Lana, of course, gave Rachel a good half-second to grieve before she barged into her cubicle in a rage. Rachel did not stand up, nor did she wipe her tears away, but she fixed Lana with a stare that she hoped would convey her utmost apologies potently enough that she would not have to speak. Lana turned to sit down close to Rachel, then changed her mind and knelt on a cushion directly across the little candle flames.

  “Start talking,” Lana demanded, the skittish candlelight accentuating the anger in her features.

  Rachel took a deep breath. “Seems you’ve already heard what I have to say.”

  “Only as much as you wanted Matt to hear,” Lana reasoned. “You’re both Beyonders, as is your friend. You’ve been back and forth from the Beyond to Lyrian twice, in the future.”

  Rachel scoffed, only because she couldn’t stand to shed another goddamn tear. She almost let slip that she was also an Edomic adept, then realized that fact would be better introduced by demonstration.

  Wordlessly, Rachel snuffed the candles, then brought them back. “You missed the best part.”

  Lana’s eyes bulged. “No, you’re not.”

  Rachel nodded. “Not that it does me any good in the current era.”

  “So that’s why Tassel’s so interested in you,” Lana breathed.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows, delighted that Lana had seen that her association with Tassel was not her fault. “We’re getting off topic. You were mad at me.”

  “From what I’ve seen, getting mad at either you or Tassel never ends well.” Lana’s shoulders settled visibly. “I don’t like you. If I had an ounce of sense, I’d probably pack up and resign myself to building my dissertation from a bunch of dusty old books.”

  “But you won’t,” Rachel inferred.

  Lana chuckled, clearly ashamed to admit it. “I mean, okay. My research is important to me. I love history, and I’ve been delivered a chance to live it. But… honestly, and don’t tell Tassel this, I’m actually having fun.”

  Rachel gasped, acting scandalized. “Wizards? Fun? Don’t let that leave these walls.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Lana sighed. “But, I don’t want to join you unless Matt agrees to.”

  Rachel had hoped Lana would say nothing of the sort. “I should have figured you’d say that. Shall we go now or after Tassel finds us?”

  “Do you know where he is?” Lana asked in a way that implied the answer would be no.

  “Nope,” Rachel said, then opened her bag, pulled out Matt’s sweaty shirt and ripped a messy segment from the neck. “But we will in a minute.”

  Lana frowned. “With his, um…”

  Rachel grinned. “It should do the trick. Give me a second.”

  The hardest part was not the incantation - it was the effort to tear off a single string long enough to dangle the shirt scrap. After four frustrating attempts, she succeeded, and the resulting contraption leaned just slightly to her left. The connection wasn’t as strong as Jason’s with his ring all those years ago, but it would do just fine.

  “Would you mind terribly leading Tassel on a wild goose chase?” Rachel asked.

  Lana smiled. “It would be my pleasure. So long as that chase ends at his apartment and not my dorm. I do not need anyone else knowing where I sleep.”

  Anyone else. Rachel made a mental note to ask Lana about it later, but opted to stay silent as she led Lana out of the library and through the High School grounds. The little scrap of fabric swayed slightly as they walked, as if Matt were still running through the densely packed city streets. The chase led them further and further from the city center and across the threshold of what Rachel faintly recognized as the Fleabed - though the construction was still much more solid than she remembered. The streets grew disorderly, and the sweet smells of the inner city gave way to a faint, tangy scent of rot.

  “I’ve never been through here,” Lana said, drawing closer to Rachel.

  Rachel let Lana close the gap between them and locked her arm to her side before she could offer any physical reassurance. “Don’t bother anyone and they won’t bother you. They’re all just trying to get by.”

  “Still,” Lana shivered. “I wouldn’t want to do this alone.”

  Rachel smiled. “Neither would I. It must bring you no pleasure to rely on me.”

  Lana dropped her gaze. “I could say the same to you about Tassel.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows, then changed course as the scrap of fabric began to lean to the right. “You’re perceptive.”

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  “I don’t understand,” Lana sighed, moving even closer to Rachel so she could lower her voice. “You’ve known your friend isn’t here for weeks. Why stay?”

  Rachel let out a scoff aimed solely at herself. “Hm. Mostly because I couldn’t stand to tell Matt I ruined his life for nothing.”

  Lana looked at Rachel but did not reply. They took another turn, this time to the left, before Rachel felt comfortable to continue.

  “He… deserved better. Deserves. His life in the Beyond wasn’t happy, but at least it was familiar. And I…” Rachel paused and let out a soft laugh. “I was so mean to him. I don’t know why. I probably hate this whole thing almost as much as he does.”

  “You can’t say that,” Lana protested. “He did nothing.”

  “He called me. Reminded me of Lyrian.” Rachel slowed, widening the space between her and Lana. “I’m not saying it’s an eye for an eye. But I knew I couldn’t stay in the Beyond, not forever. The lying… it all would have driven me mad.”

  “So you brought him here.” Lana wrinkled her nose. “And started lying all over again.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Lana?” Rachel caught Lana by the shoulder and stopped them both. “Tell him while we were in the forest? When we arrived in Trensicourt? I still care about him. I… want him to be happy. To forget.”

  “You should have left him behind,” Lana muttered.

  Rachel blinked and lowered her gaze, letting silence reign as she racked her memories for ways she could have done everything differently, ways where she could be at peace, whether here or in the Beyond.

  “To what life?” she finally replied, her voice coming out weakly.

  Lana pressed her lips together. “I… don’t know. He hasn’t told me.”

  Rachel, carefully, led Lana to the edge of the street and sat down, leaning against a squat stone building with a precariously perched wooden second floor. Lana stayed upright for a moment, then joined Rachel on the ground. She leaned her head back against the wall and ran her fingers through her jet-black curls, letting out a sigh that could have brought forth waterfalls from the sky.

  “It’s not mine to speak about his life,” Rachel admitted.

  Lana nodded. “Then don’t.”

  Across the street, a beggar dressed in soiled rags asked a group of teenagers for change. His voice was scratchy, but not weak. The teenagers turned to him, glancing between each other nervously.

  “But you’re out here looking for him,” Lana said. “Why not leave him behind?”

  One of the teenagers took a copper piece from his pocket and hurled it overhand at the beggar, who ducked too slowly. It bounced squarely off of his temple, and he quickly cupped the injury, dropping his head towards the ground as the teenagers erupted into laughter. Lana winced. Rachel stared, unmoving.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said truthfully. “I finally told him the truth, but I don’t feel any better. I’m not free. I’m not happy. I just ruined the one good thing I had in this world.”

  Lana turned her head to face Rachel. “Was it a good thing? If it was built on a lie?”

  Rachel forced back an upwelling of emotion, but even still, the effort wrenched the words from her throat. She tightened her core, steeling herself before she responded as she had so many times before.

  “You’re disappointed that it was the only good thing I mentioned,” Rachel inferred, hoping it would be enough to shift the subject.

  Lana wrinkled her nose. “I told you I don’t like you.”

  The teenagers were kicking the beggar now, shouting for him to dance. The beggar let himself fall limp, taking their blows without a sound.

  “I know. And I believe that.” Rachel brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. “That was a nice conversation, though. Last night.”

  “Last night,” Lana mused. “It feels like forever ago.”

  Rachel closed her eyes. “Last night, there were four of us. I was still lying. You were still hopeful. Matt was still… no, he wasn’t okay. But he was still there.”

  “You still thought he was okay,” Lana corrected.

  Rachel nodded. “Mm.”

  “I thought I had found a friend,” Lana continued. “You… I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t deserve it.” Rachel turned to face Lana, mostly to tear her attention away from the violence across the street. “I was mean to you. You made that clear.”

  Lana sighed. “But you were strong. Are strong. Even now, after all this, I still respect you somehow. Not for what you’ve done, but for who I think you have the potential to be.”

  “The potential…” Something burned inside Rachel’s stomach, though she couldn't discern whether it was warmth or pain that it caused. “I…”

  Lana waited patiently for Rachel to form her thoughts. The one-sided brawl across the street was dying down, more taunts and laughter now than blows.

  “I so often think of my younger self as my ideal,” Rachel finally continued. “I was optimistic then. Happy, even. After everything with Maldor, I lived in Caberton, studied Edomic, made friends, but… I don’t know. When I returned to the Beyond, I didn’t just leave behind living friends. I left my dead ones.”

  “Who’s-” Lana started, but stopped herself before Rachel could do the same. “Sorry.”

  Rachel shook her head, as if to say don’t be. “I just want to risk everything for my friends again. I want to be capable of throwing myself in front of a monster to save someone I love. I want to feel that love for the people around me. I just want to love, and be loved, and to care like I used to. When it felt… normal.”

  The teenagers were gone now, leaving a shivering heap of a man in his ragged blankets, blood dripping from both nostrils into a channel that already held the remnants of his tears. He reached out with a shaky hand to roll the single drooma he had been beaten with into his palm, then gazed at it for a long moment before he began to cry once more. He held the drooma against his forehead and leaned into it as if it were the last thing he would see at the end of the world.

  Lana shook her head, her bottom lip trembling. “You didn’t even get up to help him.”

  A stubborn tear leaped from Rachel’s eye before she could resist. “Neither did you.”

  “Then I guess we’ve both got a long way to go,” Lana murmured.

  Rachel leaned into Lana then, their shoulders pressing together like tiny magnets in a hurricane. They remained silent, petrified, for what could only be an eternity as the sky turned from blue to red, as shadows lengthened and people fled the streets in search of a hot meal. The beggar went still, and though Rachel could see his breathing, she couldn’t help but feel the cold hands of death descending around him.

  “Are you willing to face him?” Rachel asked.

  Mist clouded Lana’s eyes. “Are you?”

  Rachel, silently, shook her head. She felt awful, selfish, weak, but she shook her head.

  “Then let’s go,” Lana said, pushing herself to her feet and extending a hand to help Rachel stand.

  And so they went.