“How ballistic do you think she’s gonna be?” I asked, my gaze on the vibrating door.

“Intercontinental missile ballistic.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

Lesley placed her stack of cards gingerly on the tabletop, then looked over at me. “But you’re still going in there, right?”

I nodded. “As soon as I’m ready.”

“Anything you want in your eulogy?”

Lesley smiled tightly. I gathered up my scarf, rose from the couch, and headed for Scout’s door.

“Just tell my parents I loved them,” I said, and reached out my hand to knock.

13

Four minutes later, when Scout finally said, “Come in,” I opened the door. Scout was on her bed, legs crossed, a spread of books before her.

She lifted her gaze and arched an eyebrow at me. “Well. Look who we have here.”

I managed a half smile.

She closed a book, then uncrossed her legs and rose from the bed. After turning down the stereo to a lowish roar, she moved to her shelves and began straightening the items in her tiny museum. “You want to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me?”

Because I’m afraid, I silently thought. “I’m not avoiding you.”

She glanced over with skeptical eyes. “You ignored me all weekend. You’ve either been holed up in your room or hanging with the brat pack. And since I know there’s no love lost there . . .” She shrugged.

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re freaked out about the magic, aren’t you? I knew it. I knew it was going to freak you out.” She plucked one of the tiny, glittered houses from a shelf, raised it to eye level, and peered through the tiny window. “I shouldn’t have told you. Shouldn’t have gotten you wrapped up in it.” Shaking her head again, she put the house back onto the shelf and picked up the one beside it.

“You’d think I’d be used to this by now,” she said, suddenly turning around, the second house in her hand. “I mean, it’s not like this is the first time someone has walked away because I’m, you know, weird. You think my parents didn’t notice that I could do stuff?”

As if proving her point, she adjusted the house so that it sat in the palm of her outstretched hand, then whispered a series of staccato words.

The interior of the house began to glow.

“Look inside,” she quietly said.

“Inside?”

Carefully, she placed the illuminated house back on the shelf, then moved to the side so I could stand beside her. I stepped into the space she’d made, then leaned down and peeked into one of the tiny windows.

The house—this tiny, glittered, paper house on Scout’s bookshelf—now bustled with activity. Like a dollhouse come to life, holograms of tiny figures moved inside amongst tiny pieces of furniture, like a living snow globe. Furniture lined the walls; lamps glowed with the spark of whatever life she’d managed to breathe into it with the mere sound of her voice.

I stood up again and glanced at her, eyes wide. “You did that?”

Her gaze on the house, she nodded. “That’s my talent—I make magic from words. Like you said, from lists. Letters.” She paused. “I did it the first time when I was twelve. I mean, not that particular spell; that’s just an animation thing, hardly a page of text, and I condensed it a long time ago. That means I made it shorter,” she said at my raised brows. “Like zipping a computer file.”

“That’s . . . amazing,” I said, lifting my gaze to the house again. Shadows passed before the tiny glassine windows, lives being lived in miniature.

“Amazing or not, my mother freaked out. My parents made calls, and I was sent right into private school. I was put in a place away from average kids. Put into a home.” She lifted her gaze and glanced around the room. “A prison, of sorts.”

That explained Scout’s tiny museum—the room she’d made her own, the four walls she’d filled with the detritus of her life, from junior high to St. Sophia’s. It was her magical respite.

Her cell.

“So, yeah,” she said after a moment, waving a hand in front of the paper house, the lights in the windows dimming and fading, a tiny world extinguished. “I’m used to rejection because of my magic.”

“It’s not you,” I quietly said.

Scout barked out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the first time I’ve heard that one.” She straightened the house, adjusting it so that it sat neatly beside its neighbors. “If we’re going to break up, let’s just get it over with, okay?”

I figured out something about Scout in that moment, something that made my heart clench with protective-ness. However brave she might have been in fighting Reapers, in protecting humans, in running through underground tunnels in the middle of the night, fighting back against fire- and earthquake-bearing baddies, she was very afraid of one thing: that I’d abandon her. She was afraid she’d made a friend who was going to walk away like her parents had done, walk out and leave her alone in her room. That’s what finally snapped me out of nearly forty-eight hours of freaking out about something that I knew, without a doubt, was going to change my life forever.

“It’s probably nothing,” I finally said.

I watched the change in her expression—from preparing for defeat, to relief, to crisis management.

“Tell me,” she said.