beaten up the “ninety-eight point six” he was carrying around. Luke McKenna had a history, and until Tristan knew the details of that deadly night—as well as what had occurred before—he was a sitting duck.
    As far as Tristan knew, the person Luke had fought hadn’t reported it to the police. Why? Perhaps Luke’s opponent was also wanted by the law. Or maybe his opponent had died, and Luke had two murders on his head. Perhaps they had been on a boat, and Luke had thrown the victim over, tied to a weight so he would never be found.
    What were Luke and this unknown opponent fighting over—money, power? Perhaps someone who loved Corinne, Luke’s ex, was taking revenge for her murder. There were too many possibilities and too few facts. Tristan couldn’t ask the police for the details of the night he was brought, unconscious, to the hospital. There was only one person he could risk approaching: Andy, the nurse who had taken care of him.
    The smell of clam chowder and French fries made Tristan’s mouth water, but, careful with his money, he bought only a cup of coffee. Picking up a newspaper someone had left behind, he sat with his back to a bright spread of windows, aware that it would be hard for someone looking into the light to see his face. Sometimes it bothered himhow many tricks he had learned while trying to stay under the radar.
    He wondered how long he could camp out at the cafeteria without being noticed. Andy might not be working today, but Tristan couldn’t risk going to his floor to find out. So he waited, pretending to read, pretending to sip his coffee, looking over the edge of his cup, checking out the people who came into the cafeteria. He envied them, workers who were tired and hungry, but luckier than they would ever realize, able to eat with friends and go where they wanted without looking over their shoulders.
    At last, forty-five minutes later, Andy walked in with two women, all of them in nurses’ scrubs. Tristan was surprised by the lump in his throat when he saw the sandy-haired, squarely built nurse. Despite the comically short robe Andy had lent him, Tristan hadn’t realized how stocky he was. When Tristan came to the hospital he had been as helpless and scared as a baby, scared to the point of nastiness, and had trusted no one except Andy. He owed the nurse big time.
    Andy glanced around the room, looking for a free table. He paused for a moment when he caught Tristan looking at him. Tristan quickly lifted up his newspaper, feeling like a detective in a corny movie.
    Would Andy talk to him? Would he call the police? Even if Andy hadn’t read one of the newspapers that wereeverywhere in a hospital, someone must have said to him, “Hey, remember that patient you took care of? The one who skipped out on