When she arrived at work for her next shift, she didn't notice it immediately. Some customers stared curiously at the dessert display, but she didn't make anything of it until one of them asked her if it was a game. Perplexed by him pointing more specifically at the middle row, Cinder frowned when she saw a cut-out piece of white cardboard blocking nearly half of the window pane. How had she not noticed that before? Informing the customer that no, there was no game—whatever that meant—she rounded the counter until what she saw made her freeze on the spot.

It was, indeed, a piece of white cardboard that had been cut into a sloppy, square sign. In scribbly, uppercase, familiar handwriting, it said:

I SPY PIE (only $1.99!)
BUT DO YOU SPY KAI?

In small, barely distinguishable writing at the bottom, it said: Contact Thorne to win this pie!

Cinder stared in disbelief. "What is that sign?"

The customer shrugged. "You're the one who works here."

"Sorry," said Cinder quickly. "That question wasn't directed at you." She pulled nervously on her ponytail. "I believe my colleague is just…looking for someone."

The customer nodded and leaned forward to inspect the display as Cinder hurried back behind it in order to remove the sign. "$1.99 for pie sounds like a good deal anyway. I'll take it."

"Certainly." Cinder hastily wrapped up a slice, put it in the standard Lunar Cafe dessert box, stuffed in extra napkins, and rang him up. She pushed out any thoughts about Kai until the customer was gone and she held the offending object in both her hands.

Thorne, slyly grinning by the drive-thru register, saluted her. "Great idea, am I right?"

"Thorne." She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "What do you think this is supposed to be?" She shook the sign at him, her pent-up frustration at him seeping into the cardboard. After he had ruined Kai's note and caused her to lose his number, she had not panicked. She had not even yelled at him. She kept it bottled in, like she tended to do, and tried to logically rationalize how she would contact him.

She knew his last name (Prince) and the name of his sister (Iko). She also knew that he had a friend named Torin. How hard could it be to track him down with information like that at a university of 40,000 people? Probably nearly impossible, she'd decided. She'd had some ideas that involved quite a bit of stalking and breaking some FERPA laws, but nothing that was convincing enough to begin her search yet. She needed time to think things through—which was obviously what she was doing now. That, and resisting the urge to throttle the Italian in front of her.

If only she had bothered to take him up on learning some swear words in his language.

"It's a catchy rhyme to help us locate your lost lover," said Thorne.

Ignoring the tingle of anticipation that the word lover brought to her spine, she narrowed her eyes at him. "Those are the dumbest two lines I've ever seen strung together."

"Well ex-cuse me!" he drawled. "Poetry is hard in a foreign language."

She tore the sign in half; she would not have people asking about Kai all day or she would probably lose her mind. Noticing that some people in the cafe were staring at them, she closed her eyes to center herself with calm thoughts. When she opened them, Thorne still stood there, smiling. Her own voice was barely a whisper. "And what makes you think that I need a sign to find Kai? How would you even know if I haven't already contacted him?"

"Oh, Cinder. You act tough but you're really transparent."

"And you're an idiot."

"Let's hear your great idea of how to find him, then?" When she hesitated, he added, "One that doesn't involve putting up signs."

"I'll figure it out, Thorne. Just give it a rest. Don't you think you've done enough damage already?"

Thorne's shoulders finally slumped—but only a little. He took one of the cleaning rags and wrung it around his hands. "I admit, the game with the piece of paper was not my finest moment."

"Hmph."

"Which is why I was trying to make it up to you!" He dropped the rag, instead stooping down to pick up the discarded sign. "We can still tape this."

"No." If she was going to find Kai, she was going to find him her way, without completely embarrassing herself. She just had to figure out how…

Perhaps it wasn't her most brilliant of ideas. At the time, it had seemed like a stroke of genius. Now that she sat in her dorm room nervously nibbling on her fingernails instead of doing her homework, it was easy to look back at the whole thing with a different perspective. It wasn't that she was lazy, either—she just thought it would be far too exhausting to run around campus all day trying to hunt Kai down. When she wasn't working, her time needed to be focused on studying. Just because a guy liked her, should she change all of her priorities?

It hadn't been her first choice either. She'd taken Kai up on his suggestion to ask around about him. A few people seemed to have heard about him, but they didn't know what dorm he lived in or what clubs he was a part of. Cinder had sort of been hoping that he was secretly their class president or something, and that it would be easy to locate him. But the people who knew of him only said things like, "oh yeah, he's hot" or "that guy is really popular, I think." One girl even blushed a little, which in turn had made Cinder just a little jealous.

She had also tried talking to the Registration and Records office, claiming that he had lost something important. She'd said that without his Student ID number or contact information it would be would be impossible to give it back. The secretary had stared her down before demanding that Cinder turn over the lost object, which of course Cinder didn't have, so consequently she had rushed out.

Thorne's sign idea had started looking pretty appealing, though she would never admit that to him. She remembered the movies she'd seen where the boy had lost the girl at the ball and had put up signs asking around about her identity—it seemed easy enough for them to locate her with that method. But Cinder had wanted something more efficient, something that would produce quick results without broadcasting her feelings for Kai around the entire campus.

That was how she ended up asking Wolf to track down Kai for her.

Her fingernail chewed thoroughly, she began tapping her pen methodically against her notebook. It certainly hadn't been her finest moment. Asking Wolf was an understatement: she had basically bribed him with a month's worth of donuts on the house. He didn't know it yet, but Thorne was going to be the one picking up the tab on Wolf's free food as penance for making her lose Kai's number in the first place.

Wolf hadn't been coming to the Lunar Cafe as regularly as before. Now that he was with Scarlet, he only showed up when Scarlet showed up. No longer sitting in the corner with his newspaper, he usually offered a bashful grin out of the corner of his mouth whenever Cinder rang him up. His eyes, however, barely left Scarlet's. Hand in hand, the two of them were almost more nauseating than Winter and Jacin.

Scarlet still chatted up Thorne like she always did—or was it the other way around? It was in one of those moments when Wolf was standing quietly behind her, hands protectively on her hips, that Cinder's plan had formed.

Wolf was patient. Smart. Romantic. Somewhat instinctual even, from what she'd observed of him. He was even willing to cross a few personal boundaries to achieve happiness in love. He had waited incessantly for Scarlet to show up and notice him. And with all that waiting, he clearly had plenty of free time.

Unwilling to let another opportunity slip away from her, she blurted out the first thing she thought of.

"Find Kai for me."

Thorne, Scarlet, and Wolf all turned to her. "Kai Prince," she added hastily. "He likes me, I like him,"—it was so strange to admit it out loud—"but he doesn't know I lost his number. Help me find him."

It was Scarlet who looked at her quizzically, somewhat amused. "Me?"

"Uh—sure. I was thinking Wolf, but maybe you guys could do it together. It…could be fun?" Stars, she was an idiot.

Thorne raised a finger. "I see where you're going with this. I like it."

"You don't know me well," Cinder continued to babble. "I get that. But I watched the way you found Scarlet and now you're together. And—your name is Wolf!"

At that, Scarlet began to laugh. "It must be a sign." She nudged her partner, whose cheeks began to heat.

"What do you say?" asked Thorne.

"The girl seems desperate enough," said Scarlet. Wolf still had not spoken.

"I can pay! Not in the traditional sense, maybe, but what about free donuts for a month? Anytime you come in here."

Wolf considered before he finally spoke. "Why can't you just do it?"

"I'm so busy," she said lamely, wanting to shrink down behind the counter. "And I don't even know how to track someone down efficiently. You…seem like the type who would know. Maybe even has contacts."

"You did track me down," said Scarlet, a finger trailing down his arm. More heat on Wolf's cheeks. More hope for Cinder. "Come on, help her out. This cafe did help us get together."

"Is he the guy who comes in here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?" asked Wolf.

"You noticed?"

"I'm sure the whole cafe has noticed." He laughed to himself. "Plus, the only time you mess up orders are when he's around."

Had she really messed up orders and not noticed? Come to think of it, Cinder couldn't even remember other customers when Kai had come around, probably because she was too focused on how her tongue tended to stick to the roof of her mouth whenever he was in front of her. And then Thorne would step in and take care of other orders. Though slightly disturbed at her own transparency, Wolf's comment made her believe that he was even more qualified for the job.

Now, back in her dorm room, still fiddling with her pen, she desperately hoped she had made the right choice. Because if she had, she might finally find out what it would be like to stand in front of Kai, no longer wondering if he was thinking of her. They would be equals in their feelings.

That is, if she decided to trust him. It was very tempting to forget everything that happened and just fantasize about the two of them on a date. Even now, her thoughts drifted to his mouth, the way he smiled, the way her heart raced back to the desire to have his lips on hers. Her imagination ran just wild enough to allow herself to think about what it might be like to call him hers.

She was getting ahead of herself, she knew it. But stars, she hoped Wolf would just hurry up. If he didn't find Kai soon…well, she would probably need to take the embarrassing route. As in the buy-a-billboard, wear-a-sandwich-board, shout-from-a-megaphone-in-the-cafeteria route. Cringing just at the thought, she reckoned that something like that should do the trick.

Kai had better be worth all this trouble.