AN’T WE PUT a boot on her, like a little car?” Gazzy asked, rubbing his hair in frustration so that it stood straight up.

“Yeah, maybe we should start locking her in at night,” I said wryly.

“Could she have been … kidnapped?” my mom asked.

We all quickly looked around. There was no sign of disturbance; everything was still locked. And the note was in Angel’s handwriting.

“No, I think she decided to go,” I said. “As much as I wish that weren’t true.”

“What does she mean about Fang’s time being up?” Jeb asked.

“She said that in Africa,” said Nudge. “She said Fang was gonna die.”

“Die?” My mom’s eyes widened.

“She was just trying to get attention,” said Fang. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

I suddenly had a thought, one of those awful thoughts that you hate right away and yet you can’t ever unthink it. I felt my heart start to pound as I stood up.

“Fang? Let me see the back of your neck.”

Those of us who graduated from (or, I should say, escaped from) the School have expiration dates, like milk. We first noticed them on some Erasers, after they had … expired. Dates, like little tattoos, showed up on the backs of their necks. They seem to become visible about a week, maybe less, before the built-in expiration gene kicks in. Do we have long, full lives ahead of us, or are we living on borrowed time? No clue. It makes retirement planning, like, impossible.

Fang stood up. In the past year he’d gotten taller than I was, so I had to stand on tiptoe a bit to see his neck. I didn’t want to look — didn’t want to know. I couldn’t even let myself think of what it would mean if I saw a date there.

But I’m not a coward. So I brushed his black silky hair off the smooth skin of his neck — the same neck I had kissed not long ago. I could smell his clean Fang smell, the one he inexplicably had even when he was noticeably filthy and covered in gore.

And I looked.

And saw … just smooth, plain, tan Fang skin. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“No date,” I quickly told the others, and they visibly relaxed.

“Do I have a date?” Dylan’s quiet voice almost made me jump — I’d forgotten that he was there.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You were made by different people, I think.”

uncertainty played across his once-again-gorgeous face. I took pity on him. “I could … look. I guess.”

He came to stand close to me, and turned his back. His streaky blond hair wasn’t as long as Fang’s, but I still had to push it out of the way. And tug down a tiny bit on the neck of his maroon T-shirt. I hadn’t been this close to Dylan before, and I realized that he smelled good in a completely different way. Clean. Spicy.

Then I realized what I was thinking, and my cheeks burned. I took a fast look at his neck and snatched my hands away. “No date. Not that that means anything.”

“At least you don’t have one,” said my mom. “We know what having one means; we don’t know what not having one means.”

Still, Angel’s note had reignited the fears I’d tried to bury. What if all of the attacks in recent days had been meant for Fang? The Eraser attack, the Cirque shooter, the Furioso incident — what if all of these had been designed to get Fang? I remembered how Dylan had chopped the woman’s gun out of her hand at the restaurant.

He just might have saved Fang’s life.