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I think this might be the longest time I’ve ever spent in his company without things descending into an argument or a fight. He’s not even speaking now, he’s just knelt there, staring at me sightlessly. Then after another series of the slowest seconds in the world, he decides to set his weapon down.

Even though Halsten would never knowingly do that.

He would never cede ground like that, never give up some advantage.

Because this isn’t Halsten anymore, the memory of Madison suggests in my head, and the idea is compelling enough that I just have to see. I need his eyes; I feel like I will know if I can see his eyes, so I reach up with one trembling hand and touch the metal—just the metal, not his skin, not his face, not anything so intimate.

Yet he reacts like I have.

He makes a sound almost like a sigh when I make contact. Then again, when that spell melts away. It turns into a swirl of sugary blue, and spirals up and off his face. And what’s left behind is something I have never seen in all my days. Not just from him, not just from hundreds of years of our fights, but from anyone.

Awe. Wonder. Gratitude.

Then, just in case I could doubt, he speaks.

And I can hear it in his voice, too.

The words he breathlessly says sound like music. They sing through my soul, so strongly I almost don’t move my hand away. As if I want to put it on his face, this suddenly completely unfamiliar face. Who are you, I almost say, and it’s only when I do that I realize how insane this is.

He’s someone you can never trust, I tell myself.

Then I raise my umbrella, and let it carry me away from the madness.

CHAPTER NINE

I don’t tell any of the rest of this newly formed gang about what happened. It just seems better to try to figure out what is going on before I say anything. If this is some kind of trap I want to know it, and have time to come up with a plan to protect them—hopefully before all the daylight hours bleed away.

Even though it means telling them to continue searching in weird places.

And relying solely on Phone, who is still not happy with me. She seems to have found her way out of the closet with the buzzing-until-she-bounces trick she does. But it’s clear she couldn’t manage to get up onto her favorite spot—atop the teetering pile of washed laundry in the corner of my bedroom that’s been there ever since she revealed she’s some sort of conscious being.

I find her on the floor, sadly leaning against it.

However, when I go to pick her up she isn’t exactly appreciative. I get a zap to the palm and a promise to never speak to me again. And I don’t think it’s just about the closet. I mean, there is a bunch of washed laundry piles in there, too—she could have easily found a spot. Plus it’s not as if she doesn’t know how to occupy herself. She has the sum total of human knowledge at her fucking fingertips.

The fingertips that she’s shown me before, and that now haunt my dreams.

They look like fleshy, nail-less potatoes. I have to not think about them so I can figure out what the actual problem is. “Look, I know you were frightened that he could have climbed through the hole. But you have to trust me sometimes,” I say.

And to my relief, she turns back on.

And she doesn’t even use her serial killer face.

She uses a cartoon spider with a tiny skewed mouth instead. “And how am I supposed to know when I should and when I shouldn’t? You made the party sound like a good idea, too.”

“It was, in a way. It meant I made friends with witches who’ve helped me.”

“Yeah, I heard you talking with that chatty, annoying one about it. And then you didn’t even consult me about whether it was a good idea to do a spell on him! So now of course it’s all gone wrong, and suddenly you need me again,” she huffs, as she turns her cartoon spider face away.

The memory of Maisy tells me she sounds jealous.

But then Maisy was as confident as only a movie star can be and better at judging these things than I ever am. I never imagine anyone would be that interested. It’s always me who seems more interested in everyone else. And sure, that’s my job. Yes, I like unearthing everybody’s secrets. But sometimes, just sometimes, I’d like to mean that much.

It’s nice to realize maybe I do here.

I nod in Maisy’s faded direction, and go to reassure Phone.

“I always need you. Not just need—I like you.”