Archive of Our Own

The memories went down Crystal’s throat like broken glass and amongst them all, crunching sharp and cold between her frantic teeth, there was this one.

In it, Crystal’s little, she’s just started school. She’s in a car alone with her mom. They were going to a party with some of Dad’s old money friends but he’d driven separately. There had been a fight earlier – now Crystal’s parents weren’t talking. She was already pretty used to that. Crystal’s mom slept with her lawyers and therapists; Crystal’s dad favoured taking pet artists and keeping them around long enough to get a portrait of himself before dumping them like unwanted strays. At this age, Crystal hadn’t joined all the dots together – she was just excited to have alone time, rare and precious, with her mom. The original Palace was a glamorous, bohemian presence, every movement marked by the jangle of her jewellery.

Crystal was telling her about a new friend from school. Valerie. Her best friend.

Valerie liked horses and glitter glue and the Princess Diaries books and she had drawn all over her arms with markers so it looked like she had tattoos. She smack talked all the teachers and knew all the other kids’ secrets, and nobody could pull off a prank like she could. She was one of those friends nobody else could see. Crystal’s teachers said she had a big imagination, in dubious voices, like they didn’t think that was a good thing. Crystal’s mom didn’t say anything much. She was driving with one hand on the wheel and one dangling her cigarette out the window, her head nodding along to the music playing through the car speakers, until eventually Crystal’s eager babble petered out. She didn’t want to be annoying, or worse, boring.

Crystal’s mom flicked her cigarette away into traffic. “Your little bestie,” she said lightly, “how did she die?”

“Um,” Crystal said. It seemed kind of a rude question. “She got hit by a car.”

“Sad.” Crystal’s mom didn’t sound sad. “ Baby, you r teachers think you’re lying or crazy, talking about invisible kids. Bex has been fielding a bunch of calls, it’s getting too much. ” Bex was her secretary at the time. The school didn’t have a direct number for either of Crystal’s parents; Bex handled everything. “I know it’s fun but you won’t get away with this shit forever.”

Crystal frowned. “ Valerie’s not invisible. I can see her.”

“ Well, duh.” Crystal’s mom laughed. “All the women in our family can do things like that. Your grandma, now she was crazy. Me, I’m an artist. I found my angle. You will too, baby girl, don’t you worry about that.” She reached out and petted Crystal on the head, like a kitten. “Be more careful though, huh? Once the crazy chick, always the crazy chick. You can’t shake that.”

Here’s another glass shard memory. Crystal’s fourteen.

This was when she stopped living with her parents. It wasn’t exactly moving out of home, because they hopped between residences as the mood took them. Crystal chose to get off the carousel in England. She stayed alone in the empty London penthouse, living off ramen and take-out, calling Bex’s replacements at all hours to figure out what she should do if the tap was leaking or whether it was okay to eat expired salad, until she realised that other people just Googled this shit. She had just been kicked out of a very expensive Catholic school and was at a bit of a loose end until her parents coughed up the right threat or bribe to get her in somewhere else.

Crystal had a reputation by now. The other kids always picked her out as different in some intangible, sixth sense way, watching for the moment the mask slipped, and no matter how hard she tried, it always did. She saw things, when she touched people. Sometimes just when she touched their stuff. It was so hard keeping up the poker face. But when she didn’t, the whispers would start going around. Worse than whispers. These weren’t just other kids; they were kids with inheritance. They knew that there was no mess the housekeeper wouldn’t clean away, no mistake daddy’s lawyers couldn’t fix. Everyone in their world had a place and there was nothing more fun than teaching a new girl where hers was.

Once the crazy chick, always the crazy chick.

Crystal didn’t know how to back down from a fight and she fought dirty, throwing punches and secrets in an indiscriminate animal panic until it was all over and a teacher was ringing Adele or Bianca or Elise, whoever was currently being paid to answer that call so Crystal’s parents didn’t have to do it.

In the aftermath of her latest expulsion, Crystal turned nocturnal. She slept all day and spent her nights roaming the graveyards of London. Humans didn’t like her much, but ghosts usually did. They wanted to talk about their lives, and deaths; they wanted her to do little things for them that only living hands could do. They told her stories about their shadow world, existing parallel and sideways to the land of the living, showed her tricks to protect herself and taught her how to cheat at every game they knew. It had always been like this. A Victorian granny had fussed over her skinned knees when she tripped in the street. A nurse who had died in the London Blitz had helped Crystal through her first period. When she was finally back in school, walking on eggshells with her new classmates, Crystal took advice from her real friends.

They’ll get you if they can. Hit first and hit harder. Don’t let them see you’re afraid. Divide and conquer. Keep ‘em on the back foot. Don’t let them see you’re afraid. Start as you mean to go on. Never let them see you bleed.

Don’t let them see you’re afraid.

At sixteen, she picked up her first fake ID and was good enough with make up that she could get away with it. She’d pregame with her friends at her place then go out to dance. Men twice her age bought her drinks and she’d stroke their arms flirtatiously to find out whether there was something in the drink. If there was, that was a trick they were never going to do again. Hadn’t they heard? Crystal was a crazy chick. Even her friends were scared.

David wasn’t scared.

In hindsight, yeah, maybe that was a red flag. Crystal was scary, but David said she was adorable and it felt, it felt, it felt so good. He told her she was fun. He told her she was special. She didn’t have to take the secrets out from under his skin – he whispered them into her ear, down the line of her throat, across her back as his fingers traced the strap of her bra. She wanted to tell him things too, things she’d never told anyone. He wasn’t going to judge her. David wanted her just the way she was. Perfect, he’d sigh into her hair, you’re perfect for me. Let me in, baby, let me inside, and she had.

They warned you about the demon on your shoulder, in Catholic school. Maybe Crystal had skipped the day they covered how to handle the demon sliding out of your boyfriend’s mouth, because didn’t that little twist hit her like a sack of bricks.

Ironically enough, now that Crystal had her memories back, she had a whole new set ready that she was willing to trade away. Hey David, want to have this one of Edwin screaming on Esther fucking Finch’s table? What about this one of Charles chained up like a dog on the floor, iron searing his neck every time he moved? Oh, David, you’ll love this one. It’s Niko on the floor, all in pretty, impractical white, because Niko had never heard of the word practical. She’s spilling red across everything she touches because Niko is bleeding out, she’s dying. Crystal remembers the sheer bewilderment of that moment. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen to Niko. Crystal had saved her from the dandelion sprites; she was supposed to stay saved.

She had not felt dead, in Crystal’s arms, even with all the blood.

It was Charles who had got them out of that house. He’d held it together because he was right, no one else was going to keep spirits up and no one else was going to think straight while Niko (not Niko, not Niko) was a body on the ground, Crystal was going to scream and Edwin was going to cry and Charles was going to haul them both up with all the strength he had.

The weeks since were blurry around the edges. Crystal had packed her stuff. Got on a ferry, got on a plane, got on another plane. Slept on a couch in the agency office, woke up to Edwin weeping silently over Niko’s manga at the desk. Took Advil for the headache that never seemed to quite go away. Slept again, woke up to Charles arguing with the Night Nurse in savage whispers. “Proud of your record, are you? I’ve seen what it’s like down there. How many kids have you sent to Hell because some other fucker higher up the food chain called them sinful? ” He was so angry, though he tried so hard not to show it. He’d gone to Hell. He’d gone to Hell and hauled Edwin out of there too . Crystal still couldn’t get her head around that and she had an actual demon in her head , buried alive under the ancestor tree.

Another week passed. Crystal tried calling her mom on that forbidden number and got her secretary instead. Her name was Hilda. She had signed Crystal up for an expensive new school. Crystal hung up on her and took more Advil. Slept, waking up to moonlight streaking in through the window and Charles sitting beside her with silver in his dark eyes.

She sat up and kissed him.

Charles kissed back, she’d known he would. His hair was soft under her hands and his mouth parted under hers like he was trying to tell her something but she didn’t think she wanted to hear it so she just kissed him harder. Charles made a surprised noise somewhere in the lungs he didn’t exactly have any more and leaned into her, He like being wanted and he liked giving you whatever you wanted, an intoxicating feedback loop. The blanket slid down and Crystal was up on her knees, her arms sliding down to wrap around his neck. It felt good. He probably didn’t mind that for him, it wouldn’t feel much like anything.

Charles managed to free his mouth long enough to say hoarsely, “You said it was a bad idea. You wanted to figure yourself out.”

“I want a lot of things,” Crystal said. She wanted Niko to be alive. She wanted David out of her head for good. She wanted Charles to stop looking at her with that little frown, a warning of second thoughts. The moment was broken though. She sat back on her heels and her bare foot knocked into the brightly coloured volume of manga Edwin had left on the arm of the couch, sending it clunking to the floor.

That brief touch was enough. Pain shot through her temples and at the same time, her mind’s eye filled with a familiar candyland fever dream, music bubbling from nowhere. Underneath the music, there were voices and those were familiar too, a familiar bitchy back and forth that Crystal had become used to hearing from underneath a sweater. Only this time, there was a third voice. A familiar voice. Crystal? Crystal, you found me!

“Crystal?”

She blinked back to herself. She was kneeling on the couch with Charles holding onto her shoulders, the frown now deep and troubled.

“Where’s Edwin?” she said, pitchy and wet. “I need Edwin right now.”

Edwin was, predictably, a pain.

“It was Niko,” Crystal insisted for the millionth time. “You think I wouldn’t know Niko?”

“Niko died,” Edwin said tightly.

“ So did you ,” Crystal yelled. “You and Charles are dead and I’m talking to you. ”

“Exactly!” Edwin looked relieved to have an excuse to yell back. “There was no sign of her ghost anywhere around the house! I checked. I looked everywhere. She was not there.”

“Then she was somewhere else. She’s out there somewhere, Edwin, I know it.”

“Where else would she be?” Edwin demanded. “I have consulted a dozen texts to see if there is precedent and so far I see no evidence to support what you say. With the dandelion sprites involved, who can tell what you really saw.”

“I know what I saw!” Crystal screamed. Charles tried to interrupt then, his usual oil on troubled waters thing, but she was not in the mood to hear it and just yelled louder. “I’m not crazy, Edwin! I have been a psychic my whole life, I have been dealing with these shitty superpowers since the day I was born, and when it comes to this one thing, I know more than you .”

That was a red rag to a bull with Edwin and she’d known that, she had wanted this fight. She saw him inhale hard, breath he didn’t need, all the better to return serve.

“Oh please, tell me about your studies,” he sneered. Charles groaned and banged his head back against the wall .“Where did you learn again? The school of trial and error?”

“Admit it, you can’t stand not being the best at magic any more,” Crystal snarled. “You’re so used to being top of the class that now I know enough to actually tell when you’re wrong, it’s driving you crazy.”

“Crystal, enough,” Charles began. This time it was Edwin who drowned him out.

“I am not wrong!” Edwin was really furious now. “You have only just regained your memories and unlocked this psychic…ancestry…power source or whatever it really is, and you don’t even understand it well enough to fully explain it, let alone tell me anything about magic. I have been collecting these books for longer than you have been alive, and I know – ”

“ Seriously? Seriously ? You’re pulling the age card? Edwin, you’re so disinterested in the mortal world that you don’t know what a handjob is. I get what’s going on. You’re a goody two shoes and I’m the resident bitch and that doesn’t make me wrong.”

Charles clapped his hands together loudly, sick of being ignored. “Okay, okay,” he said, stepping between them like a referee. “Maybe nobody’s wrong. Maybe you know different things, yeah? Which is aces because we are all. On. The same. Side.”

Crystal was breathing heavily, trying to calm herself down. Edwin did one of his precise little heel turns so he wasn’t looking directly at her any more, pressing his balled fists together in a stress response that would have indicated someone about to get socked in the jaw if it was Charles and in Edwin, indicated he was ten seconds away from throwing in the towel and dropping through the floor to get away from this conversation.

“Tell you what, let’s split up,” Charles suggested. “Edwin can keep checking for answers in our books here and Crystal can come along with me to see if we can get fresh eyes on the problem. We’ll figure this out.”

Crystal’s stomach was already turning sour with shame. She was, indeed, the resident bitch. It was as if Edwin had, entirely accidentally, found a bruise and ground his heel into it as hard as he could. She avoided looking at him, reaching for her coat.

“Yeah, okay,” she muttered.

“Goody two shoes,” Edwin echoed darkly.

“Yeah, okay, come on,” Charles sighed. He squeezed Edwin’s shoulder. “Crystal didn’t really mean it like that. Everyone knows you’re a good boy, you can relax.”

Crystal saw Edwin’s face make a brief, complicated expression that involved wide, shocked eyes and a parted mouth, before he slotted whatever feeling that was away in his mental shelf like a scandalous book. “I will relax when the case is closed,” he said stiffly. “One way or the other.”

“Yeah,” Charles said, releasing Edwin’s shoulder. It didn’t help much with the tension that was suddenly running between them. “One way or the other.”

Charles did not explain immediately where they were going and Crystal did not ask, following him onto the Tube alongside the early morning commuters, They stood together in silence, not touching. Crystal was buzzing from adrenaline over lack of sleep and the headache was still pounding behind her temples, making her feel floaty and strange. Come to think of it, she hadn’t eaten in a while either. It was surprisingly difficult to remember regular meals when she spent nearly all her time with two dead boys.

“You’re right,” she said at last. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Might want to tell Edwin that,” Charles said evenly.

“I will.” Crystal looked out the window. It was still pretty dark out there at six thirty in the morning but the dark had never bothered Crystal much. There had been weeks at a time when she barely saw daylight. Her friends usually preferred to come out after sunset. She suddenly remembered sitting on a gravestone, showing someone – what had her name been? Emma, yes, it was Emma – how to take pictures with a Polaroid camera. No wonder she’d fallen in so easily with Charles and Edwin. The kindest people she knew were all dead.

Not Niko, though.

“I was right, too,” she said.

Charles sighed. “I’m not doubting you, Crystal, Edwin wasn’t – ”

“He definitely was.”

“He’s just cautious, yeah? He wants facts before he starts to hope. You know how he was with Niko.” Charles shoved his hands in his pockets. “You know, I think he was having a pretty good time in Port Townsend for a while. Better than me, that’s for sure. Niko was a big part of that. It was always just us before and then we rescued you and I thought he was just upset there was someone else around, even after you said he was jealous – I really should have seen that…”

Trust this to be the moment Crystal discovered she was living in a soap opera.

“What should you have seen, specifically?” she demanded.

Charles winced a little. “Oh. Yeah. We haven’t talked about that yet.”

“Tell me about it now.” Crystal had a feeling she could guess, especially after Edwin’s reaction to a little praise in the office just now.

“When we were, you know, escaping from the baby doll monster,” Charles began. He seemed suddenly really interested in the grubby floor. “Edwin wanted to tell me – I mean, he’d already started, I just didn’t get it. I thought he was talking about Monty. He seemed to like him and that was all right, better than the Cat King anyway. But then he said it was me.”

“Edwin told you he’s in love with you?” she said, voice rising to the point where Charles hissed and made shooshing gestures, even though they were miles away from the office. He looked like he regretted telling her anything. Tough luck, Charles, she thought.

“What did you say?” she demanded. She remembered standing in the butcher’s shop with her bag packed, making her dramatic exit to save them all from her toxic alter ego – not yet realising this was the kind of thing a toxic alter ego would do – and how she’d kissed Charles then and there thinking it was the last chance she’d get. Edwin had been standing a couple of feet away, watching it happen. She hadn’t known. Oh God, she’d just made out with Charles in the office. Had Edwin heard them?

“Nothing’s going on with us,” Charles said. “I – turned him down, I suppose.”

That made it worse. Edwin had been heartbroken and Crystal had, as she reliably did, made it all about her – and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had suspicions, was it? She’d seen how Edwin was painfully jealous every time Charles so much as smiled at her, she’d caught the lingering looks. She had wanted Charles, though, warm uncomplicated Charles who kissed her so well she’d forgotten about David for whole minutes at a time.

“You turned him down?” she echoed.

“It’s all right,” Charles said. “He’ll get over it.”

Crystal looked at him incredulously. “Are we…talking about a different Edwin?”

“Look,” Charles said, in the patient voice he used when he was trying to explain a part of his world to Crystal and she was taking a while to pick it up, “he’s going through a rough time. He wants something safe and what’s safer than me? I’m a damn sight better than a randy cat or a backstabbing crow, and I’m not going to have hard feelings when he finally works out what he really wants.”

“And if what he wants is still you?”

Charles shook his head. He was smiling a little, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve known each other for thirty years, Crystal, we’ve spent pretty much every minute together in that time. If he felt like this before, I’d have known, and if he didn’t, nothing’s different, why would he change his mind about me now?”

“I don’t know,” Crystal said, uncertainly. It was a fair point to which she didn’t have an immediate argument other than, me. He saw you with me and it hit him like a shovel. She didn’t know if she could say that to Charles, though, or how he’d feel about it if she did. There was a tightrope to walk here and a step in the wrong direction would fuck up everything. “Have you guys talked about this at all?”

It was Charles’s turn to look at her disbelievingly. “Um, no, Crystal,” he said, with a bit less patience. “What are you expecting us to say about it? Hey, Edwin, remember how you told me you fancy me on the steps of sodding Hell, after being tortured by a spider monster thing and getting groped in a bloody orgy, want to talk about how you feel when I take my shirt off? I’m sure that won’t be upsetting for either of us or humiliating for you.”

“I mean, don’t put it like that,” Crystal began, wincing.

“If I bring it up, he’s going to think I’ve changed my mind. It would just hurt him and I am not, not ever, going to do that.” Charles sounded rock solid. He’d been thinking about this. “If he wants to talk to me about any of it, that’s fine. We’ll talk. But this is Edwin, so I’m going to throw out a wild guess that we’re not going to talk about it, and that’s fine too.”

“You said that about your dad.” It was a low blow but Crystal felt it had to be said. She remembered what Charles had been like after the Devlin house, sweet smile and dead eyes. He was the kind of guy who’d give you the best hug after a bad day but didn’t want to be perceived when he was upset, let alone touched – even Edwin had not been allowed to touch him on the cliff by the lighthouse, however desperately Edwin had obviously wanted to comfort him.

Charles shut down. Crystal had tripped off the tightrope and here was the consequence, the Charles Rowland patented brush off, which was a three step process – deep breath, plastered on smile, flat stare. “I got the message about you not being interested a while ago, Crystal, no need to shove me quite so hard at someone else,” he said in a tone that might have been light if he wasn’t looking at her like that. “Did it maybe not occur to you that it’s really bloody awkward having this conversation with the girl who told me it was over then snogged me into next week?”

“Charles, I didn’t - ” Crystal felt like she was a kid fumbling around on an ice rink, stumbling over her own feet, ready to smack her face into the ground. “It’s not that I don’t like you. There’s just – too much going on, and then after – ” After Niko. She couldn’t explain that though, not even to Charles, who loved Niko too. It had been as if a whole house full of doors had just shut for her, after that, and she was left in a waiting space in case any of them opened again, but she had not wanted to keep Charles there with her. The make out session on the couch was a moment of weakness and quite possibly the first step in a Crystal Palace toxic breakdown deluxe, only headed off by a blinding flare of hope. “I’m sorry,” she said, inadequately. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m a mess right now.”

“We’re good. It’s fine,” Charles said. It was always fine, with Charles. Until it wasn’t.

Eyes on the prize, Crystal thought, Niko is out there. Doesn’t matter if Edwin does not believe you, she’s alive, she’s waiting.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Charles glanced out the window and swore. “It was a stop ago. Come on, we’ll get off here.” He hopped out through the doors before they opened and Crystal scrambled to keep up. “We’re going to the New Inn. It’s kind of a hotspot for people like us, the other side of London.”

“Will a pub be open at the crack of dawn?” Crystal said skeptically.

Charles laughed. “Nah, but we’re not after a pint. We’re going to talk to Hob.”

The New Inn looked nice enough, a bit boring, an after work drinks kind of a place that would never in a million years attract Crystal’s old clubbing friends. Charles circled around the back to a flight of stairs that led up to what was apparently a flat over the pub and started banging unceremoniously on the door. It took a little while to raise an answer and when the door opened, the guy on the other side look justifiably pissed off. He was wearing an ancient hoodie with the logo of some fencing group on it and there were pillow creases across his left cheek.

“You are so lucky I didn’t answer the door with a broadsword,” he told Charles.

“Morning,” Charles said, with a winning smile. “I’ll make it quick, promise.”

“Ugh,” Hob sighed, and opened the door wider, letting them in.

“This is Crystal,” Charles added, as they entered the kitchen. “She’s a psychic.”

“Hi,” Crystal said uncertainly, wondering if she was going to get an explanation of what Hob was. He looked about as normal as it was possible to be and his flat did too, a bit messy, with books stacked on the coffee table and a fleece blanket thrown over the back of the couch. There were pot plants in the window sill and dirty dishes in the sink. The only strange thing Crystal could see was an ashtray on the kitchen counter that held, instead of cigarette butts, a light scattering of sand and one large black feather.

Hob had started making tea. He asked if Crystal wanted toast and she abruptly, fervently did so he stuck in a couple of slices and leaned back against the fridge to look at them both while the tea was brewing. “I take it the psychic bit is important to whatever you’ve got to say,” he said.

Charles explained, badly. Crystal explained too, not much better. Hob asked questions and made horrified faces at some of the answers, not always the ones Crystal expected. His hands were busy the whole time, preparing a pot of tea, buttering toast, frying up a couple of eggs when the story just kept going and going. He pushed a plate at Crystal when she stopped for breath and she devoured the lot in a couple of minutes.

“I get the picture,” Hob said. “Spiteful little minor gods, a crow, a witch, giant interdimensional mushroom, primordial goddess, abduction, torture, murder. That’s about the sum of it? Seems like you’ve got the curse of interesting times.”

“Can you help?” Crystal asked. She quite liked Hob, mostly because he’d given her breakfast, but she’d yet to notice anything extraordinary about him. She went to put the plate in the sink and deliberately brushed against him on the way, her wrist touched his forearm.

“Ah,” Hob said, a few minutes later, as they both looked down at the shards of the plate on the kitchen floor. “Probably not such a great idea, looking in my head.”

Crystal stared at him. He had a friendly, rueful smile, not unlike the one Charles deployed when talking to difficult clients, and there was a smudge of butter on his sleeve from when he’d dropped the knife. He was so ordinary, and so old. His memories went down deep as the layers of an archaelogical dig, into the medieval strata of London itself. There was a shape within those memories, dark starry eyes and a voice as resonant and melodious as a cathedral bell, but even in its strangeness somehow familiar. A voice heard once in a dream.

“Long story,” Hob said, cutting her off as Crystal opened her mouth. “Dustpan’s under the sink, by the way.” He turned to Charles. “You’re an optimist, aren’t you? Avoiding Death, I can help with, but afterlifes are not really my wheelhouse.”

“Any ideas?” Charles said, with an edge of desperation.

Hob drummed his fingers consideringly on the countertop. “Well. I do have one thought, but you might not like it.”

“If Niko is alive, I like anything,” Crystal said.

“I respect that,” Hob said, saluting her with his mug of tea. “Don’t take my word for anything, don’t do anything stupid with what I’m about to say, and don’t bring up my name when you do the something stupid I’ve asked you not to do, all right? Here’s what I think. Your Niko lived with gods. Minor gods with terribles attitudes, but really, most of them have egos the size of the moon. They’re gods, regardless. They disappeared, after what happened with the witch. That’s suggestive, I think.”

“I thought they died with her,” Crystal said. She had not cared much. The sprites had been vile to everyone, most of all to Niko. “What do you think happened?”

“I think,” Hob said, almost apologetically, “that we’re dealing with a miracle.”

Crystal looked at Charles. He shrugged, which was reassuring; they were both bewildered.

“They do happen,” Hob said, smiling. “I should know. It’s not quite what you think it is. A miracle is something bigger than you, sometimes as big as a universe, deciding this is the day it steps over the ant instead of squashing it. Or, depending on the god, it might be a bit more personal. These little gods, they fed off attention, and Niko gave them attention.”

“They hated everyone,” Charles said. “Seriously, everyone, even her.”

“Gods can be like that. I shouldn’t say gods, anyway, there are entities out there that don’t identify themselves as gods. It’s a whole thing.” Hob poured more tea. Crystal marvelled again at how unbelievably ordinary this man managed to seem, chatting away about the mysteries of the universe in a cheerfully shabby little kitchen while the kettle gurgled away behind him. “Anyway, my point is that your girl was owed. She spared the lives of gods. She out-specified one of Death’s highest ranking employees. She was given one of Sedna’s holy charms and I can tell you, those don’t come easy. That’s the threefold touch of gods and wonders. It leaves a mark on your life. Sometimes it remakes your life completely.”

Crystal found that she was crying. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Hob said gently, “you can hope.”

They got back to the office around mid morning. Crystal had cried on Hob’s couch for an embarrassingly long time while Charles rubbed her back and Hob made her more breakfast, and on the way back she had swung by a Tesco picked up more painkillers and a bottle of water to take them with. Probably she was deficient in something, which was why the headache was getting to the point where it was hard to think straight. She was definitely operating on a less than ideal amount of sleep, but all she could think about was Niko, and miracles.

Edwin was barely visible behind the wall of books stacked up around the desk. Being a ghost, it took a lot to change his physical appearance in any meaningful way, but his eyes somehow gave off the vibe of being bleary and bloodshot as he lowered the enormous dusty textbook he’d been studying and said in a fretful tone, “Back so soon? Was it bad news?”

“Mate, we’ve been gone four hours,” Charles said gently. He eased the book out of Edwin’s hands and added it to the nearest tower.

“Oh. Being so disinterested in the mortal world, I do not always notice the passing of time.”

Crystal sighed at the dig but didn’t bite. She let Charles explain what Hob had told them and watched Edwin nod along, processing the information and forming connections with all the amassed knowledge in his formidable memory. He was reaching for more books as Charles talked, opening them up and spreading them about in the small amount of room he had left between stacks.

“Do you guys really think it could be a miracle?” Crystal said. She wanted to believe in it, badly, but miracle was one of those words that was difficult to take seriously. If anyone deserved to make impossible things happen, though, it was Niko.

Charles was leaning over Edwin’s shoulder to look at the book currently laid open. Their heads came up at the same time and they exchanged a look with that weird ghost life partner telepathy thing they had. In context, Crystal now felt a bit like a homewrecker.

“It is possible,” Edwin said. “I can work with possibilities.”

It was not an apology, except it was, really. Crystal managed a small smile.

The research went on all day. Crystal went through all Niko’s things that had come back to London with them and got the same staticky rainbow blur every time. The strongest connections, from Niko’s most beloved things, gave her tantalisingly brief snatches of something like clarity. Crystal. Crystal? Can you hear me? Are you still there? But that was all. It was like tuning into a radio station the old fashioned way, unable to quite get the dial where it needed to be. Crystal’s headache got worse and her mood got worse with it.

Edwin was the only one of their three who was built for long periods sitting still with his nose in a book; Charles cracked after a few hours and announced that he was going out to talk to more contacts. Crystal saw Edwin watching him leave – a look that was clearly meant to be a secret thing, soft and bruised and wistful, quickly tucked away like a jotting in his little notebook. Suspicion confirmed, still in love with Charles.

Was Charles right? Had Edwin just picked the safest available option? Because Charles was safe. He would rather stab himself with the nearest piece of iron than hurt Edwin. Whatever happened, they were going to remain inseparable.

Crystal had done a lot of stupid things for Charles and would do more, because he was Charles and her friend and he was worth it, but she had only been half joking when she described him as a fun addition to her body count – she wanted him when she wanted him, but that was a shitty offering for a relationship, and it was also all she had to give right now. Remembering who she had been, maybe it was all she would ever have. There was a depressing thought.

“I suppose he told you,” Edwin said. That was what you got for thinking you were being sneaky around a detective. Edwin wasn’t looking at her; from the side, she saw the tightness in his shoulders and jaw, bracing for a fight Crystal had no intention to give.

“Sort of,” Crystal said. “He had to. I was in the middle of that and I didn’t know.”

“He did not have to,” Edwin said grimly. “Well. Say your piece. I know that my confession intruded into your budding relationship – I will say that I was unaware it was still budding until later on, Charles told me you had specifically announced no intention of pursuing anything more – however. It does not matter. I already knew he would say no.”

“Of course it matters,” Crystal said gently. “You’re my friend. It’s girl code, you don’t date the boy your friend likes.”

“He was your friend first,” Edwin pointed out. “And he liked you at once.”

“Charles likes everyone.”

“Only nearly everyone,” Edwin amended, but the rigid tension had gone out of him. “You were special, I could see that. It was why I found you so discomfiting. It’s all right, Crystal. I am very fortunate. I have Charles as my oldest and dearest friend. Whatever else I might want need not trouble you.”

“It’s okay to want him,” Crystal said. She was back on the tightrope, trying to sound supportive, realising that she didn’t have huge amounts of experience to draw on in sounding supportive. She hoped Edwin could at least hear the sincerity. “I’m not – I know this is super awkward, to talk about this with me, but I am your friend. And nothing is really happening with us. I told him that already. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Edwin said. There was a warning edge to his tone.

“ Of course it matters,” Crystal began.

“If it mattered what I want,” Edwin retorted, as bitchy as he had ever been. “What I want is for an end to all of those infernal jokes everyone makes. Allusions to our ‘special’ friendship. Descriptions of us as a married couple. We are not married. Charles would not want us to be married.” Edwin slapped a hand against his chest, his tone rising despairingly. “And I do. I want that. I…I died a virgin sacrifice, it is exactly the kind of thing everyone would make jokes about. You like to tell me that the world has changed so very much but I am still what people make jokes about, am I not? Too prim, too fastidious, too strait-laced. A, a Mary Ann. In my time, a girl who waited for marriage was virtuous, but if I wanted that, if I wanted…courtship and, and flowers, and a ring on my finger before the marriage bed, it would be utterly unacceptable. Wouldn’t it? And now, if I want to keep all my firsts for love and only love, I am a dull little prude who needs to ‘loosen up’ and ‘experience life’ as if we are not all very, very aware that I am dead.”

Crystal gaped at him, horrified not by the bitter flood of honesty, but that she had upset Edwin badly enough to push him into it. This wasn’t a friendly heart to heart, this was Edwin bleeding out despair all over the ancient floorboards of his own office. “ That’s not what I meant,” she began, fumbling for the right words. “Jesus, Edwin. I’m the worst. I didn’t…actually say most of that, who have you been talking to? Was it the Cat King saying this shit? ”

“And it is so unfair,” Edwin bit out, relentlessly, tears shining in his eyes, “because you can have him. If you kiss him, he will kiss you back. If you hold his hand, he will not question it. I know I have our history, our friendship, things that are incalculably precious to me, but you could love him and you seem to have chosen not to, and I cannot fathom it . Do you not see what I see? Oh, I know in some way I should be grateful. Heaven knows it hurt s enough watching the way he is with you, but at least then I thought you understood. How beautiful he is.”

Crystal’s own short history with Edwin told her that touch was rarely the best play but she couldn’t help herself, reaching out instinctively to take his balled up hands in hers. “Of course I get it,” she said softly. “He is beautiful, right? The way he smiles, it’s not okay, he could power a small town with that thing. The way he believes in people, straight up believes that people can be good. I’m not good! I was so mean to him when we first met and he liked me anyway, and he had my back when I really fucking needed someone to have my back. I literally don’t know anyone who makes me feel safer than he does. So yeah, Edwin, I get it. I love him. Take it from the most selfish person you know, I had to love him a lot to want him as my friend instead of my boyfriend. I have, like, literally the worst taste in men.”

Edwin gave a tiny wet laugh, freeing himself from Crystal’s grip to scrub at his cheek with the back of his hand. “Yes, as I recall, you fell for a demon. Not even an interesting demon.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up,” Crystal said. “I do know a good thing when I see it sometimes. You know, I’m jealous of you too? You guys are so crazy in sync all the time. You can finish each other’s sentences, basically each other’s thoughts. Do you realise you’re always handing him shit, like when you’re done with a book or whatever, you just stick it in the air because you know he’s going to take it off you and put it where it needs to go? I joke d about it because I have eyes . He acts like he’s your husband who’s been following you around parties for thirty years, apologising whenever you’re a bitch to someone but not so secretly loving it, and he keeps anything he thinks you’ll need in his backpack so you don’t have to wait for it even when you can travel through fucking mirrors, Edwin, it would take a whole ten seconds for you to get what you want yourself, but he wants you to have it straight away .” She laughed. “ Kind of hard having a relationship in the shadow of all that, even when you’re, you know, not dealing with demon-induced amnesia and coming to terms with your family’s generational wealth of psychic abilities, oh and fighting off your stalker ex who wants to possess your brain and ma d e you eat rotting garbage because apparently that’s fun.” Crystal drew a deep breath. “I wouldn’t call it a break up. We had a couple of hot make out session s and I called it quits, because sometimes, I get ahead of the curve before I totally self destruct. Be proud of me, okay?”

Edwin was giving her one of those small smiles where it tucked up into his cheek like he was trying to hide it. “I am proud,” he said solemnly. “ You are kinder than you think, Crystal.”

“Bullshit,” Crystal said. She rubbed at her own face. Her fingers came away wet.

“You are right,” Edwin added, his mouth twisting wryly. “I understand what you see. I see it too. But my husband, who loves me, does not love me like that.”

“That fucking sucks,” Crystal said thickly. “We need Niko here, right? She’d say something totally random and it would be the perfect thing to say, somehow.”

Edwin’s smile widened painfully. “Yes,” he said. “Always.”

They didn’t hug. Crystal’s emotions were too all over the shop for that and Edwin was resistant to most kinds of physical comfort unless they came from Charles, which was the kind of thing you’d imagine Charles might have noticed over the course of three decades in close proximity – but Charles, Crystal had discovered in the time she had known him, was so expert at putting uncomfortable ideas out of his head that he might as well have dropped them into the depths of his bottomless backpack, to jangle around with swords and spellbooks. He’d conjure up a smile and a joke instead and go about his day as an undead ray of sunshine.

Well, no one had ever accused Crystal of being sunny, but she did know there was no point in trying to hide things from herself. What with the demon already buried in her subconscious, there probably wouldn’t be room.

“What I said earlier, Charles was right. I didn’t mean it,” she said, bumping Edwin with her shoulder. “You do know more about magic than me, most of the time. I hate feeling like the crazy one. It felt so good to be right. I…old me didn’t get that much, so she got really, really good at being wrong. I’m trying not to be like that any more. It’s how she lost all her friends and I don’t want to lose you.”

Edwin cleared his throat. “I was not being my most pleasant self either,” he said quietly. “I was not appreciative of your input as I should have been. I am used to us all inhabiting our own individual areas of expertise and now things are changing.” He made a wry face. “As I believe you are aware, I do not find change easy.”

“And then there’s the cute elephant in the room with the earring,” Crystal pointed out. “We’re not competing over him, but we’re both pretty damn competitive.”

“That is also true.” Edwin looked down at his desk, strewn with books and papers and the random bits and pieces Charles had been fiddling with while trying to pay attention to the books he had been trying to read. “I am glad to have you here, Crystal. And I do believe you.”

“Really?” It was exactly what Crystal wanted to hear, so she had to doubt it.

“Niko is out there,” Edwin said. “We will find her. I am sure of it.”

When Charles came back with a tall paper cup that smelled hedonistically caffeinated for Crystal, there was a large sheet of butcher’s paper pinned to the wall, covered in a mix of Crystal and Edwin’s handwriting. There were coherent sentences to begin with that tailed off into cryptic nonsense such as fairy circles. Is this a mushroom thing? and ships are vessels!! Enchanted ship? Flying Dutchman? In Crystal’s defence, the headache was now bad enough that she wasn’t quite seeing straight. Charles, having taken one look at her, cruelly refused to give her the coffee and instead insisted she lie down on the couch ‘for five minutes’. She was asleep the second her head hit the pillow.

She had a dream.

In the dream, there was a man. He was very tall with sad eyes and dark, spiky hair, and was draped in a frankly indecent robe that was also the night sky. You would think the night sky would cover up a bit more skin. The man was sitting on the edge of a well, turning over a small shiny disc between his fingers. When Crystal came towards him, he looked up. There were stars in his eyes.

“Hello, Crystal Palace Surname-von Hoverkraft,” he said.

“It’s a stupid name, isn’t it,” Crystal said, wincing.

“All names are powerful,” the dream man said. “Yours even more so, now it is reclaimed.”

Crystal stood next to him and looked down into the well. There was something at the bottom, she felt, something important. “What is this place?”

“Look again, Crystal.”

She glanced over her shoulder and there, behind her, was the glow of the ancestry tree. To her surprise, the table underneath it was empty, though scattered with dishes, as if everyone had stepped away for a little while to give her privacy. There were dead leaves under the tree, which was strange – there had never been anything like that before. But then, there had never been a well here before either.

“The well is symbolic,” the man said kindly. She thought it sounded kind, anyway – it was hard to read tone in the deep, resonant voice. She had heard that voice before, she knew she had, she just couldn’t remember where right now. If it wasn’t for this headache…

“Do you know Hob Gadling?” she blurted out.

“He is not an ant,” the dream man said. “But if he were, I also tend the dreams of ants, and they are no more nor less worthy than the dreams of men.”

“Um. Okay,” Crystal said. “Good to know.”

“Consider the well, Crystal,” the dream man said. “I believe this is yours.”

He gave Crystal the shiny disc. It was a hundred yen coin. Crystal flipped it between her fingers, which was something she did not think she could do so well when awake, and looked up to ask more questions, but the man with star eyes was gone. There was only the tree behind her and the well ahead. Crystal sat down on the bricks encircling the well and looked down into the water. Was it water? There was something shining down there, very far away. Something she wanted so badly it made her chest constrict and her eyes sting.

Crystal, you’re almost there. Crystal…

She dropped the coin and made a wish. Behind her, another leaf fell from the tree.

Crystal woke up in so much pain she could barely move.

She pressed her hands to the sides of her head with a low moan. There were concerned noises from somewhere nearby and the cool pressure of ghost hands against her forehead. Edwin, probably, trying to assess what was wrong with her. Crystal would like to know what was wrong with her too. The pain was so bad she wanted to hit her head against a wall until she passed out and went back to the well, which had been so calming. Fuck this being awake bullshit.

Edwin and Charles were talking. Crystal couldn’t really follow what they were saying but she could also hear the frantic rustle of pages and then there was just the rhythmic cadence of Edwin’s voice chanting. Pain spiked through Crystal’s head, suddenly somehow so much worse, and she screamed. Was this dying? This felt like dying.

Then the pain eased and she could open her eyes.

Charles was leaning over her. He smiled with relief and Crystal smiled weakly back.

“What was that?” she croaked. “It felt like a power drill to my skull.”

For some reason that made Charles laugh very hard, a bit hysterically, and Edwin leaned in to explain for him. “I believe that this is an unintended side effect of burying a demon alive inside your brain,” he said, studying her worriedly. “The incantantion will weaken him but it cannot banish him, not from where he is. We need to do something about this, Crystal.”

“You mean I do,” Crystal said, heaving herself upright. “We are trying to help Niko. David is my stupid mistake.”

Edwin pushed her back down firmly. “As I recall, he is our demon now.”

Crystal sighed. Though the headache was significantly better, it wasn’t gone. “I guess Advil isn’t going to fix this,” she said. “Do you have a plan?”

“I have a plan,” Charles said cheerfully. “You’re going to love this.”

Crystal did not love it.

“What’s your plan?” she asked Edwin, sitting up again and batting his anxious hands away. “Tell me you came up with a plan too.”

“I am not overfond of a few details in Charles’s idea,” Edwin conceded, “but I think it is the best we can do. David has proven a tricky customer. Once out of your head, we need to put him somewhere, and this way he cannot possess others to harm you the way he did Jenny.”

“I’ll point out that my plans have a pretty good record,” Charles said, looking offended. “That jar did hold the sprites. I did get Angie back to sleep. Also, rescued you from Hell.”

“We are not questioning your competence, Charles,” Edwin said, completely sincerely. “Your plans are excellent, except for the very high element of risk involved.”

“Whereas Crystal buried a demon in her head and that’s working great,” Charles pointed out. “Let’s get him out before he does more damage, eh?”

When he put it like that, there wasn’t much of an argument to make.

Part one of the plan involved Crystal lying in the middle of a summoning circle. Charles drew all the symbols. Apparently that was his thing. He and Edwin had been together long enough that they’d divvied up who drew better infernal runes. Seriously, how had Crystal ever thought of Charles as available? Single was one thing, emotionally entangled with his best friend to the point where they really, truly might as well be married – sorry Edwin, no joke – was another, and that was a ball game Crystal was wholly unqualified to play, even if she was interested in trying. She lay in the middle of the circle, trying not to move, as Edwin slowly walked around checking for any gaps in the edge.

“We are ready,” Edwin decided. “Crystal?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she said.

Edwin began chanting again. Crystal couldn’t understand a word of it, but she could feel it, like a hook digging into the rich soil somewhere deep inside of her, catching on the roots. It hurt, a different kind of pain from the one David had been causing. She twitched, hands clenching.

“Crystal, you need to let him go,” Edwin instructed. “He needs to answer.”

Crystal closed her eyes. She was back in that place, between the ancestry tree and the well. She was sort of surprised the well was still there – she’d assumed that was a one time only, conjured up by dreams thing, as opposed to a new piece of real estate. Still. It was not her current problem. David was. It was time to dig him up.

She reached down and started scraping at the soil. It really was a shallow grave she’d made here – with practically no effort, there he was, lying quiet and still as a corpse. David was one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, not just looks, it was the self confidence and charm. As a demon, most of that had been thrown out the window. It existed in memory – those memories, she thought grimly, she had always been allowed to keep.

She began to straighten up and his hand shot out, seizing her wrist.

“Not so fast,” he snarled.

Crystal had the dizzying sensation of being in two places at the same time. She was standing under the tree, feet planted hard in the soil as she fought to free herself from that grip. David was dragging himself out of the dirt with odd, jerky movements, grinning horribly. In the same moment Crystal was lying on her back on the office floor, surrounded by chalked out symbols, Charles on one side of her with his new cricket bat at the ready, Edwin on the other with his book, reading aloud in an uninterrupted stream of what might be Latin, or some language that might be even deader. The feeling was like sleep paralysis. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, she couldn’t move in either place. Her limbs felt so heavy. Her head hurt.

“Oh, you are going to pay,” David hissed, spitting dirt. “You think your pathetic little friend Edwin suffered? He had a picnic in the park compared to what I’ll do to you. I have friends too, you know, and they are all so. Very. Hungry.”

Crystal felt hands on her shoulders, warm and welcome. It was Iris – the closest of her ancestors, the one who lent her the most strength. “It’s okay, baby,” Iris said. “We’re here.”

Once the crazy chick, Crystal thought. She pulled back her arm and David wasn’t dragging her any more. She was dragging him. “Hear that?” she said, because she could definitely hear it, the steady chant of Edwin’s voice outside of her. “He’s talking to you.”

David was thrashing about, trying to do as much damage as he could, but the summoning circle had a hold of him now. He started to fade, patches of him burning out one at a time like cigarette burns through a photograph. Crystal shuddered.

“The tree,” she said. There were so many dead leaves.

“Shhh,” Iris said. “You think no one in this family ever made a mistake before? That tree will grow and grow. A few dropped leaves are nothing, girl.”

When Crystal opened her eyes, there was a demon lunging at Charles.

This was the plan. It was, whatever Charles might say, an objectively bad plan. Draw a perfect summong circle, lure out the demon from Crystal’s brain, deliberately break the circle as an invitation and give the demon bait – this being Charles. David hated Charles. He might not look much like David now, a burnt and fiery thing with claws for hands, but the pettiness was a hundred percent real and Charles had just given him the opportunity to unleash it.

Except that was the plan.

Charles jumped backwards and the demon, instead of making contact, went straight into the mirror behind him. An enchanted mirror. There was a holding circle carved in all around the frame. Instead of travelling elsewhere, David was trapped, like an evil queen’s shit-talking reflection.

“Oh my God,” Crystal whispered. “That actually worked.”

“It actually worked,” Charles echoed, a bit shakily. It had been a very close thing. He turned to Edwin and hugged him hard. Edwin dropped his book and hugged him back, hands splayed protectively across Charles’s back.

There was a horrible rending noise inside the mirror. The glass held.

Crystal stood up. She stepped out of the circle. The headache was gone; she felt exhausted but completely herself again in a way she realised she had very much not been for weeks. When Charles turned around and hugged her too, she let herself hold him for a long moment and thought, I see what you see. She was lucky enough to be Charles’s friend. She felt lucky.

There remained the question of what to do with the mirror. This was also a temporary solution – mirrors could break – but it was a problem they could now kick down the road a decade or two and Edwin was already talking about various more permanent ways to dispose of a now thoroughly trapped demon, in between writing down more notes on what to do about Niko.

They had been back on the research for days. It was not going well. Crumpled up notes were strewn across the floor and Edwin had even been desperate enough to ask the Night Nurse when she stopped in with a new case for them. She looked horrified to be confronted with naked emotions.

“How should I know what happened? I wasn’t even in the same dimension,” she said irritably. “All I can tell you is that your friend did not come to me. Now, when you have a minute to fulfill your responsibilities as independent contractors to the afterlife, please read over those files and get to sending me more missing children, if you’d be so kind.”

Her sarcasm was lost on Edwin, who pushed the case files to one side and went back to the latest book. Charles was sitting on the edge of the desk, rummaging in his bag for another book that Edwin wanted. They had been in the middle of a fight about what it looked like and whether it was really in the bag at all when the Night Nurse had shown up and they’d immediately closed ranks in case they needed to fight with her instead. Crystal looked at the debris of items he’d already pulled out of the bag. A sword – the snake-slaying sword, presumably. His spyglass. Potted lavender, which looked remarkably healthy for a plant living in a bag. A jar of coins.

“Those look like mine,” Crystal said, tapping the jar. “My rent money.”

“They were,” Charles said. “Jenny gave it to me, when we left. Said I looked like I believed in wishes more than she did, whatever that means.”

Crystal thumbed the cool glass. There were a lot of coins in that jar. She remembered it being heavy as she put it down on the countertop in Jenny’s shop. It was Niko who had thought of wishes, wasn’t it? You could make a lot of wishes.

The well was symbolic. A wishing well.

“I think,” Crystal said, in a small voice, “I think we’re doing this wrong.”

Edwin looked up from an incredibly dusty book. “What do you mean?”

“I think we need to look for dandelions,” Crystal said. “We need to make a wish.”

London, in the slushy, melty bit at the beginning of spring, was not the best place to look for dandelions. Crystal didn’t want to look here anyway. Niko had never been to London. Instead, the task fell to Edwin to go through the mirror and into Port Townsend, where he found a perfect dandelion seed directly in front of the little broken shrine. He’d set up a mirror in the woods so he could return immediately; the puff of white was still suspended in his hand, whole and perfect.

It couldn’t work, of course. Crystal was jumping to conclusions. It couldn’t really be so simple that you made a wish and you got your friend back – your wonderful, ridiculous friend, who had died in your arms, who had never seemed dead even then – but she was holding her breath anyway, in case it disturbed the dandelion seed. They all stood in a circle, looking at it. Breathing was not really a problem for the boys, unless they chose to do it.

“Shall we? Together,” Edwin said, his eyes fixed on the dandelion.

Crystal nodded. She inhaled through her nose, then very gently, let the breath out. I wish, I wish, I wish. The dandelion seeds floated away through the air, catching in sunbeams and drifting down towards the floor. Just a flower, in the end, just a weed and a lot of hope, and…

“I’m not a zombie,” Niko said. “I won’t eat your brains.”

She was in the sunbeam, her hair short and white and drifting around her face, like the dandelion seeds. She looked more insubstantial than a ghost, but she was there. She was there. She was smiling shyly, the way she always did when she’d done something clever and wasn’t sure who was impressed and who might be uncomfortable. Crystal couldn’t move or speak, just stared for a long moment.

Edwin moved just fine. He jerked forward, minimal control for once over his long limbs, and wrapped Niko in a very tight hug. Charles followed, wrapping his arms around both of them, laughing wetly as he wiped the tears off his face.

“Niko,” Crystal said. “Oh my God. Niko?”

Niko’s smile curved, secretive and sweet. “I might be both those things?” she said. “But it’s okay. I like Niko best.”

They got the whole story out of her eventually. It was a very long and strange story – a very Niko story – about a bear who held her spirit safe in his mouth and the dandelion sprites who had very irritably come to claim her as one of their own, and a very cold, very lovely place that Niko said was a dream – Sedna’s dream, safe harbour for a fledgeling goddess. Niko had been fragile as a newly hatched butterfly, easy prey for greater and more terrible things. She had no shrine or worshippers to give her strength, so she had to wait for someone to call on her.

“I knew you would,” she said serenely, leaning her head on Edwin’s shoulder. They were all sitting up on the roof above the office. It was the kind of scene that had belonged in Port Townsend, the four of them perched around talking about impossible things.

“We might not have,” Crystal had to point out, feeling shattered all over again by the thought of the path they might have taken. “We had no fucking clue what had happened to you.”

Niko lifted her head, looking puzzled. “But you did. You worked it out.”

“Eventually! But that was just dumb luck, really.”

“Crystal,” Niko said gently, like Crystal was being very silly and Niko was trying not to make her feel bad about it. “You made me a shrine in your head. I knew it would be okay.”

Crystal stared at her.

“That’s why David was fighting you so hard,” Niko explained. “He was scared. I guess for him that it was a scary thing. He can’t get back in your head now, ever again.”

Crystal swallowed. “Can you?” she said.

Niko shrugged and kicked her legs idly. “Only if you want. I don’t think I need to be there, though. It’s enough that I have a shrine of my own. The shrine was enough to make me…I don’t know. Real. Real-ish.” She smiled. “Maybe one day, I’m going to be strong enough to grant wishes. Litty and Kingham used to do that sometimes for their worshippers. They told me about it. I mean, there were a lot of wishes they couldn’t grant, things like immortality or endless wealth, but I could do little things. Wouldn’t that just be the best thing ever?”

“One step at a time,” Edwin cautioned and they looked at each other with their own form of best friend telepathy, his arm tightening around hers.

“Yeah, Niko, you got this,” Crystal said. Her throat was tight. “We believe in you.”

Niko glowed. Literally glowed, a gentle radiance. A little miracle.

“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”