if one of them is dead.

chapter one.

Lilith.

Excitement is fun, until you royally screw it up.

But I am hoping to not royally screw it up.

Mattheo has come by a lot over the summer. He hasn't let me visit him because god forbid Voldemort knocks on his bedroom door while we're doing more than talking.

He also doesn't want me to meet his father, which is understandable.

Right now, I'm in a dark alley. It's two a.m. and I haven't been in this alley since last summer when I got the nasty scar on my collarbone. But it's okay this time, my friends are here. To clarify, they're my muggle friends. I don't think that any of my wizard friends would survive a day out on the streets screwing around like we do.

Darcy is standing on a dumpster, digging through to find the box that she threw away by accident. If her parents found out that she threw it away, she would be dead. No, I'm not kidding. They would actually kill her. That's why I'm scared for her. Most of the time she spends the night at one of our houses because we refuse to let her go home alone anymore. Any time we do, she comes out more bruised than the last time.

Aven is trying to spin around a butterfly knife in her hands. She knows how to pickpocket which is why she just pickpocketed it from a guy on the street a few hours ago. We all pickpocketed someone on that street, which ended up in those people chasing after us. But it's okay, we know a bunch of hiding places around the city.

Fynn is lighting a cigarette with an old lighter. His father probably would have bashed his head in for lighting one if it wasn't for the fact that his father was passed out on the couch with empty beer bottles surrounding him right now. Which is also the reason Fynn has a black eye right now. But it's fading, and that doesn't make it any better.

Alrik is flipping through the stack of cash that he stole from his foster parents.

They're deep sleepers.

Alrik has gone through tons of foster parents, and none of them every want to keep him in their care for more than five months. This time around, they're really rich and tell him he can do whatever he wants. But they still don't really care for him, and they leave him alone at their house more times than they're there anyway.

Raine is leaning against the wall, cracking their knuckles. Their parents haven't made food for them for three days, and they haven't gone shopping for food for a week. Raine is skinnier than I've ever seen them, and that is scary. If we're one of the ones that doesn't take Darcy home, we take Raine home. I decided to teach Raine how to bake and cook for when they can get out of that damn house.

I'm on the fire escape ladder, just standing on it as we all stand here.

What a group we are.

"My parents are going to kill me," Darcy says, running her hands through her pink hair. They almost killed her for that too.

I dyed it, so they almost killed me too. Getting shoved against a wall with a gun to your head while a middle aged man is spitting in your face isn't fun. Fynn and Alrik got him off me. Thank god they were there.

"Dar, we can try and find a replica or something," Rain says, spinning a ring around their finger.

Dar shakes her head, and huffs.

"Dar," I say, "it's late, okay? It's dark, and it's not going to get light for another three or four hours. Let's just go back to my place and we can sleep on it. We'll come back in the morning and look for it. Worst case scenario, I can get you another one. I promise."