He drove in silence as the rain pounded the car.

It wasn’t like him to talk like this—the cold tone, the tight anger. At last she said, “You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Yes!” He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “You need to be scared!”

Eve stared at him. She’d never seen such an expression on his face, contorted as if she had stabbed him. His breathing was hard and fast.

“Don’t risk yourself,” he said. “Please. Stick to the established schedule. Stay with agency-approved people. Inform me immediately if there are any changes in your status. Please, Eve. I can protect you from everything but yourself. Do you understand?”

His voice caught on her name, and she had a sudden thought: He cares about me. She wanted to reach out and touch his arm, to reassure him or apologize or … she didn’t know. She’d never had thoughts like these before. Besides, he was driving, and she didn’t know how he’d react. So she only nodded.

Malcolm parked the car, breathed in deeply, and put on his shades. He then stepped out of the car into the rain, checked up and down the street, and crossed to her side. She unclicked the seat belt and climbed out. One hand on her shoulder as if he expected her to bolt, he guided her into the house.

Inside, Malcolm dumped her in the doorway to the living room. He then stalked to the kitchen without a word.

Eve stepped into the living room. A puddle formed around her shoes. Damp, her clothes stuck to her skin. She remembered Aidan saying once that “drowned rat” was not her look.

Aunt Nicki rose to her feet—she’d been sitting on the couch. Aidan, who had been by the window, vanished in a whoosh of air. He reappeared next to Eve, wrapped his arms around her, and folded her in against his chest. Aunt Nicki raised both her eyebrows at this.

Two hands on his chest, Eve pushed him away. He staggered back. “I only … I’m just glad you’re all right,” Aidan said.

“I’m fine,” Eve said.

Walking in a full circle around Eve, Aunt Nicki inspected her. “I assume Malcolm read you the riot act about never doing that again?”

“He hinted that it wouldn’t be acceptable,” Eve said dryly.

A cabinet slammed in the kitchen, and they all flinched.

“You’d think he’d be at least a little pleased,” Aunt Nicki said. “Sneaking out with a boy is a very normal-teenager thing to do. I hope you at least made out with the boy.”

Eve felt her face flush.

“I’ll talk to Malcolm. You talk to him.” Aunt Nicki pointed to Aidan. Snorting in what sounded suspiciously like a laugh, Aunt Nicki headed for the kitchen, leaving Eve alone with Aidan in the living room. Eve studied the carpet, the coffee table, the mantel, the wall.

“Can we … talk?” Aidan asked.

“I’d rather not.” She wished she’d kept walking down the hall and into her bedroom. She wished she’d gone farther away than Zach’s house. She wished she hadn’t let Malcolm bring her back.

“Then I’ll talk. You’re special, Eve. You have to know that. You make me crazy, worrying about you all the time …”

“Why?” She looked at him. He was running his fingers through his artfully tousled hair. She noted that he had dark smudges under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. She didn’t know why—she hadn’t been gone for more than an hour. “Who am I to you?” she asked, and then she took a breath and asked a question that she knew Malcolm wouldn’t want her to ask. “Who are you to me?”

“You really have to ask that?” He looked hurt.

She should continue to lie about her memory, play along with whatever people dropped on her. “I do,” Eve said firmly.

Aidan walked to the mantel as if to look at the fake photos of her. Eve suspected he didn’t want to stand near her anymore.

“Who are you?” Eve asked.

He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Rules.”

“Forget the rules. Why should I trust you?”

“Because I care about you, Eve.” He held out his hand, as if expecting her to come to him. She laced her hands together in front of her and didn’t budge. He lowered his hand. “Because you are the first thing in this world of vacant people, tasteless food, gravity-bound structures, and flaccid entertainment that I have found interesting.”

“Uh-huh.”

Since she hadn’t crossed to him, Aidan came to her. “Or if you don’t like that answer, then try this: because I’ve lost people. People I care about. In my world, there’s a war …” His voice cracked, and for the first time, Eve thought she was seeing through his smiling facade. Then he controlled himself again. He clasped her hand and drew it to his heart. “You are the answer to a prayer. You are the treasure that I have been seeking. You are the prize that I am destined to win.”

“That’s nice.” Eve wormed her hand away from his.

“I can be your knight in shining armor. I can make you happy. I can make you safe. I can make you whole, if you let me.”

Eve opened her mouth to say he couldn’t—she was broken with pieces missing, except that she didn’t feel broken anymore, thanks to Zach.

“But you found someone else to do all of that. Tell me about him, Evy. Who is this human boy who caught your eye and captured your heart?” He caressed her cheek and then curled his fingers in her hair. His hand tightened into a fist. “What can he do for you that I can’t?”

“He can make me fly.” She pulled away, and several strands of her hair, still knotted around his fingers, yanked out of her scalp. She spun away from him and ran to her bedroom.

“Evy!”

She shut her door and leaned against it. She scanned the room—the only other door led to a closet, and the window was locked with a padlock. And she realized she’d spoken the truth. She’d flown with Zach—and she hadn’t had a vision.

He’d fixed her. He’d cured her.

She didn’t have to be the broken girl anymore, afraid of herself, afraid of what she could do, afraid of what was inside of her.

She strode to her dresser and opened the top drawer. “Go back,” she told the paper birds. “Be as you were.” Eve felt wind in her face as the paper birds fluttered in the drawer. They rose out in a spiral. Backing toward the bed, she watched them dive and soar around the room before flying toward branches in the wallpaper and settling against them. She saw a bird melt into the paper—before she pitched backward, unconscious.

The Magician has a black felt hat. He flips it off his head and tosses it up and down his arms and across his back. He throws it into the air, and I can’t see it against the glare of the stage lights. He catches it, plunges his hand in, and pulls out a bouquet of tissue roses, held by the severed hand of a girl. The hand is rigid and bloodless.

The audience laughs, but it’s a tinny sound, as if it were an old recording. It cuts off abruptly. I can’t see the audience from where I lie, wrapped in stage curtains like a shroud, but I see a girl step onto the stage.

She has freckles, red-brown hair, and antlers like a deer.

The Magician gives her the flowers, and the severed hand begins to bleed. Red flows down the antlered girl’s arms. It pools at her feet.

And then she and the Magician are gone. I lie unmoving in the silence.

Eve stumbled to the bathroom. She clutched the sides of the sink and tried to force the remnants of the vision out of her mind. It’s not real, she told herself. This is real. This sink. This house. These people. This life. This body. She splashed water on her face.

Breathe in, she ordered herself. Out. In.

She thought of Zach.

He hadn’t fixed her.

She pictured him next to her—if he were here, he’d be telling her facts about sinks or toilets or mirrors or toothpaste or whatever caught his attention. Closing her eyes, she listened to his voice in her imagination. It was like wrapping herself in a warm, soft quilt.