I bite my lip. My instinct tells me they’re telling the truth. And behind that truth is a whole lot of information I’d like to get. I step forward and retrieve Twill’s gun before lowering my bow, though. Then I hesitate a moment, thinking of another day in this woods, when Gale and I watched a hovercraft appear out of thin air and capture two escapees from the Capitol. The boy was speared and killed. The redheaded girl, I found out when I went to the Capitol, was mutilated and turned into a mute servant called an Avox. “Anyone after you?”

“We don’t think so. We think they believe we were killed in a factory explosion,” says Twill. “Only a fluke that we weren’t.”

“All right, let’s go inside,” I say, nodding at the cement house. I follow them in, carrying the gun.

Bonnie makes straight for the hearth and lowers herself onto a Peacekeeper’s cloak that has been spread before it. She holds her hands to the feeble flame that burns on one end of a charred log. Her skin is so pale as to be translucent and I can see the fire glow through her flesh. Twill tries to arrange the cloak, which must have been her own, around the shivering girl.

A tin gallon can has been cut in half, the lip ragged and dangerous. It sits in the ashes, filled with a handful of pine needles steaming in water.

“Making tea?” I ask.