“McCormick’s tests are always multiple choice,” John Michael continued, the word multiple picking up the cadence and melody of his accent more than any of its neighbors. “Which makes you a very lucky girl.”

“Because even if I guess completely randomly, I’ll still probably end up getting some of the questions right?”

“No,” Skylar said. “Because all multiple-choice tests are subject to … the code!”

I must have looked as clueless as I felt.

“It is like this,” John Michael explained. “Multiple-choice tests are written by people, yes? And the people, they tend to write them in a certain way. The code is Darryl’s theory about the way the tests are written. And if you know how a test is written, you can pass it, even if you do not know the answers in and of themselves.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

Skylar nodded. “Darryl took the AP psychology exam last year, just for fun. He only missed two multiple-choice questions, and he never even took the class.”

Okay, that was kind of impressive.

“So what’s the code?” I couldn’t help lowering my voice to a whisper as I spoke. There was a certain solemnity to this moment.

“It’s pretty simple.”

It took me a minute to realize that Darryl was the one speaking. His voice was low in volume, but higher in pitch than I’d expected it to be, given his size.

“McCormick’s tests have four choices, A through D. One is the correct answer. Two are decoys. The fourth can be anything, except that it’s not related to the first three.”

I really wasn’t following here.

“All you have to do is figure out which answer matches up to two different decoys,” Skylar said. “So say you’ve got a test that asks you, I don’t know … what the color and consistency of a zombie’s tongue is.”

Genevieve giggled and then popped a french fry into her mouth. Clearly, she’d never been up close and personal with the walking dead, because ew.

“Ahem,” Skylar said, clearing her throat, but she spoiled the effect by reaching over and stealing one of Genevieve’s fries. “So, anyway, what is the color and consistency of a zombie’s tongue? (a) black and hardened, (b) black and rotting, (c) brown and rotting, or (d) blue and scabby?”

E, I thought, none of the above. Zombies didn’t have tongues. Like a caterpillar eating its way through its cocoon, the first thing Homo mortis did upon rising was eat the flesh out of its own mouth.

“Ummm … D?” I guessed, because I wasn’t about to share that little tidbit with the table as a whole. As far as the rest of the world knew, I didn’t have any more experience with zombies than the next girl. I knew that they existed. I knew to call Preternatural Control in the unlikely event that I saw one, but that was it. I didn’t know what a horde of zombies smelled like. I couldn’t feel them coming from a mile away. I’d certainly never snuck into my father’s lab and disemboweled twelve of them in one night.

“Wrong,” Darryl said softly.

Yeah, I thought back. Most people think what I do is very, very wrong. But then I remembered that, unless Darryl was psychic (and really, who believed in psychics these days?), he was referring to my answer, not my hunting habits.

Darryl smiled, as if softening the blow. “If the answer was ‘blue and scabby,’ what would the decoys be?”

Sensing that Darryl had just about reached his word limit for continuous speech, Skylar picked up where he’d left off. “When people write multiple-choice tests, they like to give you some answers that are almost right to keep you from picking the right one. Even if the teacher tries to write the answers randomly, it’s nearly impossible to do, so they end up coming up with at least a couple of alternatives that have something in common with the real answer. In this case, ‘blue and scabby’ is the complete oddball.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So you throw that one out and you’ve got three choices left.”

“Right, so then you look and you find one choice that has something in common with the other two. In this case, the word black and the word rotting both appear twice.”

“So the ones that have black or rotting in it are the decoys, and the one that has both words in it is the answer?” I asked. The method didn’t seem foolproof to me, but it was probably better than my previous plan, which had involved playing eenie meenie miny moe.

“It does not always work,” John Michael said, echoing my thoughts, “but it is a lot better than guessing randomly.”

Again, I tried to place his accent, and again, I failed. Still, John Michael’s words had taken my mind off zombies. And hellhounds. And the other thirty-seven species of preternatural fauna identified since Darwin had gone public with the discovery of the Galápagos hydra, and mankind had started turning over stones better left unturned.

“Another one, Skylar?” The voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and without turning around, I knew that the person speaking was popular, good looking, and in the process of rolling his eyes. “Seriously, Skye, you’re worse about collecting strays than Vaughn is. And that’s saying something, given that he’s a vet.”

I resisted the urge to turn around in my seat and told myself I didn’t care what this holier-than-thou, cooler-than-you, condescending a-hole looked like. Even though his voice did have a way of wrapping itself around your body, heavy and warm.

“What? I’m not allowed to make friends? You afraid you’ll lose your position as the most popular member of the Hayden family?”

I heard the boy’s sigh a second before I felt it on the back of my neck. It was like he was standing directly behind me, even though I knew we had to be separated by at least a foot or two.

“At least it’s not another guy,” the boy muttered.

Skylar rolled her eyes, stood up, and practically skipped over to the boy behind me. I refused to turn around, but a moment later, Skylar came back into view, pushing an older, larger, male version of herself toward our table.

“This is Elliot,” she said. “He used to be my second-favorite brother, but he’s recently been demoted to third.”

I could feel Elliot’s eyes on my face, but couldn’t seem to bring myself to meet them.

“This is Kali,” Skylar said. “Be nice.”

I finally lifted my eyes and met Elliot’s lighter-colored ones. He was tall, not Darryl-tall, but at least three or four inches taller than my five seven. His hair was a shade or two darker than Skylar’s, but cut so short that it still looked almost white. His skin was just tan enough to make me wonder why he’d been spending so much time in the sun, and his cheekbones were a thing of beauty.

Not that I was looking or anything.

“Elliot is one of those guys,” Skylar said. “You know, the ones who hang out with those girls, even though those girls are constantly stealing his sister’s tampons.”

All of the boys, Elliot included, winced, and I made a mental note that the word tampon was male kryptonite.

“Hey, I told them to lay off you. And they did.” Elliot turned Skylar around and searched her eyes. “They did lay off, right?”

Skylar nodded. “’Course, El. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Elliot glanced back at the table, and it was suddenly very clear that he thought Darryl, John Michael, and Genevieve were social mistakes on his sister’s part. The football legacy who chose not to play. The exchange student with a predilection for eyeliner. The quiet, intense girl who didn’t look very girly.

And then, there was me. Clearly, Mr. Judgmental did not approve.

“Hi, Kali. Nice to meet you. I promise I’m not the tool I might appear.” Skylar poked her brother in the side, encouraging him to parrot her words. “Go on. Say it.”

Elliot flicked her in the back of the neck with his thumb. “Shut up, squirt.”

“You’re in serious danger of being bumped down to fourth-favorite-brother status,” Skylar told him. “And Lord knows I’m not really feeling like promoting Reid, so behave.”

Elliot rolled his eyes, but then he looked back at mine, and for the first time, he smiled. “Hi, Kali. It is nice to meet you.”