“Why don’t you tell me about him?” Mac invited. “I brought food and blankets in case we needed to spend the night. We’ll eat and you can tell me about your time together.”

In my head, she said, If he’s here, and he’s as sensitive as you told me he was, his feelings are hurt. Hearing you tell us stories about him may coax him down.

I conceded the wisdom of her plan.

Mac made a fire and I discovered I wasn’t the only one who’d brought fish, but hers were on ice in her backpack. She wrapped them in foil and tucked them into the embers to roast. As the aroma filled the air, I dropped down cross-legged by the fire and told Mac how we’d met on Olean, how he’d taught me to freeze-frame better, and the story about the edible planet. I even told her some of the tales I’d not told anyone about the less dangerous jams we’d gotten ourselves into, and how Shazam had rescued me, time and time again. As I reminisced, some of the grief over Dancer that was eating me alive was met by yet more grief as the realization settled in that Shazam really might not have waited or survived.

Did I have to lose everything? Both of them? Was this the harsh life lesson I had to learn now? Did some people just not get an easy life? I would never say it wasn’t a good one but, bloody hell, sometimes I wondered why mine was so rocky all the time!

Eventually my stories made me miss him so keenly that, combined with my fresh, hot grief over Dancer, I did something I’d never done in front of Shazam because he was so vulnerable and prone to manic fits of depression. No matter how bad our circumstances had gotten, I’d never cried.

I did now.

Bloody hell, all I did anymore was cry! It was ridiculous. I despised being this person. Mac started to cry, too, and I looked at her through my tears and said impatiently, “You don’t have anything to cry about. What’s wrong with you?”

“Your pain is mine. When you hurt, I hurt. If someone who truly loves you sees you in pain, they share it.” She tipped her head back, staring up at the air. “And they’d certainly step in to stop it. To comfort you. No matter how much of a pissy mood they were in. They would see that their Yi-yi was devastated and do anything to make her feel better. Even if they didn’t feel like it,” she practically snarled.

The fire exploded in a tower of sparks and was instantly extinguished.

The foil wrapped fish vanished.

Bones tumbled out of the sky, showering down on me, bouncing off my head.

I scrambled to my feet, rubbing at my eyes. “Shazam! Are you there?”

Violet eyes materialized in the sky above me, narrowed to slits. “You said wait. Your expects, bars on my cage. Did you come? No. Not then. Not the next day. Not ever.”

Holy hell, he was here! He was alive!

He vanished.

Another bone exploded out of the sky and bounced off my head. “Ow!” I clapped a hand to it. “Ever is now! I’m sorry. I’ll tell you I’m sorry every day for the rest of my life if it makes you feel better.”

“It will take much more than that,” came the bodiless sniff. “My knots have sprouted an entire civilization of knots that have been reproducing with the ferocity and fertility of a band of mating Ka-lyrras! I’m one big tangle!” came his anguished wail. “And I’m fat.”

“I’ll brush you. You’re not fat. Just come out. Let me see you!”

“Am, too!” he wailed. “You may only see parts of me. The slender ones.” Eyes materialized ten feet above me. “You will leave me again,” he said tearfully.

“I won’t. I’ll never leave you again.” I said something I’d never said before. A thing I’d learned to say with Dancer. “I love you, Shazam. I can’t stand living without you. I missed you so much that I went a little crazy for a time. But I couldn’t come back because the Silver took me back to Dublin—”

“You found your way home, Yi-yi?” he said tremulously. “You did it? You finally made it?”

My heart melted. The happiness in his voice was unmistakable, happy for me, because I’d finally gotten what I’d been seeking for so long. “Yes, and because of that damned infinity of mirrors—”

“Not infinite, tiny red. Four-hundred-thousand seven hundred and sixty-two,” he corrected.

“—I was trying to find a way to mark the correct one from the other side so I could bring you home with me. I’m so sorry, Shazam!”

Suddenly he manifested fully, dropping from the sky to plop fatly on the trashcan. I blinked. Good grief, he really was fat. His furry white belly draped both sides of the trashcan. I made a Jada-face to mask my astonishment. No way I was hurting his feelings now. He might vanish again.

Behind me, Mac gasped.

“See—she thinks I’m fat!” He shot an accusing glare at Mac.

“That’s not why I gasped,” Mac said, sounding oddly strained.

He thumped the trashcan with a paw and turned an accusing glare on me. “You sent it through empty. What kind of Yi-yi does that? Not a speck of food. Not an ort. Not even a morsel.” He tossed his shaggy head and scowled, then a belch escaped him and a brilliant orange feather floated up into the air. He hastily licked his paw and began scrubbing at his whiskers with an innocent expression.

My eyes narrowed. “Did you eat the tribesmen?”

He swung his great head from side to side in elaborate denial. “Not me.” He belched again and half a blue feather drifted out.

“How many of the tribesmen did you eat?” I demanded.

“You told me not to eat people. I didn’t. Well, maybe I did. But only a few. The rest,” he said, slumping a mound of fatness and foul mood over the rusted can, “decided I was too fat to share an island with.” He shot me a meek, pitiful look. “They went away.” He turned his nose up in a snit. “I have no idea where.”

“Shazam,” I said warningly.

“They took my Yi-yi away from me!” he snarled.

“How many did you eat?”

“They were going to eat me. You would probably prefer I’d let them.” He glared at me, eyes narrowed, nose crinkling. “Then you wouldn’t be bothered with me,” he added in a small voice.

“I’m never bothered by you. I adore you. Answer my question.”

He stood up, back arching into a horseshoe shape with porcupine bristles ridging his spine. “What did you expect?” he said defensively. “I ate them. Okay? I have problems. You know that about me.” He sniffed and tears began to flow. “Now you don’t want me anymore. I should just die. We’re all going to die anyway. What does it matter if I do it now? Who would care?” He flung himself dramatically off the trashcan, rolled midair to land flat on his back on the ground, where he lay like a dead thing, head lolling to the side, paws up in the air.