“No way!” I slithered out of her grip. “You can’t compliment your way into my honey stash. I’m immune to your charm.”

Millie scrunched her eyes tight and released a soul-destroying whine. “You already get the whole freakin’ diner. Can’t I just have the honey?”

Even though she was right, inheriting the diner when I turned eighteen was hardly my life’s greatest ambition. They were my father’s instructions before he went away, which would no doubt be enforced by my gloriously grumpy uncle Jack, who happened to exude a particularly pungent aura of I-don’t-take-no-for-an-answer. It didn’t matter anyway. Millie and I both knew the diner wasn’t something to be excited about. It was just one big, dead-end headache waiting to crash into my life. But the black-ribboned honeypot? That was pretty — a nice surprise to lift the monotony of the day.

Millie shuffled behind me. “Sophie, this is your conscience speaking,” she whispered over my shoulder. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked, but it’s time for you to do the right thing. Millie is so nice and pretty. Don’t you want to give her the honey? Think of how happy it would make her.”

“I didn’t know my conscience had a British accent.”

“Yeah, well, don’t read too much into it. Just give her the honey.”

I stalled at the edge of the parking lot, where we would peel off separately into the night. Before my parents’ income was halved, Millie and I used to walk in the same direction, to Shrewsbury Avenue, where there were housekeepers and gardeners, giant pools, and crystal chandeliers hanging inside actual foyers. Now my walks home were a whole lot longer than they used to be.

“Millie doesn’t even like honey,” I hissed. “And she has no respect for bees. I saw her stamp on one three times last week to make sure it was dead.”

“It’s not my fault this country is overrun with obnoxious insects.”

“What do you expect? It’s the middle of July!”

“It’s a disgrace.”

“And you were wearing Flowerbomb perfume.”

“He was being inappropriate.”

“So you murdered him.”

Millie shot out her hand. “Just give me the freaking honey, Gracewell. I need it to bribe my way out of a grounding.”

I raised my eyebrows. We had just completed an eight-hour shift together and she hadn’t mentioned this. “Grounded?”

“Total injustice. Complete misunderstanding.”

“I’m listening …”

“Alex called me a braceface.” Millie paused for effect. “Can you believe that?”

Well, she did have braces. And they were technically on her face. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I did what any best friend would do. I adopted an expression of pure outrage and pretended to linger over what a rude tyrant her not-so-mature-but-definitely-hot brother was.

“He’s such an ass,” I offered.

“He’s literally the worst human being on the planet. Anyway, one thing led to another, and his iPhone fell out the window … Well, it sort of fell out of my hands … which were coincidentally dangling outside of his bedroom window at the time … He completely freaked out on me.”

“Oh, siblings …”

“Well, you’re lucky you don’t have to share your house with any douchelords,” she ranted. “What kind of nineteen-year-old guy squeals on his younger sister? I mean, where is the honor in that? He’s a total disgrace to the Parker name. And how was I even supposed to know his phone would break?”

“Weird.” Honey still in hand, I leaned against a nearby streetlamp and watched my shadow curve inside its puddle of light. “I could have sworn the latest iPhones had tiny built-in parachutes.”

Millie started to swat at the air, like the problem was floating around in front of her. “If I give my mum that thoughtful jar of honey to use in one of her baking recipes, then she’ll see me as the kind, caring daughter that I am, and take back the unjust grounding, which was unfairly handed out because of my ignorant, pigman brother.”

I straightened up. “That’s never going to work. I’m keeping the honey.”

“Whatever,” she said, with an elaborate flick of her poker-straight brown hair. “It’s probably poisoned anyway.”

She stuck out her tongue and flounced off into the darkness, leaving me alone with my hard-won bounty. I slid the jar into my bag, watching the wisps of black ribbon fall away from me.

I crossed the road and paused, trying to decide which way to go. After six shifts in a row, the balls of my feet were throbbing, and because Millie and I had stalled for so long, it was already later than it should have been. The longer way home was usually my preferred option — it was well lit and well traveled — but the shortcut was significantly shorter, bypassing the center of town, winding up the hill instead, and looping around the haunted mansion at the end of Lockwood Avenue.

The moon was full and high but the evening seemed darker than usual. After fifteen minutes with only the sound of my footsteps as company, the turrets of the old Priestly house climbed into the sky ahead of me, peering over the neighboring houses like watchtowers.

Beautiful as it was, the mansion had always reminded me of a child’s dollhouse that had crumpled in on itself. Its whitewashed wooden exterior caved in at strange angles while corners jutted out like knives, piercing the overgrown masses of ivy. A stone wall covered in leaves snaked around the exterior; it was the only house in Cedar Hill that could boast such privacy, but its gothic aura did more to repel intruders than its boundary.