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“It’s all inert,” Morrow said. “No power in the words. There’s no real rhyme or reason to any of it. So they’re not really spells. Not deliberately written out, you know, like someone stringing together a sentence — subject, verb, etcetera? The grammar’s all wrong.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding along. I was just happy to learn that simply looking at the tablet wasn’t going to break my skull open.

“But it’s so interesting seeing how some of these fragments fit together. I wonder if you could piece together new spells from all these combinations.”

“Like those fridge magnets. You know, the ones with all the words, then you try to rearrange them to make a poem or whatever? Except everyone just writes dirty messages instead.”

“That’s a pretty fair comparison, actually.”

He slid his finger across the screen, carefully studying every new page. I watched the creases in his forehead as he read, the way his mouth pressed into a tight line, his eyes barely blinking.

Morrow was conventionally attractive, sure, but time and again I found myself extra enamored when he showed his nerdier side. The precision of his scrollwork, those glasses that he kept on his desk, and now, his nascent theory of potential random spell generation.

It was all I could do to stop myself from placing my hands on his broad shoulders so I could lean in even more, pretending to be interested in the emanated waste products of my mind.

And then he turned the page again.

I froze. Morrow held his breath. There on the page, interspersed between the words and phrases, was his name. Theodore, or Morrow, or Theodore Morrow, every variation written over and over, copied again and again.

I snatched the tablet out of his hands. He didn’t move, hands in midair as if still holding the tablet. His eyes did glance sideways, though, inspecting my face for some kind of response.

“That’s enough studying for one day,” I said, stammering. “All work and no play, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” Morrow said, nodding along with forced enthusiasm. “And that’s probably why my name keeps appearing in the tablet. Because we spend so much time together. And you keep thinking about work.”

“Oh, you saw that,” I said, an artificial, high-pitched squeak in my voice. “That’s probably what it is, since we’re partners and all.”

“Right,” Morrow said. “Of course. Because we’re partners.”

He got up from the table, but I was still standing behind him. I doubled over with an “Oof” when his chair struck me in the stomach. He caught me in his arms. The fragmentablet flew out of my grasp and landed among the couch cushions.

“Oh,” I breathed, my body pressed against his, the tautest, most muscular parts of him kneading into me.

“Oh,” he breathed, his face too close to mine. His body, his heat, his name over and over in the fragmentablet, on my mind, on my lips.

“Morrow, I — ”

“Yeah,” he said. “I — I mean — ”

The palm of Morrow’s hand pulsed with pale blue light. My heart plunged into my stomach.

“You should get that,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, meaning it. He stared into his palm, brow knitting. “This looks urgent. Oh. Uh-oh.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“More like who. It’s Director Sakamoto.”

CHAPTER 18

Morrow pinched his fingers, then spread them, a thin beam of ghostly blue light radiating from the implant in his palm. The projection wavered into an upside down pyramid, out of which stared the faintly flickering bust of one Enyo Sakamoto.

“Morrow! Good. You’re awake.”

He checked his wristwatch. “Director, it’s only after lunch.”

She waved her hand impatiently. “I don’t know what hours you like to keep. Time was when our recruits never slept at all. Ah. Those were the days.”