Books flew in circles around them.

Zach grinned wide. “It worked.”

He’d worked this magic … through her? Using her magic? He kissed her again joyfully, and the books flocked to the ceiling.

Breaking the kiss, they watched the books fly. A pair circled and spiraled. A few flew in a line, rising and falling. One flapped closer to another, and a third dove toward them, opening and shutting its pages furiously, as if jealous. Eve laughed out loud. Zach was laughing too. Holding each other, they laughed as the bird-books flew around them.

At last, the books slowed, and they sank one by one toward the floor. They collapsed, strewn around the reading room, fluttering their pages up and down until at last they all lay still at Eve and Zach’s feet.

One of the librarians halted in the doorway to the reading room. “What—”

Books had fallen everywhere, spine up onto pillows, pages bent, upside down.

Eve and Zach leaped apart.

The librarian’s eyes were so wide that the whites were visible in a ring around his irises. He looked like a startled horse, Eve thought—and then she wondered when she’d been near a horse. She could picture one, yoked to a carnival wagon. Its eyes were wild, and it strained against its harness. Distracted by the memory, she didn’t answer. Instead, Zach did.

“I can work magic when I kiss her,” Zach said.

Blood began to rush to the librarian’s face, tinting his neck and cheeks a ruddy pink. His mouth opened and shut, but words didn’t come out.

Quickly, Eve said, “We tried a new shelving technique. It didn’t work well.”

Color faded from the librarian’s cheeks, and he began to breathe again. “Okay. You … uh, clean this up before the patrons come in, or Patti will have your heads.”

Eve nodded.

The librarian retreated, looking back at them several times.

“You lied easily.” Zach bent to pick up the books. She joined him and didn’t know what to say. He was right.

Halfway through cleanup, she saw a hint of movement outside one of the reading-room windows. She looked up to focus on it. Shrouded in shadows, a hooded face was pressed against the glass. Someone watching her. And then the face was gone.

Clutching the books, Eve went to the window. No one was there.

“Eve?”

She retreated from the window. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” That lie was easy to say too.

Safely behind a curtain, Eve studied Aidan through the library lobby window. He was leaning against his car in front of the entrance next to a NO PARKING sign. His hands were loosely in his pockets, his ankles were crossed, and his face, eyes closed, was tilted up toward the sun. He looked entirely at ease, as if he belonged there.

“Is that Pretty Boy?” Zach was behind her. His breath was soft on her neck.

Aidan was Pretty Boy. He looked like an airbrushed model in one of Aunt Nicki’s magazines. Seeing him, though, made her want to run in the opposite direction, which didn’t make sense if she was supposed to be with him. “He’s supposed to take me to lunch with his friends. I think.”

“Are you going?” Zach’s voice was neutral.

Malcolm had said she’d asked for the lunches. But she didn’t remember. How could she be committed when she didn’t remember? She thought of Aidan kissing her, and her fingers touched her lips.

Aidan stretched, pulling his arm across his torso and then over his head. His chest muscles flexed. He rolled his neck as if he were limbering up.

Eve stepped away from the window. She faced Zach. Behind him, she noticed Patti Langley at the circulation desk. Her hands processed books, scanning them, demagnetizing them, and handing them to patrons, but her eyes were glued to Eve, as always.

“No,” Eve said to Zach. “I’m not.”

“Are you going to tell him that you aren’t going?” Zach’s hands were shoved in his pockets, but he didn’t look anywhere near as comfortable as Aidan. In fact, he shifted from foot to foot as if nails poked into the soles of his feet.

“No.” She felt herself smiling, though she couldn’t explain why.

“You can escape through the back door in the staff room,” Zach said. “Get a couple blocks away and then call your aunt to pick you up.”

“I want to go with you.” She didn’t plan to say it, but the words felt right—the same way it felt right not to walk out the door and go with Aidan, no matter what her past self had planned.

“I don’t have a car. Or even use of my mom’s lunchbox-on-wheels.” But he seemed pleased. His eyes were bright again, and his cheeks were twitching as if he wanted to smile but thought he shouldn’t.

“Where do you go after work?” Eve asked.

“Home. I live a few streets that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction from Aidan. “Come home with me. For lunch, I mean.” He blushed pink. “I make a mean egg salad bagel sandwich. Pickles and everything.”

She thought that sounded wonderful. She was aware she was smiling goofily at him. He wore the same expression, his eyes full of her, as though drinking her in. “Can we skip the everything bagel?” she asked.

“You don’t like everything bagels?”

She shook her head.

“Why didn’t you ever say so before?”

“I’m saying so now.” I can’t be bound by a past self I don’t remember, she thought. It was a freeing thought, and she felt her entire heart lift.

His smile faded as his eyes flicked to look over her shoulder and out the window. “So, Pretty Boy … He won’t call your aunt and freak her out if you don’t show?”

Her shoulders slumped. He would, of course, and Aunt Nicki and Malcolm would crash down on her with full wrath if she left with no word. Eve peered out the window at Aidan and felt as if a box lid were slamming shut on her and she were shrinking inside. And then she straightened as an idea occurred to her. “I’ll tell Patti.”

Without waiting for Zach to respond, Eve crossed the lobby to the circulation desk.

The librarian immediately looked down at her computer, as if she hadn’t been staring at Eve for the past ten minutes. “Yes?” she said, like she’d expected a patron.

“There’s a boy waiting for me outside. I …” She thought of how concerned Patti had been about security, of Patti’s secret eyes, of her arrangement with WitSec. She’s hiding too, Eve thought. “I don’t feel safe with him.”

Patti looked up sharply, dropping the feigned air of disinterest. “He’s picked you up before. He must have been approved.”

“I know.” Eve couldn’t explain it to Patti any more than she could explain it to herself. She looked down at her feet, unable to meet Patti’s intense gaze, and thought that maybe this was a bad idea, maybe she should go with Aidan and not second-guess the agency.

“Intuition?”

Eve nodded, still studying her shoes. “I’d just … feel better if I went home with Zach. I can have Malcolm or Aunt Nicki pick me up at his house.”

“You’ll tell them about your unease with the boy?”

Eve looked up at Patti. There was sympathy in her eyes. “I will.”

“Good. I’ll take care of him for now.” Patti smiled reassuringly at Eve. The smile transformed the woman’s face, softening her by a decade.

Eve smiled back, though her cheeks felt stiff. “Thank you very much.”

“You have to trust yourself,” Patti said, and then her smile faded. “In the end—when they find you, when whoever you’re running from catches up—that’s all you can do.”

Eve shivered and wondered if that was experience talking or prophecy. She backed away slowly, then quickly, and returned to Zach. She took a deep breath, looked one more time out at Aidan, who was checking his watch, and said to Zach, “Show me that back door?”

He led her through the library, deep into the stacks, to a door marked STAFF ONLY, tucked between the audiobooks and older magazines. He forced the door open—it was half-barricaded by books—and they slipped inside.