Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Dan,” Louise was pleading over the phone. “Dan, you’ve got to come.”

Dan sighed loudly into the speaker of his battered mobile, trying not to let on how nice it felt to have someone want him somewhere. “What would I even do,” he asked, falling back onto his mattress. “I’d just be sitting around like a useless log.”

“Now you know that’s not true, Daniel,” came the immediate reproach. “But if you’re intent on being daft, then you have to at least come to keep me company. I’ll be bored to absolute tears otherwise.” 

This was because Louise was certain that Dan was at least a little bit magic, while Dan insisted in turn that the only magical thing about him was his constant bad luck. But Louise was right about most things, so. It was hard to tell. 

“Maybe I have other plans,” Dan said nonchalantly, just taking the piss at this point. “Better things to do than sit in a creepy graveyard with you at night.”

“Dan,” Louise said sweetly. “What could possibly be better than hanging out with me?”

“Got me there.”

He went, of course. 

“I thought you said you’d be bored,” Dan leaned over and hissed quietly to Louise. “Bored to tears, you said.”

It was almost midnight. They were sitting on a crumbling old stone wall inside a churchyard so old Dan didn’t even know if it had a name. For a town as small as Henrietta, there were certainly more abandoned churches than you would expect. It had taken Dan ages to follow Louise’s directions and find the right one, all the way on the outskirts of town. Dan shivered in the night air, bumped Louise’s shoulder, and gestured over to the huddle of women standing a few feet away from them.

“And it was the truth,” Louise said, shrugging, not even bothering to whisper. 

“Louise,” Dan deadpanned. “I thought you’d be alone. Your whole family’s here.”

“Not all of them,” Louise corrected. “And besides, they’re here to do the actual work for the ritual, I’m only here to sit off to the side and provide my energy, or whatever. There’s nothing for me to actually do. Hence, the boredom.”

Dan sighed, out of protests. This was, after all, one of the reasons he suspected they got along so well. Their living situations were both equally impossible to talk about. Not that Louise’s home life compared to the misery of Dan’s shitty public housing on the ass end of town, but no one ever believed her when she talked about it. 

Louise lived in a house of psychics. It was an ever-expanding brood, including her mother, several of her mother’s friends that Dan could never figure out if were actually her secret lovers or not, a smattering of aunts, a rotating carousel of cousins, and seemingly random strangers that had wandered into the fold. They were all women, and they were all, with the exception of Louise, real psychics.

Louise swore up and down that she was useless herself at seeing the future, but she did have one strange talent. She could sort of amplify the abilities of other psychics, getting close to them when they needed a boost and juicing them like a battery. Dan thought it was pretty cool, even if Louise was always lamenting her lack of any real magic. 

“It's starting,” Louise hissed, batting incessantly at Dan’s shoulder. He watched as the five or six women of varying shades of blonde all pulled out pens and notebooks and stared intently out at the empty courtyard. They started talking in hushed voices, mostly asking What is your name? Will you tell me what you’re called? 

“There’s probably ghosts all around us right now,” Louise murmured, rubbing her hands together. “That’s a bit spooky.”

“Isn’t that, like, all the time?” Dan asked, mesmerized by the women chatting with seemingly invisible people.

“Oh, but it’s different tonight, didn’t I tell you?”

Dan didn’t say that sometimes Louise liked to talk a lot, and very fast. “Um…probably?”

Luckily, Louise also never minded explaining something twice. “That’s why St. Mark’s Eve is so important. Spirits are revealed to those with second sight, but not people that are already dead. People that will die this year.”

“Oh,” Dan said. He shivered. That was decidedly spooky. “Why…here? In a church? Shouldn’t they just show up where they died, or something?”

“It’s cos the church is on the corpse road. Don’t make that face, it’s like… a hotspot of magic, I suppose. The spirits are drawn to it.”

Dan nodded. He guessed that made as much sense as anything. 

“Anyway, my family sits watch every year. As a respect thing, I suppose. And also to help the families get things in order if needed.” Louise gazed over at her aunts and cousins, leaning her chin on her hand. “I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad that I can’t see them. Because it’s a bit sad, isn’t it? But…”

“Louise?”

“I also think my ghost would want people to say hi to it. Wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t want to be all lonely, wandering through-“

“Louise.”

“What, Dan?”

“Can you see that?”

Dan's eyes were transfixed on the churchyard in front of them. Just a few yards away, closer to the two of them than to the other women, was a…was… 

Well, it looked an awful lot like a ghost. 

It was a boy, he was pretty sure. Tall. Maybe around their age. Dan thought he had black hair, probably, but anything other than that was all blurry, like he just wasn’t quite there. He had his arms folded over his chest, hugging himself, wandering idly.

Dan could hear his heart thudding messily against his ribcage. He turned to Louise, to see if she could see it too, but instead of her eyes catching on the boy they were fixed on his face. A shock of delight was blooming in her expression.

“I knew it,” Louise hissed, joyfully, “I always knew you were a bit psychic, oh, Dan, I was right!”

“You can’t see him?” Dan asked frantically, fingers gripping her shoulder.

“Not at all,” Louise whispered back. “It’s a him, is it? Go on! You’ve got to ask his name!”

“Wot?”

“It’s what we always do! Go, go, ask him!”

Louise gave him a little nudge, and against his better judgement, Dan slid from the stone wall. He walked forward, shoes crunching on crabgrass, closing the distance between himself and the ghost. What are you doing, Dan Howell, his mind screamed. What are you doing what are you doing- but then he was face to face with the dead boy.

He expected to be able to make him out more clearly this close, but the spirit was just as intangible and blurry. He couldn’t pick out anything other than vague features. 

“What’s your name?” Dan asked clumsily, hands shaking. 

The spirit, who had been staring out at the horizon, turned to look at Dan. And he…smiled. Somehow Dan knew he was smiling. “It’s you,” the boy said, with a voice that sounded faded and faraway. 

Dan blinked in surprise. That had certainly not been the response he’d expected. “Me?” he asked, brow furrowed. “I just…can you tell me your name, please?”

The boy laughed, actually laughed. “You know it,” he said, easily, like he’d never been so sure of anything. And then, before Dan had time to respond, he was gone. 

Just…gone. Like he had never been there. Dan shivered, rubbing at his arms.

He stood there for a minute, feet planted, as if maybe the spirit would flicker back into view, but nothing happened. Dan sighed, walking back to the wall and hoisting himself up to sit beside Louise.

She was watching him anxiously. “Well?” she asked. “I couldn’t hear from back here, did you get it?”

Dan shook his head. “I tried,” he said, suddenly self-conscious. “But he just said…that I knew it already, and then he was gone.”

Louise put a finger to her chin. “Strange,” she mused. “But, oh well, this is still brilliant. I can’t believe you’ve been more psychic than me this whole time!”

Dan winced. “I’m not, though. I promise I’m not. This is the only psychic thing that has ever happened to me. Look, aren’t there any other reasons people see ghosts on St. Mark’s Eve?”

He glanced to Louise. She dropped her gaze, suddenly, chewing on her bottom lip. “No,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “None. Only psychics see them.”

For some reason Dan didn’t believe her.

They sat the rest of the night in relative silence. No other ghosts appeared for either of them. Dan tried to push the memory of the ghost boy out of his mind. 

***

Dan did not have a car. This was because his parents could barely afford the one car they shared between them, and even with working two jobs Dan couldn’t hope to afford tuition and a car payment. So he just biked everywhere instead. It wasn’t so bad. Probably good for his health. His mum did continually fret about him biking along the side of the highway every morning, but he knew she would never push it, because there was no way for him to get to school otherwise. 

Before, when he’d gone to Henrietta’s public school, he’d been able to take the bus. Now he attended Aglionby Academy, which was the preppiest thing you could find this far into the middle of nowhere. It was a private all-boys school that was perfect for the sons of politicians and oil company CEOs. Dan hated it.

But it wasn’t like he’d hated the public secondary school any less. He’d probably set an actual record for the student who’d gotten into the most amount of fights, though to be fair it was rarely ever him doing the actual fighting. His grades were probably among the lowest in the school. Not one person in that place had liked Dan Howell, not even the teachers, and eventually Dan’s mum had had enough. He came home with a black eye one day too many, and she decided there and then that she was sending him to Aglionby next term. I want more for you, she’d said, staring at the wall behind him instead of meeting his eyes, which was how Dan had known she was serious. The Howells weren’t very good at being honest. You don’t deserve that shithole. I want to give you a better future.

Dan wasn’t really sure what kind of future Aglionby provided to students who weren’t set to inherit disgusting wealth, but he kept that to himself.

So he had picked up two part-time jobs, and somehow scraped together the ridiculous private school tuition. At least he didn’t get beat the shit beaten out of him at Aglionby, even if the other students were insufferable pricks. He was sure they’d like to, but everyone was just too posh to throw punches in the middle of the school day. The administration certainly wouldn't stand for it, either. The only means of bullying Dan the other Aglionby boys (raven boys, everyone called them, after their school mascot; it was a very derogatory nickname in Dan’s head) had at their disposal were verbal and exclusion, which he could deal with just fine. It was easy enough to run to his bike and speed home at the end of every school day before he could get cornered. Everyone still hated him, and he still hated everyone back. But his mother worried less.

This was what made this morning so interesting.

Dan was biking to school like usual on the edge of the road. He squinted up ahead, and to his surprise realized that he was coming up on an offensively orange convertible parked on the side of the road. It was accompanied by two boys in Aglionby uniforms; one with dyed black hair who was leaning against the passenger door, and one with brown curls whose head was buried underneath the car’s hood.

Two things were interesting about this. One: as Dan got closer, it became clear that the black-haired boy was Phil Lester, whom nearly everyone at Aglionby knew for being strange, eccentric, personable, and rich. Second: it also became clear that Phil was waving at him rather enthusiastically.

“Dan!” Phil was calling, sticking his arm out wildly like he was trying to call a cab. “Hey, hey, Dan!”

Dan had the absurd urge to look over his shoulder and make sure there wasn’t another Dan riding a bicycle somewhere behind him. How the hell did Phil Lester know his name?

But, no, Phil was looking at him. “Dan!” he called again. Feeling like he had no choice in the matter, Dan slowed his pedaling. He came to a stop next to the orange car, planting one foot on the ground.

“Uh,” Dan said, still gripping the handlebars. “Hi?”

For some unfathomable reason, Phil looked relieved that he’d stopped. “I thought it was you!” he said, delighted. “Didn’t I say it was Dan Howell, PJ?”

“You did,” came a voice from under the hood.

“Well, sorry for accosting you. I was just wondering- I mean, do you know anything about cars?”

“Like, fixing them?” Dan asked. He looked from Phil’s face to the parked car and back, at a complete loss. Phil Lester was asking him for…car advice? Him? “Um, absolutely nothing, mate, sorry.”

“Oh,” Phil didn’t look angry, luckily, just lightly confused. He scratched idly at his temple. “Sorry, I just thought maybe, since you work at that hardware store.”

Dan’s brain valiantly attempted to reconcile the fact that Phil Lester apparently knew where he worked. 

“I just kinda sell the parts,” Dan said lamely. “I’m not…actually a mechanic. By any means. Uh, sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry for flagging you down,” Phil said, and sounded actually apologetic. “I’m just a bit terrified of calling a tow, to be honest. But, hey, PJ says he’ll figure it out. Won’t you, Peej?”

PJ- whom everyone at Aglionby also knew, mostly for being inseparable from Phil- held out a thumbs up, which was the only part of him Dan could see. “We’re all creatures of the universe, aren’t we?” PJ mused. “We can’t be so different, this car and I.”

“That’s the spirit,” Phil said brightly. “My car won’t fail us, anyway. I have faith. It’s always been good to me.”

Dan blinked. And blinked again. He was fairly sure this was the longest conversation he’d ever had with other Aglionby students. It was definitely the strangest one.

He was still hovering awkwardly on his bike. “Well,” Dan said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um, I hope you-”

“There!” PJ exclaimed, standing up over the hood and clapping his hands. “There, try it now, Phil!”

Phil obediently ducked into the car and turned the key in the ignition. The engine kicked on with a thrum.

“She’s alive!” Phil cheered, throwing both hands up. “You’re a miracle worker, PJ! What did you do?”

“No idea,” PJ said happily. He closed the hood in triumph.

“Congratulations, I guess,” Dan said. He was fairly sure this detour would make him late for his first class, and- and he had been making an effort this year, to not miss as much. A wave of dread passed over him. “I’ve got to-”

“You could just ride with us,” Phil suggested, sticking his head out the passenger window. “Your bike will fit in the trunk.”

Dan blinked at Phil’s incredibly earnest expression. “Um,” he said, speechless. “No, that’s all right, really.”

“You’ll be late, though,” Phil pouted. “Because I bothered you about my stupid car. I’ll be guilt-ridden.”

“Completely guilt-ridden,” PJ emphasized.

Dan felt a bit like he was having an out-of-body experience. He wondered if this was how Louise’s relatives went through life.

“Um,” he said, for the millionth time this morning. 

Suddenly PJ was standing in front of him, holding two hands on Dan’s handlebars expectantly. Wordlessly, obediently, Dan swung his leg over and stepped off the bike. PJ walked it over to the back of the car. “Pop the trunk, Phil,” he called. “No, not that button. The other button. Good job.”

Dan’s bike was deposited into the trunk. PJ climbed into the driver’s seat. Feeling like he was in a dream, Dan opened one of the back doors and climbed into the backseat.

“You guys really didn’t have to do that,” Dan insisted, as PJ pulled back onto the road. “I mean, you really didn’t have to.”

“We really did,” Phil teased from the front seat. “Besides, biking to school every day sounds horrid, you deserved a reprieve. I’m impressed no one’s run you over so far.”

“I’m a master evader,” Dan quipped, and then decided it was the most embarrassing thing anyone had ever said, ever. “I thought you said this was, uh, your car?”

“It is,” Phil said brightly, turning back to look at Dan. “And I can drive, you know, got my license and everything. PJ just doesn't let me.”

“He would definitely be the person running you over,” PJ agreed. “Plus he likes being chauffeured around. Like royalty.”

“Don’t embarrass me in front of Dan,” Phil whined. Dan felt a bit like he was listening to his grandparents squabbling.

Dear Louise, he said in his head, maybe your ghost ritual messed up the timeline or something. I’m sitting in a car with two raven boys who are the most un-Aglionby people imaginable. They are being, and I know this one is a shocker, nice to me. Do we have to go on a quest to repair space-time now or something?

“I didn’t even know you knew who I was,” Dan said, wonderingly, and then realized a half second too late that he said it out loud.

“Of course I do,” Phil said, sounding a bit offended. “We had classes together last term!”

“Oh,” Dan said, and did not say that he was incredibly used to no one in his classes remembering he existed, “right.”

The rest of the drive to school was quick and filled with easy chatter. It was mostly Phil doing the talking, with Dan and PJ filling in the gaps. It was one of the strangest car rides of Dan’s life.

PJ eventually pulled into a parking spot. Upon seeing the undoubtedly identifiable orange convertible, several students waved and shouted to Phil and PJ. Dan still felt like he was in a dream.

“Thanks,” he said, stepping out of the car. “Uh, I’ll just take my bike to the holder.”

“Want us to drive you home?” Phil asked, closing his own door.

Dan couldn’t help stifling an absurd laugh. He thought about Phil Lester and PJ Liguori dropping him off at his neighborhood, which would probably be the most low income thing the majority of Aglionby students would ever see. 

“That’s really okay,” he said. “Really.”

Phil shrugged. “If you say so.”

PJ helped Dan retrieve his bike. Dan took it by the handlebars, walking it up the pavement.

“BYE, DAN!” Phil called from behind him, much louder than he needed to. “THANKS AGAIN!”

Dan chuckled to himself as he walked away, and wondered what exactly Phil was supposed to be thanking him for.

***

Dan always sat in the back row of his classes, a habit from public school that he hadn’t been able to break. Aglionby was insufferably private, which meant the classes were all stupid hard on purpose, and a neverending drone of lectures. Dan hated lectures, and he hated taking notes, and he hated school in general, but. But he had promised himself that he would actually try. So he forced himself to pay attention, and forced himself to take notes. So far his grades weren’t too terrible. Respectable, even. It wasn’t so bad when Louise forced him to study with her.

Dan nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He had forgotten to leave it on silent; people didn’t call him. Frowning, he pulled it out and looked at the screen: it was Louise. Louise never called him during school. Dan glanced at the clock- still six minutes till class started- and accepted the call, pressing the phone against his ear.

“Hello?” he asked in a hushed voice. Luckily there was enough chatter among the other students in the classroom for him to not feel out of place. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” came Louise’s voice, but she sounded…nervous. Antsy. “I’m sorry for phoning, Dan, I just had to- it’s been eating at me-” 

“Slow down, Louise,” Dan said, holding the phone with both hands. “What’s wrong?”

“Remember what you asked me, the other night?”

“About what?”

“About seeing ghosts on the corpse road.”

Dan bit his bottom lip. He held his breath. “Yeah,” he whispered into the speaker. 

“I wasn’t…really being honest.” Louise took a deep breath in. “There is a reason non-psychics see ghosts on St. Mark’s Eve. Two of them actually.”

“What are they?” Dan could barely hear his own voice.

“Well…” She seemed to hesitate. “If you see a person. It means…either they’re your true love, or…”

Her voice just trailed off, into nothing.

“Or?” Dan asked. It was like the whole rest of the room had disappeared, everything but him and Louise. 

“Or you kill them.”

Dan’s heart seemed to stop.

“Dan,” Louise said, unmistakably nervous. “Dan, are you-”

“Dan!”

He blinked, drawn out of the moment. The voice had come from the other side of the classroom. Dan glanced up, and- and there was Phil, waving to him. Phil, walking towards him.

“Gottagosorry,” he mumbled into the phone, and hung up before he could hear Louise’s protests. 

“I didn’t realize you were in this class,” Phil said, delighted. He slid into the empty seat next to Dan, setting his backpack next to him. “Sorry to accost you again,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice. “The guy I usually sit with is just horrible, but he thinks we’re friends and he’s always trying to talk to me about-” 

Phil paused, watching Dan take the phone from his ear and set it down on the desk. His face dropped.

“Oh, my god, were you on the phone?” Phil put a hand over his mouth. “I just interrupted you on the phone. I’m so sorry, oh my god.”

It startled a laugh out of Dan. “It’s seriously fine.” 

Phil’s forehead thumped against the desk. “I’m literally out to ruin your life today,” he moaned. “I’m the worst person ever.”

Dan was fairly certain this wasn’t true.

“Hey,” he said, attempting somewhere between humor and comfort, “you gave me a ride to school and everything. Pretty sure that cancels out anything bad.”

Phil raised his head. “You’re sure?”

“Positive,” Dan said. Phil seemed mollified by this. 

“You’re so benevolent,” Phil said. “Oh! And you like Muse? I can’t believe we’ve never talked before.”

Dan blinked, wondering for a moment how Phil could have psychically intuited his favorite band, and then his gaze fell to the patch on his backpack. His ears flushed red. 

“You like Muse?” Dan asked, a bit bashfully. Phil beamed at him. 

“I love Muse,” he said. “They’re my favorite. I’m always trying to convince my mum to let me go to London to see them.”

“I’ve been,” Dan said shyly. It had been his birthday present, several years ago. His parents had saved for months and found a good deal on tickets. He hadn’t had anyone to go with- he hadn’t even known Louise back then- but it had still been the best day of his life. 

Phil’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Have you? Oh, that’s so brilliant, you have to tell me every detail!” 

Dan found himself a bit caught by Phil’s joyful expression. Phil Lester had a nice smile, Dan thought. And incredibly blue eyes, though really there were specks of yellow and green as well. He had the absurd urge to run his hand through Phil’s fringe. 

Dan opened his mouth to talk, but before he could say anything, the teacher stood up to the whiteboard and started his lecture. Dan closed his mouth and nodded to the front of the classroom with an apologetic look.

“I’ll bug you about it later,” Phil leaned in to whisper, and turned to open his notebook.

The really remarkable thing, Dan mused, instead of paying any attention at all to the lecture, was how Phil was already treating him like a friend despite only having had two conversations. He was just so easy about it, so earnest, like offering rides to cycling schoolmates was just what one did. And he didn’t toss strange looks Dan’s way, or snicker under his breath, or even ask what public school had been like as if it was another country. 

The really remarkable thing was how Dan was already addicted to that bright, beaming smile he had, like the whole world was a bright and happy place from where Phil stood. 

Don’t be daft, he scolded himself. You cannot develop a crush on Phil Lester, Aglionby’s golden boy, after speaking to him twice. Even you aren’t that much of a sadist. 

Then again. Maybe he was. 

***

Louise went to Mountainview, because other than Aglionby it was the only secondary school in Henrietta. But she was one year above Dan, which meant they had all different classes, and had never managed to run in to each other when they both went to school there. Dan took this as proof that the universe hated his breathing guts.

Dan had met Louise several months ago, during one of her shifts at Nino’s, the local pizza joint. Dan had been crying pathetically into a plate of fries. Louise, who hadn’t even been his waitress, had ‘mysteriously’ lost his check, brought out two milkshakes, slid into the booth across from him and listened for nearly an hour as he recounted his woes from his first week at Aglionby. When he was finished, she had said I know a place that will cheer you up. It had turned out to be a particular beech tree in the nearby park, which was, Louise claimed, ‘her favorite climbing tree.’ Dan had laughed absurdly, chasing away the last of the tears, and climbed trees with Louise for hours like they were eight again. At the very top of one of them, Louise had leaned over to him and whispered, My family’s magic.

She had been his best friend ever since. 

 Dan hummed to himself, flipping the kickstand on his bike and leaving it leaning in the Pentland’s driveway. Louise and all her various relatives lived in a very eccentric house on 300 Fox Way, which had a hand-painted sign leaning on the porch that said Psychic in seven different colors of acrylic. Dan loved it here, partly because it gave him an escape from his own home.

He jogged up to the front door, knocking on the old wood three times. A few seconds later, a voice from inside called, “Who’s that at the door?” (Which Dan could hear very plainly.)

A second voice called back, “Oh, it’s Dan. YOU CAN JUST COME IN, DAN, YOU KNOW IT’S FINE.”

He smiled. Dan thought it was still polite to knock, but it made his heart feel warm to know that he had an automatic pass into Fox Way.

He opened the door, stepping into the foyer. Louise’s house was a cross between a boarding house and a museum of oddities. It was always packed, usually with people Dan didn’t recognize, and every surface was covered with figurines and stacks of cards and lamps and candles and knitted doilies. It was distinctly strange, like everything about Louise’s family, but also distinctly a home. He passed Louise’s mother, who was brushing at a shelf of knicknacks in the sitting room with an enormous bright blue feather duster. “Hi Dan, love,” she said, lifting the duster in a wave. “Louise is upstairs.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” Dan said, just to hear her roll her eyes and smile and say oh, please. He jogged up the stairs, passing several unidentified cousins on the way, and knocked gently on Louise’s bedroom door. For a brief second, he was nervous. He hadn’t called to say he was coming over. He had kind of passed that point of the friendship with Louise, but still. Maybe she’d be mad. 

But all she said was, “Is that Dan? Come in already,” and Dan pushed the door open.

She was sitting on the floor by her bed, furiously attacking some kind of embroidered towel with a needle. Dan went to sit beside her.

“Hey,” he said, a bit meekly. “Sorry for not calling. I just figured…we should talk.”

“Oh, Dan, don’t apologize,” Louise said, pushing a final stitch through and then looking up to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry for dropping that on you in the middle of school. I just kept thinking about it, and just felt like, if I don’t tell him right now I’m going to puke my guts out and die.”

Dan laughed. “We certainly couldn’t have that. And I told you, it was fine. I didn’t mean to hang up on you.”

It was quiet for a minute. They sat in comfortable silence, leaning back against Louise’s bed, watching Louise push needle and thread through the edge of her towel. 

Just say it now, Dan thought, or you’re never going to.

“So,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’re saying that either that boy I saw is my true love, or I’m a cold-blooded murderer.”

It felt a bit strange, to say the first part out loud, but then again not so much. Louise was the only person on the earth who knew Dan was gay. Well, he thought bitterly, aside from dozens of intuitive public school bullies. But it didn’t feel so scary, with her. He was pretty sure most of her family was made up of lesbians anyway.

Louise nodded apologetically. “That’s what people say, anyway,” she sighed. “Oh, Dan, I’m sorry. Maybe it’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You know what I think,” Dan said, leaning his head back against her mattress and staring up at the ceiling. It was covered in painted paper stars.

“What?”

“I think maybe I’d like to be a bit psychic after all. That seems like a way better option.”

He glanced over to catch her reaction. Louise’s mouth curved into a relieved smile.

“That’s probably what it is anyway,” she said matter-of-factly, and Dan couldn’t decide if she was trying to convince them or if she actually believed it. “I’ve always thought it was the case.”

Dan winced. “Do you…actually think that, though?”

She nodded. “Yes, actually. It’s like…um…”

Louise rubbed her hands together, pursing her lips like she was concentrating hard on which words to say. Dan waited expectantly.

“It’s like. You know how I’m a battery, right? I make things louder for other psychics?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Louise said slowly, “sometimes when I’m around you, it’s like…it feels like it does when I’m with other psychics. When I’m amplifying someone else’s magic.”

Dan frowned. He tried to imagine himself as magical, as psychic, as someone Louise could amplify. He couldn’t picture it at all.

Louise could sense his confusion. Hesitating for just a second, she held out a finger and gently poked his shoulder. “Like this,” she said, a bit self-conscious. “Can you feel it?”

Dan opened his mouth to say no, he couldn’t feel anything, other than Louise very rudely poking him. But then he could feel something.

It was just…a buzzing, just below his skin. More the idea of a sensation than a sensation itself. Dan blinked and for a moment thought he could see green, everywhere. When he inhaled he was breathing in soil and earth. He could feel rain sliding off his arms, like leaves. He could have sworn that he was not in Louise’s bedroom anymore but deep in the forest behind his house, where he used to play for hours and hours as a kid as a way to escape the claustrophobic walls of his own home. Then Louise withdrew her finger, and the images all vanished like they’d never been there at all.

Louise studied his face closely. “You felt it,” she whispered. “I know you did. I could see it on your face.”

Dan stared, slightly openmouthed. “Louise,” he said, at a loss. “What was what?”

She looked captivated. “What did you see?”

“Um,” Dan said, glancing down at the carpet, “like, a forest, I think. It kind of felt like I was the forest.”

Louise just stared at him, for one second, and then another. He felt like she was peering into his soul.

“Dan,” she said eventually. “I think I should probably ask Mum about this.”

“LOUISE,” someone called abruptly from downstairs. They both flinched. “YOUR OTHER RAVEN BOYS ARE HERE.”

Dan and Louise just blinked at each other for a moment, confused, still caught up in the previous moment. Then Louise groaned and dropped her face into her palms.

“I tell them and tell them to call first,” she said, throwing her embroidery to the side and pushing herself up. “Sorry, Dan, it’s those other idiots I hang out with. I’ll tell them to get lost.”

Dan was aware, vaguely, that Louise had other friends who went to Aglionby. She mentioned them sometimes, but he always brushed it off as unimportant. It wasn’t like he knew really anyone at school. They’d be strangers to him. He was a bit miffed that they had interrupted such an important potential discovery, though.

He stayed, while Louise marched out of her room and down the hallway. “You can’t be here right now,” she called down the stairs. “I’m busy.”

“Louise!” an undaunted, delighted and inexplicably male voice called back. “It’s adventuring time!”

Dan couldn’t help but think it sounded familiar.

“And I said I’m busy,” Louise reiterated. Dan found himself standing up, stepping out of Louise’s room and following her to the top of the stairs. “You can go adventuring without me.”

He poked his head over the banister. Lo and behold, standing at the bottom of the Pentland’s staircase, wearing the most offensively colorful outfits known to man, were Phil and PJ.

Dan watched curiously as a delighted expression broke across Phil’s face like the dawn. “Dan!” he nearly squawked, raising a hand to wave much more animatedly than he needed to. “Is that you? Louise, you’ve been hiding Dan up there?”

Dan glanced to Louise, who in turn was looking frantically between Dan and the two boys at the bottom of the stairs. “You know them?” she asked, nearly flabbergasted.

Dan shrugged, and then nodded. 

Louise gave him a look, which he interpreted to say, Please god don’t tell me you hate them. Please god tell me these aren’t insufferable pricks who give you a hard time.

“They, uh,” Dan said, rubbing the back of his neck. “They drove me to school yesterday.”

Louise’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. She knew, as well as anyone, that this wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to Dan.

“We’re practically blood brothers,” PJ added helpfully.

Assessing that there was no actual damage control to be done in the situation, Louise’s head snapped back towards the bottom of the stairs. “You guys are not allowed to steal my best friend,” she said haughtily, which made something warm spread through Dan’s chest.

“Of course not,” Phil said, raising both hands.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” PJ said, following suit.

There was a moment of stalemate. Louise made no move to head down the stairs, and the boys stayed firmly planted at the bottom.

“Um,” Dan asked, a bit awkwardly. “What…adventure were you talking about?”

All heads turned to Phil. If it was possible, his face exploded with even more delight.

“Oh, Dan can come with us!” he said excitedly. “Say yes, Dan, please!” 

People weren’t usually excited to bring Dan along anywhere. This was the strangest day.

“Um,” Louise said, clearly out of her depth. “If you really feel like hiking through some forest with us, Dan.”

Dan thought of soil and leaves and the buzzing he’d felt when Louise had touched him. Clearly forests meant something to him.

“Sure,” he said, almost surprised at himself. “Why not.”

Phil cheered.

Dan and Louise finally made their way down the stairs. Phil and PJ wove through the maze of Fox Way rooms like they owned the place, leading the way back to the front door.

“So what exactly is this for?” Dan asked, following behind them.

“I’m so glad you asked,” Phil said, opening the front door and holding it for Dan. “Dan Howell, what do you know about dead Welsh kings?”

***

Dan Howell knew absolutely nothing about dead Welsh kings, but apparently Phil Lester did. This was what Dan learned after finding himself in the backseat of Phil’s orange convertible for the second time that day. He sat by Louise, with PJ driving, of course, and Phil in the passenger’s seat. 

“It’s like a hunt,” Phil explained, twisting his body until he was nearly facing Dan. “There was this Welsh king called Owen Glendower, right, and there were all these legends about him- like- well, I won’t bore you with all that. But his body was never found. It’s puzzled archaeologists for centuries. And I’m absolutely sure he’s buried in Henrietta.” 

Dan attempted to take all this information in. “Why?” he asked, baffled. “Wouldn’t he be buried, you know, in…Wales? Not a nowhere English town?”

“Perfect question,” Phil said, tapping his nose and pointing to Dan. “Because of the ley line.”

This rang no bells for Dan. Louise leaned over to him and whispered, “Corpse road.”

Dan’s mouth formed an O shape. 

“It’s about magic,” Phil said, and he sounded almost giddy. He kept talking with his hands. “Real magic. I think Glendower’s family brought him here to the ley line to be buried because they wanted him to wake back up.”

Dan stared. And blinked.

“Yeah, it’s a bit much, innit,” PJ chimed in sympathetically. 

Phil went on explaining, and Dan tried to listen. It went something like this: Glendower was famous for his magical exploits. Henrietta was brimming with magic. Glendower was known as the raven king. Henrietta was full of ravens. There was a significant amount of Welsh influence in the area, including names of towns and estates. Welsh artifacts from Glendower’s time had been found near Henrietta. Phil, above all else, had a feeling.

Phil had, apparently, been searching for Glendower for years at this point. This part of the story struck Dan to be a bit vague. Phil had always loved history, he’d gone down a rabbit hole, he’d found a niche. Dan wasn’t sure that explained everything, but he said nothing. 

The most important thing was the legend. People said that for whoever found Glendower’s body on the ley line and woke him up, he would grant a favor. One big mystical wish, granted by a long-dead king.

Dan’s head was spinning a bit. 

“And we think we’ve really found the place this time,” Phil said eventually. “It’s this huge forest, right outside of Henrietta. We found it, with Louise’s help. It’s, like, completely magical.”

This Dan believed. 

“I got roped in against my will,” Louise added. “I saw them trying to draw pentagrams in notebooks at Nino’s. And doing a terrible job.”

“We’re beginners,” Phil defended. “Sophie’s better at all the magic stuff anyway. Oh- Dan, she’s our other roommate. She had something else going on today.”

“Oh,” Dan said politely. He deduced that when Phil said our he was referring to himself and PJ. It made sense that the two of them were roommates. Dan realized he couldn’t imagine Phil and PJ coming home from school and parting ways to go to separate houses. It just felt unnatural. 

Quest, Dan went through in his head, dead king, favors, ley line, magic forest. Got it. 

And somehow he was involved now. 

“Here it is!” PJ called triumphantly. Dan glanced out the window. There was nothing around but trees.

PJ parked unceremoniously on the side of the road and turned the car off. All four of them piled out.

“Well,” Phil said. They all stood staring at the treeline. “Excelsior.”

Then he turned to Dan, cheeks slightly flushed. “It means onward and upward. Sorry, is that cheesy?”

“A bit,” Dan said, but he couldn’t stifle a smile. 

“Let’s go then,” PJ said, waving everyone forward. “That’s my catchphrase now. Much more to the point.”

They entered the forest.

It was like a veil fell over the world when they stepped inside. The canopy was thick and low, blocking out a surprising amount of sunlight. Everything was tinged green. These trees looked old, with thick gnarled branches, and roots marring the ground everywhere you stepped. A sheen of moss grew over most everything. Dan felt, inexplicably, at home. 

PJ had produced a large, scribbled-on paper map and was reading it intently. Louise stepped up next to him to help navigate. Phil fell back into step with Dan. 

“You’d think if anywhere was going to be magic,” Phil whispered to him, looking around with wonder in his eyes, “it would be here.”

“I would call myself a skeptic,” Dan murmured back, “but…I think you’re absolutely right.”

Phil smiled at him. A shy, private smile. God, Dan liked his smile a lot. It was entirely unfair. 

Why are you looking for a dead king, he wanted to ask. What are you doing here?

“Dan,” Phil said, quietly. “I’m really glad you came with us.”

“You are?” Dan asked. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It was just that he had a hard time believing it.

“Yeah.” Phil smiled again. “I like you.”

Dan could feel himself blushing. 

“You don’t even really know me,” Dan protested, trying to backpedal enough to find humor. “I could be a total weirdo.”

“I like weirdos,” Phil said brightly. “I identify as a total weirdo. Besides, Louise is a good judge of character.”

Dan sighed. “That’s true,” he relented. His eyes dropped to the ground, catching on roots and fallen leaves. “I like you too,” he mumbled. 

He wasn’t sure Phil had even heard. But when he glanced up, the other boy was beaming like the entire sun was in his face. How did he even do that?

“Shut up,” Dan huffed. Phil giggled.

“Phil!” PJ called from ahead of them. “This is the place.”

Phil’s face took on more of a serious tilt. They all gathered around PJ, staring at the map he held in front of him.

“When we came here last week,” Louise whispered to Dan, “There was this one place where Sophie kept feeling all this magical activity. I’m also convinced she’s psychic, by the way. Like you.”

“You’re psychic?” Phil asked curiously, turning to Dan. 

“Shh,” PJ said, lowering the map. “Can you hear that?”

They all stood in silence, straining their ears. Dan heard absolutely nothing.

“What was it?” Louise asked, bumping shoulders with PJ.

PJ flinched away. 

“Peej,” Phil said frantically, at the same time that Louise said, “What did I do?”

“Sorry,” PJ said, clutching his head. “It was just…when you touched me. I heard a voice.”

“A voice?” Dan asked, trying to keep any skepticism out of his tone.

PJ nodded. “I was hearing it before, too, but really quiet. When she touched me it got much louder.”

Dan and Louise looked at each other.

“I do tend to make things louder,” Louise said. “Like…magic things.”

PJ held out his arm. “Touch me again.”

Louise laughed, a bit nervously. She took his hand. 

He didn’t flinch his time, when their hands touched. But PJ did turn to look up at the canopy, expression positively enraptured. Like he was listening to something. 

“I’m hearing them,” PJ said, aghast.

“Hearing what?” Phil pressed.

“Well,” PJ said. “The…the trees, I think.”

Louise sucked in a breath and squeezed PJ’s hand harder. Dan’s mouth fell open. Phil hopped to PJ’s side, grabbing hold of his other hand.

“What are they saying?” Phil asked urgently.

PJ squinted, as if concentrating. “It’s like little whispers,” he explained. “And it’s not really English, but I can still sort of make out what they mean. They’re saying, um, hello. And…they’re happy to see the psychic’s daughter.”

Louise let out a little gasp. “Me,” she whispered.

“And,” PJ continued. “They’re saying hello to…well, I think they mean Dan.”

Dan, who had been standing a little off to the side, froze upon hearing his name.

“Me?” he asked, incredulous. “How? Why?”

“Peej,” Louise cut in. “Sorry. But I think I’ll be sick soon if I don’t stop.”

PJ turned to her, blinking in confusion. Then his eyes found their clasped hands. “Oh!” he exclaimed, dropping hers immediately. “Oh, Louise, sorry, you should have said something sooner.”

“It’s fine,” Louise said, but she did look rather pale. She wobbled a bit when PJ released her. Dan sprang forward, putting a supportive arm around her. 

“Battery all used up?” Dan asked sympathetically, just for Louise.

“Yeah,” she said, chuckling. “PJ, whatever you were hearing, it was using lots of magic.”

Dan tried looked over at PJ, but found Phil’s eyes staring into his own. Dan swallowed, self-conscious. 

But Phil just gave him a little smile. “The forest knew you,” he said, like it was just him and Dan in the world. “Who knew. You’ve been our missing piece.”

The forest was eerily silent. All heads turned to Dan.

“I don’t know about that,” Dan mumbled. “I’m not special or anything.”

“No, you’re definitely our missing piece,” Phil insisted. “I have a feeling. You’re like Faith in Buffy season three! Ooh, or maybe Dawn. No, no, you’re definitely Faith.”

Dan blinked. Phil might as well have been speaking a different language. 

“Don’t tell him you haven’t seen Buffy,” PJ whispered loudly. “It’ll ruin both your lives.”

“Hey!” Phil protested, but then they were all giggling, and the tension of the moment was broken. 

“We’d better get Louise home,” PJ said. “That’s enough adventuring for one day.”

“A very reasonable suggestion, Peej,” Phil agreed sagely. “Well. Off we go.”

The group trudged back through the forest, rather slowly for Louise’s sake. Several times Dan could have sworn he was seeing things, just out of the corner of his eye, but it was probably nothing. Definitely nothing.

The sunlight was nearly blinding when they emerged from the trees. The four of them piled into the convertible, and PJ drove them home, everyone deep in thought. 

It was nearly night when Dan biked home from Louise’s. Both of his parents were still out, of course. All three of them liked to spend as much time away from home as they could. Not that Dan’s family hated each other, or anything. It was just that in order for them to stay not hating each other it helped to see each other as little as possible. 

He collapsed into bed, much more exhausted than he had realized. It had certainly been an eventful day. 

Dan grunted in surprise when his phone buzzed. He held it above him, squinting at the string of unknown numbers.

From Unknown: Hi danny it’s phil louise gave me your number 🐶🐿️🦒🌳

Dan snorted. His heart did a happy little flutter as he added Phil Lester to his contacts.

Dan: hi phil 😭not sure I know this danny you speak of

Phil: I like nicknames i was trying this one out. Rate it out of ten 

Dan: 3. maybe for sparse use only 

Phil: Noted ! I’ll start sprinkling it in

Dan: also why so many random emojis am I being attacked by a herd of animals

Phil: I needed something to prove it was me!! Assorted animal emojis felt authentic to my character 

Dan: too true. didn’t doubt your identity for a second 

Phil: SUCCESS.

Phil: Anyway i was texting to ask if you were busy tomorrow

Dan’s heart stopped, just a bit.

Dan: work till noon but nothing after that. why?

Phil: in that case you have a very important one o’clock appointment 

Dan: and that would be….?

Phil: BUFFY!!! 😁😁😁

Phil: non negotiable my place at 1. or else

An aggressive number of butterflies were flapping away in Dan’s stomach. It was getting embarrassing. 

Dan: well if it’s non negotiable I guess I have no choice

Phil: YAAAYYY

Phil: im sending my address

Phil: you’ll think the GPS is wrong but it won’t be

Dan: ominous much

Dan: what if you’re planning to murder me

Phil: hey who’s supposed to be the total weirdo here

Phil: also I couldn’t murder you Sophie would kill me for making a mess

Dan: guess I’ll take your word for it. see you?

Phil: be there or be square 😈😈

Dan dropped his phone onto his chest, staring up at the ceiling. He spent thirty seconds attempting to have some self-discipline, and then gave up and grinned stupidly to himself. 

***

Dan did, in fact, assume the GPS was wrong.

He biked past it three times, actually, looking for something normal like a house or an apartment complex. Eventually, Dan admitted defeat and cycled up the drive of the crumbling brick building on the side of the road. He leaned on one leg, staring up at the thing. It was two stories. It was off of a nearly abandoned side road. The incredibly faded sign across the top read, Monmouth Manufacturing.

What, Dan thought, in the actual fucking hell.

The small lot was overgrown with scraggly weeds. Dan looked around hopefully for a familiar orange car, but there were no vehicles in sight. With a deep sigh, Dan left his bike lying on the concrete, and banged on the very fragile looking front door.

“COME IN!” a voice called from inside. This was undeniably Phil. Dan exhaled. 

Carefully, Dan turned the doorknob and stepped inside. It was- well, a factory. It was also dark. Just one big room, really, littered with incredibly dusty pieces of industrial machinery. Dan cringed involuntarily. 

“UP HERE!” Phil shouted, presumably from upstairs. Dan glanced around, eyes finding a staircase lining the left wall. He jogged over and took hold of the banister, trudging up the steps.

Reaching the second floor was like stepping into another world. Unlike downstairs, it was bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows covering the back wall. The ceiling itself was vaulted, towering above Dan. Other than a few doors leading elsewhere, it was one vast open space. There was a desk, and a table with chairs, and a lamp, but those were the only normal fixtures.It was completely cluttered with things- things that were very Phil Lester-ish. There were stacks of books piled everywhere, and crumpled maps, and stuffed animals. Houseplants in various states of decay haphazardly littered the floor. The main event was probably what looked to be a model of a city sprawled in the middle of the room, made out of cereal boxes. And next to it, for some reason, there was an unmade bed sitting out in the center of the floor.

“Dan!” Phil called. He was kneeling on the floor by the miniature city, scribbling on a piece of cardboard with Sharpie. “You made it!”

Dan just stared.

Phil burst out laughing. “Probably should have warned you, shouldn’t I,” he admitted.

“Probably?” Dan asked, incredulous. He stepped over to Phil, looking down at the array of cardboard. “Mate, you want to explain why the hell you live in an abandoned factory?”

Phil shrugged, giving him a cheeky smile. “My parents rent the building. I suppose I could have lived somewhere normal, like an apartment or Aglionby housing. But I wanted privacy, and space to store Glendower paraphernalia, and- well. No one wants this place, so it was super cheap.”

“Your family doesn’t live in Henrietta?” Dan asked, crouching down to settle on the floor beside Phil.

“Nope,” Phil said casually. “Just me. They live in a little town near Manchester.”

Dan’s eyebrows drew together. Henrietta was nestled in the south of England. Manchester seemed like a whole world away.

“That’s…far,” he said carefully.

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. Something of a shadow passed over Phil’s face, just for a split second, and then it was gone. “We call all the time, though. It’s like I never left.”

Dan frowned. It bothered him, how quickly Phil had smoothed over his own discontent. Phil Lester has more secrets than I thought, Dan mused, but didn’t press.

“What I really want to know,” Dan said, pivoting smoothly, “is why there’s a bed in the middle of the fucking room.”

It startled a laugh out of Phil, who set down his piece of cardboard and hugged his knees to his chest. “Well, I dunno,” he chuckled. “There are two separate rooms, and those are PJ’s and Sophie’s, so. Just made sense to have my bed out here.”

“You could have pushed it against a wall or something, mate,” Dan sighed, shaking his head. 

“Hey, what’s wrong with it being in the middle?”

Dan snorted. “Just what kind of freak are you, Lester?” he asked.

Phil grinned. “Total weirdo, remember,” he said. He twiddled his Sharpie between two fingers. “It’s just me here, by the way, Peej and Soph are out running errands or something. Figured that was alright? Unless you were dying to see them.”

He snuck a glance over at Dan’s face. There was some kind of unspoken question here. The tips of Dan’s ears burned.

“I think I’ll live,” he said, accompanied by a small nervous laugh. 

Phil beamed.

“Though,” Dan added thoughtfully, “I haven’t actually met Sophie yet, you know. I’m starting to think you guys made her up.”

Phil burst out laughing, like Dan had made a much funnier joke than he really had. “You should tell her that when you do meet her,” he giggled. “No, really, she’ll get a kick out of it.”

There was something about the way Phil said when you do meet her that made Dan feel warm. Something permanent, something automatic, something long-term. Of course Dan was going to meet Sophie because Dan was with them now. He was a part of this thing, whatever it was. They wanted him around.

“So,” Phil said, clapping his hands together. “Buffy.”

“Buffy,” Dan repeated.

“It was implied yesterday that you hadn’t seen it,” Phil said, raising a finger. “And that’s just unacceptable, sorry. We will be fixing that today.”

“All of it?” Dan asked, with mock defeat. Phil giggled.

Dan was getting a bit addicted to making Phil laugh.

“We’ll see how far we get,” Phil shrugged. “C’mon, over here.”

They both stood. Phil wandered over to the TV, which, instead of being on a stand, was precariously balanced on several enormous textbooks. Phil grabbed a DVD case from a nearby stack, popped out a disc, and fed it into the DVD player. 

“You’ll have to take season one with a grain of salt,” Phil rambled, fiddling with a TV remote. “Because it was incredibly campy and made for American teenagers in the nineties. But you aren’t allowed to really make fun of it, or I’ll cry.”

“Noted,” Dan said, terribly endeared. He looked around. “Um, where should we-”

Phil unceremoniously climbed into the bed- his bed- which was positioned right in front of the TV. He lounged back against the headboard, clicking through options on the menu as the TV turned on. Dan stood a few feet away, frozen.

It took a minute for Phil to realize Dan hadn’t moved. “Hey,” he said, turning towards him. “You going to stand there all day?”

“Um,” Dan said. He could feel himself blushing.

Phil blinked, confused. Then realization spread across his face. “You can come sit on the bed, Dan,” he laughed. “Were you waiting for permission?”

“Well I don’t know,” Dan huffed, turning redder. “Just climbing into someone’s bed is kind of…you know, rude, isn’t it?”

The word he’d really wanted to say is intimate. Especially when it was unmade, blankets all askew, and the bedsheets were a colorful patchwork that was so Phil that it felt a bit like climbing straight into his soul.

“I guess,” Phil said, unconvinced. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to sit, though. What was I going to do, make you stand the whole time? We’re watching at least three episodes, and that’s over two hours.”

Dan still didn’t move. “You’re, like, sure?”

Phil gave him a look that said he was the most adorable person in the universe. “Yes, Daniel, I’m sure.” He paused. “Well, probably take your shoes off first, I guess. But after that I’m sure.”

Dan snorted. Dutifully, he kicked off his trainers, and very carefully climbed into Phil’s bed.

He sat cross-legged, halfway down from the headboard, legs resting on his knees. Phil immediately swatted at his shoulder.

“Oh, relax, Dan. I’m holding you captive for the afternoon, the least I can do is have you be comfortable. Don’t be all stiff. Come here, lay back on the pillows or whatever.”

“You’re a strange kidnapper,” Dan said, but he did as he was told and leaned back against the headboard next to Phil.

Their shoulders were nearly touching. It was a bit distracting.

“Here we go,” Phil murmured, and pressed play on the first episode.

Dan did enjoy it. Mostly he enjoyed it because Phil enjoyed it, but he could feel himself getting invested. Phil whispered commentary every few scenes, and Dan loudly shushed him during dramatic parts. They both giggled at the offensively teenage dialogue.

“Oh, here comes Angel,” Phil said excitedly, halfway through the first episode. “That might be a spoiler actually, sorry. But he’s played by David Boreanaz. He’s so hot. I had such a crush on him when I was younger.”

Dan’s brain processed this information so sluggishly that he didn’t have time to stop himself from glancing towards Phil with naked surprise on his face. He tried to cover it up, schooling his features back into nonchalance and looking back at the screen, but Phil definitely hadn’t missed his stricken expression.

“Dan,” Phil said, bumping their shoulders together. “Dan?”

Dan’s eyes traveled back to Phil’s guiltily. 

Phil searched his expression. Whatever he found made his lips part slightly. “Did you really not know I was gay?” he asked, a bit in awe.

Phil’s blue-yellow-green eyes on him were too much. Dan swallowed, glancing down at the blankets. “I dunno,” he said, so awkwardly he could have pinched himself. “I didn’t want to, uh, assume. Or anything.”

Phil shook his shoulder until Dan agreed to meet his eyes again. 

For some reason, instead of annoyed or anxious or defensive or anything Dan would have been feeling in his place, Phil just looked…fond. Very fond. “You’re so,” he said, and then couldn’t seem to find an adequate descriptor and laughed helplessly instead. His eyes closed, head falling forwards. “Oh, Dan. I like you so much.”

Dan was at a loss for anything to say, or think, or do with his hands. He just sat quietly.

“For future reference,” Phil said happily. “I am the gayest person on planet earth. So. Now you know.”

Dan looked in Phil’s eyes. He tried to find something profound to say, and then just mumbled, “Okay.” And he laughed, absurdly, shoving away Phil’s delighted face and hiding his head in his hands.

Wordlessly, Phil reached for the remote and rewound the episode several minutes. They settled back in. This time, Phil inched just a little closer, the edge of his shoulder touching Dan’s. Dan wondered if this was on purpose. He decided it probably was.

It turned out Phil’s bed, absurdly placed in the center of the top floor of his own personal factory, was incredibly cozy. It also turned out that Dan’s subconscious evidently felt completely safe with Phil Lester. He wasn’t even sure which episode they’d gotten to when his mind started drifting off.

Phil is gay, were Dan’s last thoughts before sleep took him. Phil is gay, and more than that, he wanted me to know. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But he could pretend that meant something.

***

“Shhh, don’t make noise, Dan’s asleep. Oh don’t make that face at me, Peej, look how cute he is, I couldn’t wake him.”

“He does look a bit angelic.”

“Thank you, Sophie. Someone understands.”

Sleep fell from Dan in fits and starts. His brain made a valiant attempt at figuring out where the hell he was before finally realizing that the last thing he remembered was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Phil Lester’s bed.

“I made an interesting observation while we were out,” said a voice, that Dan’s sluggish mind decided was PJ. “Want to know what it was, Phil?”

“Um…what?”

“Your piece of shit car’s glovebox sprung open on Sophie while we were driving. Want to know what we didn’t find in there?”

Dan heard Phil suck in a breath. “Oh, don’t start this again.”

“Don’t start this again? I don’t know how you can just be so lackadaisical about your lifesaving EpiPen-”

“Don’t shout,” instructed a female voice.

“I can shout if I want to,” PJ said stubbornly, but his voice was noticeably several decibels lower. “How long have you had that car, Phil? And this whole time you’ve just never had-”

“Becuase I’ll never need it,” Phil argued, voice almost pleading. “I carry one on me, PJ, when would I ever be forced to resort to the glovebox in the car? What more do you want from me?”

“One day,” PJ huffed, “you’re going to be convulsing on the street and I’m the one that’s going to have to deal with it.”

“Or me,” the girl added.

Dan, nearly fully awake now, was starting to feel like this was a conversation he wasn’t supposed to hear. He blinked, eyes straining against the afternoon sunlight pouring through the tall windows. 

“What are you all shouting about,” he said groggily, stretching two arms above his head.

“Dan!” Phil skipped over from where all three of them had been sitting in chairs around the table. He stepped up to the bed, leaning his elbows on the mattress. “Did they wake you? Sorry, I told them to be quiet, but I can never get them to listen to me.”

“It’s fine,” Dan said, words slurring a little bit. Now that he was coherent, he felt horribly exposed. His cheeks burned. “Shit. Sorry. This is embarrassing.”

“What is?” Phil asked innocently.

Dan gave him a look. “Falling asleep in your bed,” he said flatly. 

“Oh, that’s not embarrassing, hush. You clearly needed a nap.”

“How long was I…?”

Phil shrugged. “Hour or two. Should I have woken you? Hopefully you haven’t worried anyone.”

Dan snorted. The idea of anyone thinking, let alone worrying, about Dan Howell’s whereabouts on a weekend afternoon was laughable. Though he didn’t say that.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll. Um. Get out of your hair.”

Phil looked appalled. “Absolutely not. You can’t leave before I feed you something. Otherwise I’m, like, a bad host.”

Dan raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You don’t have to feed me lunch, Phil. I just took up your bed for two hours.”

“No, I have to. Let me find something.” Phil scampered across the room, opening a minifridge that sat against the wall.

Dan sat up, running his hands through his hair until it was presentable and attempting to unrumple his clothes. He wandered awkwardly across the floor, to where PJ and Sophie sat around the lone table.

“Hi, Dan,” PJ said absently, looking up from his phone. He seemed back to his normal, affable self. “Sorry for shouting rudely. I’m not usually a shouter. But sometimes I just really feel the need to get a point across, you know.”

“Sure,” Dan snorted. “It’s fine. And- you must be Sophie.”

The ever-elusive Sophie was short, with an incredibly round face, round glasses, and daintily curled brown ringlets. She was maybe the palest person Dan had ever seen. The circles under her eyes were very dark, like pencil smudges.

“That’s me,” she said, and looked pleased that he already knew her name. Dan felt the sudden need to try and earn her approval, somehow. He didn’t want to be seen as the kid-who-fell-asleep-in-my-roommate’s-bed. Reaching for humor, Dan held out his hand in an exaggerated flourish. Sophie, with a small smile, shook it with her own. Her fingers were entirely freezing.

“Your hands are cold,” Dan observed as he released her, feeling the urge to say it out loud.

“I’ve been dead for seven years,” Sophie said tonelessly. “That’s as warm as they get.”

PJ and Phil from across the room both chuckled. Dan, deciding this was an inside joke too advanced for his simple mind, smiled politely.

“Well,” Phil announced, appearing back at the table, “I’ve…basically got yoghurt.” He held up several cups of blueberry yoghurt, smiling sheepishly.

“I guess I’ll take it,” Dan said. 

Phil beamed.

The four of them ate yoghurt.

They made idle small talk as they munched. Sophie, it turned out, was wonderfully strange in the same way that Phil, PJ, and Louise all were. She also collected vintage issues of National Geographic, and spoke happily to Dan about them when he showed interest. He found he liked her immensely. 

“I really do like nature in theory,” Phil mused. “It’s just that to be out in it, I’d have to leave my house.”

“Too true,” Dan sighed. “Although you have a factory, technically, not a house.”

“It can be a house! It’s a building, it counts! It’s houselike!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, I suppose.”

There was a moment of awkwardness. It became suddenly very clear that PJ and Sophie were having an intense silent conversation across the table. One that Dan and Phil were not included in. There was a lot of exaggerated eyebrow movement going on. 

“Your plants are all dying,” Dan said, directed at Phil, mostly to stave off the awkwardness. His eyes swept over the room, taking in pots and pots of various cacti and pothos. Most were shades of yellow and brown.

Phil hummed. “I try my best to take care of them,” he said sadly. “It’s just that nothing I do ever works.”

“You could try moving that one out of the sun,” Dan suggested, raising a finger to a particularly struggling calathea. “You’ve got it right in front of your giant fuckoff windows. It’s burning up.”

Phil looked curious. “Really? How’d you know that?”

Dan shrugged. He should have said something like I’ve had extensive plant education. But he really hadn’t. He’d never taken care of a house plant at all. He just…knew. 

“Peter Joseph,” Sophie said abruptly. All heads swiveled to her. 

PJ looked at her with betrayal. “Hey,” he said, and then leaning towards Dan, “That’s not my name, by the way.” 

Sophie crossed her arms. “Paul Jonathan.”

“Definitely not my name,” PJ insisted. “Paul? Really?”

“What is going on?” Phil asked anxiously, clearly tired of being kept out of the loop.

Sophie pursed her lips, looking pointedly at PJ. “He came to a revelation of sorts, while we were out,” she explained. “I think he should share with the class.”

PJ looked positively squirmy.

“A revelation?” Phil asked.

“About…my thing,” PJ mumbled, darting a glance over to Phil. 

Phil blinked, and realization spread over his face. Dan felt, yet again, that he ought not to be here. “Oh,” Phil said, voice steady. “Your thing. How so…?”

“I can just go,” Dan said, making the executive decision that he didn’t want to be talked around. He pushed his chair back, standing up from the table. “It’s fine. I’ve been here long enough already.”

To his surprise, PJ reached out to wrap a hand around his wrist and tug him back into his seat.

“No, Dan,” he said quietly. “You’re in this now, with us. I trust you. I can…hm. Let me explain.”

Dan stared at him. It was one thing for Phil to trust him, who seemingly saw the best in everyone. It meant something a bit different, to hear it from PJ.

PJ sucked in a breath, and blew it back out. He glanced over at Sophie, who gave him a tiny nod of encouragement. 

“Um,” he said eloquently, squeezing his hands together, “well, basically, I’m a bit magic. Like Louise. Or Sophie. Or you.”

“Right,” said Dan, although he wasn’t sure how he felt about being included amongst the magical.

“Except the thing that’s magic about me,” PJ continued, “is my dreams. I can…take things out of them. Make them real.”

Dan blinked several times in a row. PJ flushed.

“Sorry. I’m not used to explaining this. I don’t have dreams like normal people. I can kind of control them. And when I wake up, I can bring things from the dream with me.”

“What kinds of things?” Dan asked, trying desperately to keep up.

“Small objects, mostly,” PJ answered, running a distracted hand through his curls. “I, um. Dreamt that pot over there. Not the plant, the plant’s all Phil’s, you can tell ‘cause it’s dying.”

Dan followed his gaze over to the calathea he’d just chastised Phil for leaving in the sun. He stared. The pot it was nestled in was made of dozens of small tiles. They were iridescent, brilliantly colorful. From here, Dan couldn’t tell if it was made of ceramic or glass or plastic. It looked, he thought, like something from a dream. 

“It’s pretty,” Dan said softly, because he thought he ought to say something. PJ gave him a small smile in thanks.

It was quiet for a minute. Sophie reached over to poke PJ in the shoulder. He turned to give her an unimpressed look. 

“So,” PJ said. “I…realized something. Earlier today.”

“Your revelation,” Phil said with an encouraging voice.

“Right. So, Dan, you know how I said I usually dream small objects. The thing is that I occasionally,” Phil coughed, “dream…bigger things as well.”

Dan frowned. “Bigger, like…”

PJ seemed suddenly very engaged in scraping his spoon along the bottom of his empty yoghurt cup. “Like that forest we were in yesterday,” he mumbled under his breath. 

There was a shocked silence from Dan and Phil, and a small smile from Sophie.

“Wot,” said Dan, while Phil at the same time said, “You mean the whole thing?”

PJ nodded miserably.

“A forest,” Phil said, aghast. “A whole forest, Peej? That can’t be possible. How would it even work? It’s not like you woke up with a thousand trees growing in Monmouth.”

“I know it sounds crazy,” PJ said. “And I’m not exactly sure how it worked. But somehow I just…know it. And I realized, afterward, how…familiar it had seemed. Like I’d been there before. Only I had, sort of, because I’d been dreaming about that place for weeks without really realizing.”

“PJ,” Phil winced. “But-“

“And I was the only one who could hear those voices when we were there yesterday. I think it’s because the forest- knows me. Because it came out of my dreams.”

Phil looked helplessly to Sophie. Her lips were pinched into a thin line.

“I don’t think he created it,” she said thoughtfully, her voice barely a wisp of a sound.

“You don’t?” Dan asked, confused.

“I think it was always there.” Sophie looked small, and deathly serious. “The magic of it, I think it was always there, lost somewhere in the ley line. But I think PJ helped it exist. His dreaming, it…reached through the folds. Pulled it through. Made it real.”

Dan thought, this sounds like something Louise would say. Suddenly he missed her terribly. 

“Peej?” Phil asked softly.

“I don’t know.” PJ scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “I think she’s right. It was magic. A big ball of concentrated magic, whatever you want to call it. And my dreams help make imagined things real, you know. So I took the magic and made it a forest.”

Dan looked to Phil, who seemed to be deeply lost in thought. He couldn’t decide if this explanation made sense or was complete nonsense. But a year ago he wouldn’t have thought psychics were real. 

“I know its name,” PJ murmured. 

The three of them turned to him, surprised.

“I didn’t realize till today. But it spoke to me, um. In my dreams. It kept saying a word and I didn’t remember it before but I think it was its name.”

“What was it?” Phil asked, breathless.

PJ looked up. “Cabeswater,” he said.

Cabeswater, thought Dan, turning the word over and over in his mind, like he was tasting it. Somehow, it felt like the right name for the forest they’d stepped foot in yesterday. It was…magical. And dangerous. 

“I like it,” Phil announced.

This made PJ smile.

“Proud of you,” Sophie said, with a contented look on her face. PJ flushed. “No, really. He was too scared to say anything.”

“I was simply…apprehensive,” PJ corrected, raising a finger. “I’ve never been scared. In my life.”

For some reason, this made all of them burst into giggles. 

Dan’s head was spinning. He decided, right there, that he believed it. He believed it all, no matter how baffling. 

The conversation lightened, after PJ’s forced confession. Eventually a dusty boardgame that looked decades-old was procured. Sophie beat them all handily.

“Are you sure you have to leave,” Phil pouted, an untold amount of time later. Dan had gotten up to toss his yoghurt cup in the trash and jam his feet back into his trainers.

“Unless you want me to become an overnight tenant,” Dan quipped. 

Phil rolled his eyes. Then he brightened. “Wait, one sec,” he said, and skipped across the room.

Dan waited, retying one of his shoelaces and watching PJ and Sophie shove the boardgame pieces back into the box. Phil reappeared a second later, holding the wilting calathea like it was his own heart.

“You should take this with you,” Phil said shyly. “You’ll do a better job with it than I have.”

Dan thought, I rode my bike here, how would I possibly get that thing home, and then realized all of a sudden that he desperately wanted it. It was possible the pot would fit in the basket. He could find a way. He held out his arms, and Phil set the plant in them, wordlessly. PJ’s dreamed pot was dazzling up close, and strangely light.

“Thanks,” Dan choked out. For some reason it felt like an incredibly precious gift.

Phil beamed.

Dan left Monmouth, stepping into the cool air of early evening. He biked home. Through some miracle, he managed to transport the calathea unscathed.

***

He saw Phil again in class on Monday, when the black-haired boy slid into the desk beside Dan like there was no other possible option. “Danny!” Phil exclaimed, unceremoniously dumping his backpack onto the floor. “Fancy seeing you here!”

Dan smirked. “You’ve used up your one for the day, now,” he said wryly. 

“Aw. But I like calling you Danny. You suit Danny, I think.”

“Do I?” 

“I think so. It’s cute, like you. Oh! Your notes are so neat!” 

Phil leaned over, shoulder brushing against Dan’s. Dan blinked down at his open notebook.

“No wonder you did so well on our history exams last term,” Phil mused. “Mine are complete chaos.”

Dan felt himself blushing, for some reason. He was always blushing around Phil. “I’m honestly really shit at school,” he said, feeling the need to confess. “No, seriously, I am. I’m the worst.”

“Dan,” Phil said with a surprised laugh. “You have, like, perfect grades. On top of working two jobs. It’s honestly a miracle.”

“It’s a fluke.” Dan scribbled absently in the margins. “The only way I can force myself to do it is because if I don’t, I’ll get kicked out. And waste a fortune.”

“Pressured into studying via financial guilt,” Phil said sagely. “There are worse ways to get an education.”

Dan snorted. Well, it was true. Most of it was his own money, accrued from working the hardware store and the local grocery, but it still felt like he was obligated to try his hardest at Aglionby. No matter how much he hated it. If he didn’t try, and it turned out to be another disappointment, then…

“I’m only here because of my mum,” Dan blurted out. The minute he said the words, he winced. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

Phil watched him, nakedly interested. “Really?” he asked. “Me too, to be honest. I would have been perfectly happy going to the public school, but my mum would only agree to let me go if I went here. She has some friends in the administration. It’s like her way of keeping an eye on me.”

There was something loose and awkward about the words. Dan looked at him intently. Why are you here, he thought, wonderingly. Why are you sixteen and so far from your parents? Why are you all on your own? Why did you give your whole life up to chase a ley line and the legend of a dead king?

He said none of this, of course.

“It was really the nicest thing my mum ever did for me,” Dan said, again, without even really meaning to. He pulled idly at a thread in his jacket sleeve. “I didn’t…do very well. At Mountainview.”

“Oh,” Phil said, a bit sadly. “No financial guilt forcing you into making good grades?”

Dan winced. “Well, that. And all the people beating the shit out of me and calling me slurs. That was also. Not great.”

Dan watched Phil’s face fall in real time. Dan got ready to get defensive, to snap something about pity, but Phil didn’t really look like he was pitying. Just…sad. 

“Oh, Dan,” Phil said, quietly. “That’s awful. Why would anyone ever do that to you?”

It was probably meant to be rhetorical, but it made something twist in Dan’s gut. He felt suddenly exposed. He ducked his head, staring down at his notes without reading them, hiding from Phil. Probably because they were all right, he thought, incredibly bitter. Dan Howell was gay. What a fucking revelation.

He could just say it, right now. It wouldn’t be so hard. Phil would obviously understand. He probably knew already. 

But something in Dan cringed away at the thought. He didn’t want to confess, here, in an Aglionby classroom, memories of his bullies fresh in his mind. He just couldn’t. 

“Sorry,” Phil whispered, after the silence had gone on for a while. “Sorry. I just meant...well, I don’t know. I’m just sorry that happened to you.”

He sounded nervous. Dan glanced back over, taking in his anxious face. He found that he really didn’t like to see Phil nervous, uncomfortable, unsure. He never wanted it to happen again.  

“It’s okay,” Dan said quietly. He bumped his shoulder against Phil’s. “I’m just a bit pathetic.”

“I don’t think so,” Phil said. “I think you’re the least pathetic person I’ve ever met.”

Dan made a face at him. But Phil looked perfectly sincere.

“Thanks,” Dan said, with a helpless little laugh. He opened his mouth to say, you know I didn’t have any friends here at all before I met you, and then realized it had barely been four days. How had Phil Lester snuck into his life so quickly?

Phil, unexpectedly, reached a finger towards Dan and touched his cheek lightly. Dan blinked.

“Sorry,” Phil said sheepishly. “It’s just…your dimple. I couldn’t resist.”

There was something warm and thrumming in Dan’s chest. It really was unfair.

***

The days faded into weeks. Dan learned, for the first time in his whole life, what it meant to have friends.

They did research. They played card games. They went back to Cabeswater, but only sparingly, because it scared the shit out of PJ and they were all reevaluating how dangerous a forest made of raw magic might really be. They reminded each other gently, and then not-so-gently, to do homework. They sat around Louise’s kitchen table drinking apple juice and flipping through her mother’s occult books. 

The forest continued to speak to them when they went. The third time, whispers led them to a clearing where a centuries-old Welsh coin was nestled in between a tree’s roots. Dan had never seen anyone’s face light up as much as Phil’s had then.

***

Dan had set the gifted calathea carefully at the foot of his bed. There wasn’t room for much of anything in Dan’s room- which was really less of a room and more, just-a-bed- but he had made sure there was a place for it. Somehow he knew instinctively what it needed. Just how much sunlight, just how much water. The really funny thing was that before Dan had done much of anything at all, it started to flourish. It was a healthy shade of green, perking up, already seeming to grow more sets of leaves. 

Dan had a feeling that he could do absolutely nothing to it, and the plant would still thrive. 

He really needed to speak to Louise’s mother. 

He was thinking about this one Saturday afternoon when he glanced over and found that one of the leaves was brown. It was entirely shriveled, back to the state it had been in weeks ago, but only that leaf. The rest of it looked healthy as normal.

There was suddenly dread dropping like a stone in Dan’s gut. A tiny but incredibly specific pinprick of a feeling, one that urged, Find Phil. Now. And suddenly Dan’s mind was doing equations, stretching out a line between him and Monmouth, thinking, how far away is it, how long would it take me to get there, what’s the fastest route I could take. Then the line in his mind drew taut and pulled, and Dan was already out the door. He called something to his mum and was on his bike before he even quite knew what he was doing.

It felt like it took years to get to Monmouth. Dan’s calves ached from pedaling. He dialed Phil's phone with one hand, over and over, but heard nothing but the cheery voicemail. When he did finally make it to the factory, there was no car in the lot. Something in him pinched with dread.

Dan’s heartbeats were frantic and urgent. He threw his bike to the ground, hurrying to the door and wrenching it open. “PHIL!” Dan called, running upstairs, looking all around. There was no one. He caught sight of Phil’s phone, abandoned on the desk, and cursed to himself. And then-

There was movement out of the corner of his eye. Dan sucked in a breath, pressing his face against one of the enormous windows. And there he was, tiny from the second floor- there was Phil, in the scraggly unkempt backyard of Monmouth, just…walking. For some reason this did nothing to ease Dan’s dread.

He turned on his heel, rushing back down the stairs and out the door. He ran around the building, tall grass slapping at his legs, and finally, finally, saw him. 

“PHIL!” Dan shouted, stopping short. Phil’s back was to him. He was stepping through the grass in a perfect straight line, like a robot, foot after foot. It looked a bit, Dan thought, like a puppet. Like Phil was a marionette, walking along as his strings were pulled.

Dan’s hands were shaking. “Phil?” There was no response. Phil didn’t call back, didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge him at all. 

Then Phil screamed.

Dan sprinted towards him. Phil was clawing at his face, hands ripping through his hair. A horrible convulsion ripped through his body, like an electric current, and then- he went limp. Fell. Like his strings were cut.

Dan caught him, just in time. Phil’s body was a dead weight in his arms. He stumbled down to his knees, managing to pillow Phil’s head in his lap. “Phil,” Dan gasped out, running hands over his face, “Phil.” His eyes were closed. Dan shook him, violently, like it would do anything at all. He was terrified to check for a pulse. He didn’t understand, he didn’t- nothing about what he’d just seen made any sense. Dan realized there were panicked tears running down his face, then, and there was a lump in his throat, and he couldn’t breathe-

And then Phil’s eyes opened.

His eyelids raised slowly, lazily, like he was waking from an afternoon nap in the summertime. His lips parted slightly. He blinked, eyes focusing on Dan, and he smiled.

“Oh,” Phil said, voice scratchy and wrecked from screaming. “It’s you.”

Dan’s heart stopped dead in his chest.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” Phil whispered. “I’m sorry you were here.”

Dan tried to breathe in and choked on his own saliva. “Phil,” he said, unable to articulate anything else.

“I’m okay,” Phil murmured. “It’s okay, Dan, I promise.”

It wasn’t.

Dan’s jaw trembled. Phil lifted his right index finger and placed it lightly on Dan’s cheek, resting it there, not really wiping away the tear there but pressing it into his skin.

Dan sniffled. “Let’s, um,” he said, swallowing, “let’s…get you inside, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Phil said faintly. 

Dan helped him to his feet. They went inside.

***

Dan had expected Phil to need some kind of help or support getting back into Monmouth, but he seemed entirely back to normal. It was…eerie. When they made it upstairs Phil collapsed back onto his bed. He looked very, very tired.

Dan sat delicately on the edge of the mattress. He said nothing, watching Phil stare up at the ceiling and suck in deep breaths like he was dying. His face was unlike Dan had ever seen it. His eyebrows were pinched slightly, and there was a miserable dip to his forehead, and he just looked…bitter. Exhausted. His eyes looked empty, and Dan had never hated anything more.

“So,” Phil said abruptly, breaking the silence. “I’m going to tell you what just happened. But it’s a long story, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. So. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry,” Dan mumbled on reflex, picking at the seam of his pants. He didn’t want to look at Phil right now.

Phil didn’t even seem to hear him. He threw an arm over his face. “So,” he said again, voice muffled. “I’m allergic to wasps. Badly.”

Dan blinked, surprised. This was not at all what he’d been expecting to hear. “That’s why you have EpiPens,” he mused aloud.

Phil grunted. “Yeah. They’re pretty much useless, though. I’m, like…really allergic.”

Dan swallowed. Really allergic. So allergic that EpiPens were useless. He thought of every time in the past weeks they’d been trudging through a forest, or walking through an open field, or sitting in Louise’s backyard. 

“Phil,” Dan said, voice barely a whisper. You could have died at any time. We could have lost you, in an instant, at any time.

“Don’t,” Phil said miserably. “Just don’t. I’ve made peace with it, you know. I don’t want to live a life in bubble wrap.”

Dan thought that didn’t sound so bad. But he held his tongue and glanced down at his lap.

“So when I was nine,” Phil said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “My parents had a dinner party? And I got bored, so I wandered off. Went to play in the woods behind our house.”

Dan’s heart clenched.

“Stepped on a nest,” Phil whispered. “I didn’t know how allergic I was, back then. But then they were all over me. I would have been dead, from just one sting, but then they didn’t stop. There must have been hundreds.”

Dan felt like he was there, seeing it, being stung by a hundred angry wasps right along with Phil. He tried to picture his friend, at nine years old, attacked by an angry horde. And then he tried to stop.

“What then?” Dan asked, voice hoarse.

Phil closed his eyes, head rolling to the side. “Then,” he said bluntly, “I died.”

Dan tried to keep his breathing even.

“I mean, I- I knew I died. I felt my heart stop. I was just lying there, dead, and that’s when I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“A voice.” Phil winced. “I know it sounds crazy. No one’s ever believed me. But I heard a voice, while I was dying. It was a woman. She said-”

Phil pushed himself up, sitting back against the headboard. He opened his eyes and looked at Dan.

“She said, You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.”

Dan inhaled sharply.

“I woke up later in the hospital,” Phil continued softly. He was looking at Dan, but it felt a little like he was looking past him. “Everyone just took it as a miracle and carried on. But not me. I couldn’t.”

Dan swallowed. He couldn’t meet the other boy’s eyes. Phil has black hair, Dan thought, over and over again, Phil Lester has black hair, black hair, black hair.

“So you get why I’ve been chasing ley lines,” Phil said, a little desperately. “Why I’ve been hunting for Glendower. I have to- I have to find him, Dan, I can’t explain it. I just have to. I have to know why. There has to be a reason.”

“I think I get it,” Dan said quietly. He wasn’t sure if it was the truth. Phil Lester is tall like me. I know what his laugh sounds like. 

Phil pulled at his fringe. “I tried so many times to explain it to my parents, to my brother. They don’t get it. They just don’t. And I- I don’t blame them, it’s mental, obviously. But I have to do it. I can’t not.”

“Outside,” Dan said, suddenly pulled back into the present. “That was-”

Phil flinched. “I haven’t done that in ages,” he said. “It used to be all the time. When I was a lot younger. It’s like my body takes over, doesn’t let me control it, and- relives it. Just takes me through the motions.”

“Of dying,” Dan said. The words sounded a bit strangled.

“I think it’s gotten worse, recently. Because of the ley line. Because of PJ waking Cabeswater.” He laughed miserably to himself. “PJ’s never found me like that, thank god. Sophie has. She’s always been- remarkably calm about it. I never wanted you to see.”

The word you struck Dan squarely in the chest. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Sorry I wasn’t calm,” he mumbled. “I was…”

Dan pictured Phil collapsed, motionless, a dead thing in Dan’s arms. He pictured Phil in a churchyard at midnight.

His throat felt extraordinarily tight. His eyes were glossy again with unshed tears.

“I was scared,” Dan whispered, and the tears fell.

There was a rustling of sheets. And then there were arms around him. Phil’s head pressed against Dan’s back, hugging him from behind.

“I’m sorry,” came Phil’s voice, muffled by Dan’s shirt, “I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to.”

“You know something,” Dan said, sniffling. “I knew to come here. It was out of the blue, I just had- a feeling. Like you…”

Like you needed me.

Phil’s arms released Dan, and he moved to sit beside him. He leaned his head on Dan’s shoulder. “Always trust a feeling,” Phil hummed. “Especially if it’s one leading you to me.”

Dan could do nothing but sniff and wipe frantically at his tears. 

Eventually, Phil fell backward onto the bed. Wordlessly, he took Dan’s arm and tugged him down beside him. 

“I’m tired,” Phil murmured, eyes already closed. “Let’s sleep.”

Dan said nothing. He laid there motionless, head on Phil’s pillow, legs tangled in Phil’s bedsheets. 

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He tried not to notice when Phil wrapped an arm around him.

It’s you, Phil had said, looking up at him from where he was cradled in Dan’s arms. Dan had heard those words before, uttered by the same voice. He had heard It’s you, from the lips of a ghost boy on St. Mark’s Eve.

Dan slept fitfully.

***

It was early evening by the time he woke up. Monmouth was still silent; Dan wondered idly what PJ and Sophie would have thought if they came home to Dan snuggled up to Phil in his bed.

Phil was still asleep, breathing evenly next to him. At some point they’d tossed and turned to where Dan’s face was pressed against Phil’s shoulderblades. He opened his eyes to the bright yellow plaid of Phil’s shirt. 

There was a brief moment of contentment. Dan was asleep with Phil, in his bed. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so close to someone, in this intimate kind of way. He nearly smiled to himself, closing his eyes and content to drift back off to sleep.

Then he remembered.

It was like someone had forced a hand into Dan’s chest and wrapped around his heart, squeezing tightly. His breaths came shallow and ragged. Suddenly he couldn’t be here, with Phil, in this bed. Suddenly he couldn’t look at Phil. Suddenly Phil’s sleeping form, his plaid shirt and his mussed black hair, made Dan’s stomach writhe and toss. 

He extricated himself from the blankets carefully, and stepped out of the bed. He watched Phil, but the other boy remained unmoving, save for the rise and fall of his shoulders. As quietly as he could, wracked with guilt, Dan shoved his shoes back on and tiptoed down the steps of Monmouth. 

Sunlight accosted him when he opened the door and stepped outside. You’re horrible, Dan seethed to himself, picking up his tossed bike and throwing a leg over it. What are you, a one night stand? Leaving without saying anything? 

But he had to go. He had to get out, to clear his head, to think. Or, more probably, to wallow.

Dan biked home. His phone buzzed all night but he didn’t answer it once. 

***

“You know,” Louise said, cutting a triangle into her piece of blue paper with scissors. “I’m really glad you’ve gotten to be part of all this.”

It was several days later. Dan and Louise were sitting around the Fox Way dining room table, cutting out paper snowflakes for one of Louise’s younger cousin’s classes. Or something. Dan hadn’t really asked. The Pentland home was a forever-carousel of arts and crafts.

“Oh,” Dan said, surprised and a bit flustered. “Um, thanks. I’ve…liked being included.”

“It’s been really fun,” Louise continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Which is why I just can’t understand why you’ve been avoiding Phil.”

Dan froze, scissors halfway to the paper. 

“Haven’t been,” Dan muttered, incredibly unconvincingly. 

Louise gave him a look across the table. Somewhere else in the house, an aunt or a cousin was loudly singing the words to a Beyoncé song. “Come off it,” Louise said. “He said you haven’t texted him in days. And you haven’t been in Monmouth, either, even when we’ve all been hanging out.”

“I’ve had work,” Dan said defensively, which was true except for the fact that he’d specifically requested those shifts. 

Louise flattened her palms onto the table. “Spill,” she demanded. 

Dan stared at her. I cannot tell Louise I saw Phil’s ghost on St. Mark’s Eve, he thought. There is no possible way I can tell her that. 

He needed to deflect. Quickly.

“Are Phil and PJ dating?” Dan blurted out, turning his attention back to the snowflake in his hands.

Louise looked taken aback. “What? No, of course not. I think PJ and Sophie are headed that way, actually. Why would you…”

Dan shrugged awkwardly, not meeting her eyes. Louise raised an eyebrow.

“Dan. You’ve known them for weeks and weeks, now. Surely you must have known Phil and PJ weren’t together.”

“Well, I didn’t want to…assume, or anything,” Dan mumbled. “I try not to assume things.”

The thing was that Dan hadn’t known Louise very long in the grand scheme of things, really. But he knew her. When Dan looked up at her face, he could see the gears turning in her mind, plainly as if he could hear her thoughts aloud. Oh, I see. Dan’s got a crush on Phil. Dan’s panicking. Dan doesn’t know what to do with himself so he’s avoiding him. It all makes sense now. 

It did make sense, even if it wasn’t the truth. Death didn’t come into play at all with that explanation.

He watched Louise’s expression relax. “Well, okay, then,” she said, and said no more about it. 

Dan’s stomach twisted. He felt sick with himself.

“Hello, young man,” came a voice from behind him. Dan nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Mum!” Louise exclaimed. “Don’t sneak up on him, he’s fragile.”

Dan turned around in his chair to see Louise’s mother standing behind him. There was something both comforting and strange about Barbara Pentland, with her hand-knit sweaters and enormous shock of curly blonde hair. She was automatically the authority in any room she was in. It felt like you could do anything with her in your corner.

“I’ve been told I should speak with you,” she said with a half-smile.

“Oh,” Dan said, glancing towards Louise. “I- I guess.” To find out what the hell is wrong with me, he thought wryly.

Barbara pulled a chair up beside him. “Give me your hand,” she said, holding out her own.

Dan blinked, setting the scissors down, suddenly nervous. “You going to read my palm?” he asked, half-joking. He had never been entirely sure what being a psychic entailed.

She snorted. “I can if you want me to. But no. I have a knack for psychometry- reading things from touch. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell something.”

Dan nodded carefully. He set his hand in hers. Barbara rubbed her thumbs over his knuckles and closed her eyes, concentrating.

Eventually she held her other hand out to Louise. Louise took it wordlessly. Barbara’s eyebrows shot to her hairline.

“Well,” she said, opening her eyes and releasing Dan’s hand. “That’s fascinating.”

Dan swallowed, fidgeting with the folded paper, stomach tight with nervousness.

“What did you see?” Louise asked eagerly.

Barbara looked thoughtful. She leaned an elbow on the table. “Well, I saw Henrietta,” she said, giving Dan a small smile. “Mostly I saw a forest.”

Dan’s lips parted slightly. He thought of the vision he’d had when Louise had touched him. He thought of Cabeswater knowing his name. He thought of the calathea, healing through nothing but his presence. 

“There’s something with me and forests,” Dan mumbled, suddenly shy. He looked at the floor. “I can, um, make plants grow well without doing anything to them. And…PJ’s forest knew me.”

“Do you know what it means?” Louise asked.

Barbara watched Dan, rubbing idly at her chin. “I have an inkling,” she admitted. “And I think it has something to do with the ley line being awfully fond of you, Dan. When’s your birthday?”

Dan opened his mouth, surprised. “June twenty-first,” he said, baffled. Fond of him?

Barbara nodded like she already knew. “And born right at midnight, I’d expect.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, eyebrows drawing together. “How did you-”

“Oh,” Louise cut in. Understanding bloomed across her face. “Dan. That’s the summer solstice.”

Dan looked helplessly between them. “What does that…?”

Barbara rested an arm over the back of her chair. “Here’s what I think, Dan. Time is important, when it comes to magic. Dates as well. I think you were born here, on the ley line, on the exact moment of the summer solstice. And that made you…not psychic, like us. But more connected to the ley line, than your average person. More in tune with magic in general.”

Dan absorbed this information with wide eyes.

“The other day,” he said, almost a whisper. “Something was- happening, with Phil, and somehow I could feel it. I was home but somehow I just knew that wherever he was, something bad was happening. And I was right.”

Louise looked at him, a question in her eyes. But Barbara just nodded. 

“It was probably the ley line reaching out,” she suggested. “It can do that more, with you. Like I said. You’re more connected to it.”

“Why plants, then?” Dan asked. “Why forests? Cabeswater wasn’t a forest, not until PJ made it one a few weeks ago.”

Barbara shrugged. “Time is also a bit cyclical, with magic. In a way it always was a forest. Or something like a forest.”

Dan shook his head, trying to parse through her words. It didn’t really make sense, but he supposed he would have to accept it.

“You should be honored, Mister Howell,” Barbara said, amused. “The ley line likes you an awful lot.”

Dan blushed. “I guess that’s nice,” he said.

“This is brilliant,” Louise cried, throwing her hands in the air. “I always knew you were special, Dan. Oh, Mum, you should do a reading for him. See if we learn anything else.”

“Sure,” Barbara chuckled. “Hand me the cards.”

Dan’s head was spinning. He watched as Louise reached to a shelf behind her and tossed her mother a pack of- tarot cards. Louise had told him all about tarot. It was the main thing the psychics did at Fox Way, for clients. Read their futures in a deck of cards. 

“You alright with this?” Barbara asked him. Dan blinked, clearing his head, and nodded.

Barbara shuffled the cards artfully. The backs of them were gorgeous, painted like the night sky, with little stars and planets. She proffered the deck to Dan. “Draw the first one,” she instructed.

Obediently, Dan reached for the card on the top of the deck. He laid it out on the table.

It was The Lovers.

“Hm,” Barbara said thoughtfully. “Draw a second one.”

Dan did. He set it beside the first one.

Death.

Dan flinched when he saw it, drawing his fingers away. The card’s depiction of a skeleton with a scythe seemed to be staring into his soul.

Louise glanced nervously at her mother. Barbara frowned. There were several moments of silence, where she seemed deep in thought.

“I don’t usually do this,” Barbara mumbled. “Dan. Can I read your palm?”

Dan tried to make a joke about how he’d asked earlier, but couldn’t find it in himself to. He offered his hand to her, palm-up.

Barbara’s eyes didn’t leave his own as her fingers traced away at the lines in his hand. She only needed a few seconds before she was grunting and releasing him.

“What?” Dan asked, suddenly terribly anxious. “What is it?”

“Do you have any curses, that you know of?” Barbara asked quizzically.

Dan’s brow furrowed. “What? Um. I don’t think so?”

Barbara shook her head slightly. “It’s just that I’m getting a very specific reading,” she explained. “From both of these. Usually it’s more vague, more of a feeling, but…I can read what these mean, clear as day.”

“What does it mean?” Dan asked. He found himself dreading the answer.

Barbara sighed. “It says,” she said grimly. “That if you kiss your true love, they’ll die.”

For the second time that week, Dan felt his heart stop.

“What?” Louise was saying, voice utterly baffled. “Mum, that’s ridiculous, that’s complete nonsense, you can’t actually-”

“Thanks,” Dan choked out, interrupting her. “Um, thanks for your time, I’m- I’m just going to-”

He pushed his chair back, standing from the table, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get out of the room. Barbara or Louise or both of them were calling after him but Dan felt like his ears were ringing. He rushed to the front door of the house, opening it and shutting it behind him, collapsing to a heap on the front porch.

Dan sat on the top porch step, leaning his forehead on his knees. He heaved in huge breaths. 

If you kiss your true love, they’ll die. 

It was too much. Dan heard Phil’s voice, It’s you, you know it, over and over again.

He heard the sound of the door opening and closing behind him. Dan didn’t look up as Louise sat down beside him, shoulder pressed up against his.

Neither of them said anything, for a few minutes. Then Louise sighed.

“Dan,” Louise said. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s nothing.”

Dan blinked away unshed tears. He held his hands over his face. “A lot of things are starting to make sense, Louise,” he sniffled, bitterly. “And I hate it. I hate it.”

Louise rested a hand on his shoulder. “What d’you mean?” 

Dan glanced up at her. “Louise. I’m not psychic.”

“No…”

“So who other than psychics see ghosts on St. Mark’s Eve?”

Louise’s face fell. 

“I’m either going to kill the ghost I saw, or they’re my true love.” Dan scoffed. “And now if I kiss my true love, I’ll kill them. It just fits together fucking perfectly, doesn’t it.”

“Maybe we’re wrong,” Louise said desperately, reaching over to wipe a stray tear from Dan’s cheek. “Maybe it’s all- superstitious nonsense.”

“Your mum seemed pretty sure,” Dan mumbled. He stared down at the porch.

Louise used a finger to guide his chin over until he was looking her in the eyes. “Then we’ll stop it from happening,” she insisted. “Whatever it is, we- we know now. We’ll stop it. You just won’t kiss anyone, and it will be fine.”

Louise was nodding her head up and down, over and over again, emphatic. Dan found himself nodding along with her. The words stilled his heart, a little. She sounded so sure.

“Okay,” Dan said, voice breaking. He swallowed, closing his eyes. “Okay. We’ll just stop it.”

It’s Phil, he thought, but didn’t say. It’s Phil, Louise, our friend. He’s going to die this year. Phil is going to die and it’ll be my fault.

He had never felt so miserable in his whole life.

***

It had been over a week since Dan had seen any of his friends but Louise. He knew it was stupid, and selfish. But he couldn’t bear the idea of facing them, not with what he knew. It clawed at his gut. He’d even skipped the class he had with Phil, hiding out amongst the dumpsters in the back of school instead. How was he supposed to look Phil in the eye? Phil would take one look at Dan’s face and see it all written there, immediately. He would know. It was horrible. 

Louise had graciously acted as his go-between. Though she didn’t know everything, she knew how deeply Dan was affected. “I’ll tell them you’re going through something right now,” she had whispered one night, the two of them sitting at the base of the beech tree in her backyard. “I’ll tell them not to worry, but it’s private, and they shouldn’t pry.”

Dan had nodded miserably. He loved Louise, loved her immensely. She was too good for him.

But hiding all week had gotten him nowhere. The puddle of guilt had done nothing except for get bigger. Dan was tired of laying on his mattress, staring at the ceiling, soaking in dread. 

They were exploring Cabeswater today. And Dan was going with.

He and Louise lingered in the front lawn of her house, waiting to be picked up. “You’re sure you’re alright?” she asked anxiously, and Dan just rolled his eyes. 

The orange car pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, complete with the Monmouth trio. PJ waved to them from the driver’s seat. Phil seemed intent on studying his lap. Sophie stared ahead, unbothered. 

The two of them piled into the backseat, Dan squished between Sophie and Louise. “Hi guys,” Louise said, and Dan could hear the exaggerated cheeriness in her voice. “Beautiful day for a forest adventure.”

“Stunning,” PJ agreed, reversing out of the driveway and pulling back into the street. “Basically mythical.”

There was a moment of quiet. Not quite awkward, but unsure. 

Dan cleared his throat.

“Um. Hey,” he said, very ineloquently. Four sets of eyes fell on him.

“Hi, Dan,” Phil said softly, catching Dan’s eye in the rearview mirror. 

Seeing his face was too much. Dan flushed, ducking his head. 

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to explain, how to break the tension that he’d created by avoiding them all.

To Dan’s surprise, he felt Sophie take his hand. She linked her fingers in his, squeezing them together. Her hand was deathly freezing. Next to him, her skin looked porcelain white. 

“We’re taking bets on how long it will take before something spooky happens,” Sophie said matter-of-factly. “PJ says thirty seconds, but I think it’ll be at least ten minutes. Have a guess?”

Dan looked at her. He laughed helplessly. “Uh,” he said. “Put me down for fifteen.”

“Minutes?”

“Seconds,” Dan said. “Knowing that place, the spook will make itself known immediately.”

The whole car giggled.

“Fair enough,” Sophie said. She leaned over to Dan’s ear. So softly he could barely register it at all, she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Dan gave her a small, grateful smile.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. Phil was quieter than usual, but other than that, it felt like things were back to normal. They went through the routine. PJ parked in the same place on the side of the road. They piled out, slamming the car doors behind them. 

They huddled together, staring up at the looming trees. There was something intimidating about Cabeswater. Like you were surrendering yourself to it the minute you stepped inside.

Phil gave everyone a small smile. “Excelsior,” he whispered. They all took the plunge inside.

The air was heavy with magic in Cabeswater. It was less of a physical sensation and more of a feeling. Dan braced himself for something strange to happen. It always felt like you had to be prepared for something strange to happen in Cabeswater, so it was probably best to just get it over with. 

But nothing spooky happened. Dan mused that he had probably lost the bet. There were just the trees, and the brush, and-

Dan frowned. He was- hearing something, which pricked the back of his mind on its own. Cabeswater was usually near silent. He wandered in the direction of the noise, which sounded like water. There- a bit to their left, there it was. A small gurgling stream, cutting straight through the forest.

“Oh,” Louise said, following behind him. “That’s new. Isn’t it?”

It was. They had entered the forest in the exact same place every time, and this stream had never been here before.

All five of them bunched around it, studying it. The water was crystal clear, like out of a storybook. There was a cluster of smooth colorful stones lining the bottom. It was populated with shiny silver fish, darting this way and that.

Sophie knelt by the side of it, dipping a single finger in and watching it drip as she drew it out. Spooky, she mouthed to Dan, looking up. He grinned at her. 

“We can’t have missed this before,” Phil said, a bit of awe in his voice. “We can’t have, can we?”

“Definitely not,” PJ agreed. He knelt down next to Sophie, spreading his hands along the bank and brushing gently at the muddy rocks. PJ and Sophie were outdoors people like that. 

“Let’s follow it,” Louise suggested brightly. “It’s got to lead somewhere, right? Maybe it’s like, meant to be a sign for us. Or something like that.”

“Agreed!” Phil announced, clapping his hands together once. 

With a new goal to follow, the group started to walk along the stream. 

Dan tried to stick close to Louise. Having to talk one-on-one with any of the other three still made his stomach twist a little. Inevitably, though, Louise wandered away to investigate a particularly interesting (at least to her) beech tree, and Dan was left without armor.

Phil, who had been walking in front, fell back into step with him almost immediately. Dan’s heart squeezed. He kept his head ducked, his eyes trained on the ground.

For a minute, Phil said nothing at all. Dan’s stomach fluttered with anticipation. 

“So,” Phil said quietly. “I hope you’re okay.”

Dan bit his lip. Phil was clearly watching him, but Dan just couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes.

“I am,” Dan said, clearing his throat. “I really am. I’m- sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Phil said, with a little shrug. “I was…worried I’d scared you off.”

Dan swallowed hard. He thought of the last time he’d seen Phil, curled up in bed with him, after he’d just shared something deeply vulnerable. Dan felt exceedingly selfish.

“You didn’t,” Dan insisted, and finally raised his eyes to meet Phil’s. “I promise. I’m just a mess.”

This, at least, was true.

But Phil’s eyes crinkled into something incredibly fond. “That’s alright,” he said. “I can deal with a bit of mess.”

Dan stared at him. And blushed. 

It was unfair, really. It was completely unfair. Because Phil was flirting with him, wasn’t he, had been flirting with him for weeks now, transparently. And he had no idea that he was going to die this year. He had no idea that in all likelihood, Dan was going to have something to do with it. He had no idea that Dan couldn’t kiss him, not ever, no matter how much he wanted to. 

Dan looked away. He decided he hated magic, and tarot cards, and knowing the future. 

“The stream curves up here,” PJ said suddenly, popping forward in between Dan and Phil. “Should we still follow it?”

Dan looked ahead. Directly in front of them, the trees opened into a small clearing. The stream looped around it, off to the left. It seemed to be empty, except for grass and wildflowers. 

Dan shrugged. “I guess we just keep following-“

“Wait,” Louise interrupted. She and Sophie were gathered at the entrance to the clearing. “Come look at this.”

Curious, the boys went over to join them. “What is it?” PJ asked, scanning the clearing. Dan still couldn’t see anything of interest.

“Look at the bluebells,” Sophie said quietly. She seemed to do everything quietly.

Dan dropped his gaze. Right in front of them was a patch of bluebells alright. He didn’t think much of it, but then he noticed that they all seemed to grow in a line. They lined the edges of the clearing, almost curving into a circle, but-

“It’s a raven,” Phil said, breathless. They all turned to him.

He stepped forward, right into the center of the clearing. “Look,” he said. “Tell me I’m crazy.”

Dan looked. And…it was true, that when he stepped back, and looked at it in a certain way…there was a kind of pattern to the flowers. They formed the shape of a bird.

Dan wasn’t a bird expert. But Henrietta was full of ravens. This looked an awful lot like one. 

“Glendower was the raven king,” Phil said in a hushed voice. He turned back, to look at the rest of them. “It’s a sign. He has to be here, somewhere. I feel it.”

No one said anything. The moment felt heavy. Dan had to admit that he could kind of feel it too. 

Then PJ gasped.

“I can hear them,” he exclaimed. “They’re talking again. I can almost- Louise?”

Wordlessly, Louise stepped up next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. 

PJ’s face twisted in concentration. “They’re just saying one thing over and over again.” 

“What is it?” Phil asked in anticipation. 

“That- it will tell us what it needs. And then it will take us to what we need.”

PJ’s face relaxed. He stepped away from Louise’s hand. “That’s the message,” he said, with a shrug. 

The five of them stood around quizzically. “What could a magic forest possibly need from us?” Dan asked, puzzled. Then the ground began to shake.

It was just slightly, but enough for them all to jump. Louise squeaked. Phil lost his footing, stumbling down onto his side. There was a rumbling sound, deep in the earth, and then a crack.

“Look!” PJ shouted, pointing a little away from them. Dan’s mouth fell open.

There were two dogwood trees right next to each other, a few yards away from the group. The roots of both trees twisted and looped, tangling themselves into different shapes. Dan watched, aghast.

It didn’t take long. After less than a minute, the earth stilled again. The roots settled into place. Phil climbed to his feet.

Dan rushed over to the trees. He stood right in between the roots. To his left, the first dogwood tree’s gnarled roots had stretched into one looping, cursive word. 

Hands.

The other group of roots formed the word Eyes. 

Dan glanced between them. It didn’t seem real. 

PJ came up to stand next to him.

“I think,” he said, “that’s what it needs.”

“What the hell,” Louise said, looking distressed. “What? Why would Cabeswater need…hands? Or eyes? This doesn’t make sense.”

Phil crouched down, knees in the dirt. He traced his hands over the roots, one gentle fingertip at a time. “Hands,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Eyes. That’s like us asking for leaves and branches.”

“Guys,” Sophie hissed. Dan realized that she hadn’t spoken for a while. She lingered over by the entrance to the clearing. “Look.”

She was pointing a trembling finger inside the bluebell-ringed clearing. Dan frowned when he caught sight of her expression. It looked like she’d seen a ghost. 

PJ was evidently just as unsettled by this. He jogged over to her, gaze following to where her finger was pointing. He sucked in a breath, rushing into the clearing. 

“This wasn’t there before,” PJ said. “You all need to come see this.”

Dan, Phil and Louise went obediently. In the middle of the flowery raven, directly in the center of the clearing, was what looked like…a discarded jacket.

The three of them and PJ all huddled around it. It was light blue, but faded, like it had been left there for a very long time. It was ragged and torn in places, with the zipper ripped off. The entire left side of it was covered in dried blood.

“Maybe it’s mud,” Louise said nervously. PJ chewed his lip. 

“It’s got to have been here for ages,” Phil observed. “Years, maybe. Why would Cabeswater show us this? It definitely wasn’t here a minute ago.”

“I think,” PJ said, rubbing at his chin, “this is what…we need. Or what it thinks we need. Like the second part of the message said.”

“I hate this,” Louise shivered. “That’s so much blood. Like someone was mauled by a wild animal or something.”

“Not a lot of ferocious beasts in Henrietta,” Phil grunted. “Hey- where’s Sophie gone?”

The four of them stood up, looking around. Sophie was nowhere in sight. Something like dread settled in Dan’s gut.

“I think I saw her walking that way. I’ll go find her.” PJ backtracked out of the clearing, disappearing from sight. Dan watched him go, suddenly uneasy.

“Should we take it with us?” Phil asked nervously. “Or just leave it? Maybe…take it to the police?”

Dan knelt down, poking idly at the right sleeve. Louise swatted at his hand before he could touch it again.

“I don’t like this at all,” Louise repeated. “I say we just leave it. We can-”

“Found her!” PJ called, running back towards them. “She’s, um. Over there throwing up.”

Phil frowned. “Throwing up? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, says it’s just the heat.”

Dan and Phil looked at each other quizzically. It was early spring. Cabeswater could barely even be called warm.

“And,” PJ cleared his throat. “She says to take the jacket.”

Louise blinked in surprise. “Why?”

“Says she has a feeling.” He met Phil’s eyes.

Louise still looked uncomfortable, but Phil was already nodding. Phil put a lot of stock in feelings. Dan liked this about him, even if he sometimes thought it was silly.

“Well,” Phil said, carefully folding the jacket so that there was no dried blood on the outside. “We take the jacket, then. And let’s get Sophie home.”

They did so.

They put the jacket in the trunk as they rode home. No one really wanted to look at it. Sophie’s face was gaunt and pale, like glass. She didn’t say a word.

***

The funny thing was that nothing in Dan’s life changed, after knowing that Phil was going to die. He still went to school. He still did homework. He still went to work. He still spent all his free time with some combination of the other four. He still lingered in Monmouth, watching Buffy or playing boardgames or helping Phil construct his cardboard model of Henrietta. Nothing changed, except for the certainty that Phil Lester didn’t have long to live.

It was like pressing on a bruise, every time he saw Phil. The knowing never went away. But one thing had changed, at least.

Phil was now completely and totally convinced that Glendower was buried somewhere in Cabeswater. Even to Dan, this didn’t seem like such a leap. Cabeswater was part of the ley line, and the ley line was undeniably magic, and they’d been given several clues pointing to the fact that the sleeping king was hidden somewhere near. There had been the Welsh coin, and the raven made of bluebells. It was becoming real.

Dan had even started believing Phil about the legends. That Glendower was only sleeping, not quite dead. That the magic of the ley line was keeping him alive. That if they found Glendower, and woke him, he’d grant them a wish.

The thing was that Dan knew exactly what his wish would be. 

They had to find Glendower. It wasn’t a game anymore. It wasn’t even just a mission of closure, for Phil. They had to find Glendower, because Dan had to ask him to save Phil’s life.

Dan tried to think about the exact wording he would use. How did wishes from long-dead Welsh kings work, exactly? What if he accidentally made Phil immortal? What if one of the others blurted out a wish first, and his chance was lost? He pondered all these questions, during his Tuesday night shift as a cashier at Henrietta’s local grocery store. He scanned items and rang up totals all while completely lost in thought. He hated work, and hated it even more now that he had been integrated into Phil’s friend group. It took precious time out of the hunt for Glendower.

“Have a nice day,” Dan said robotically, to the latest customer who was walking away with their bags. He sighed. Work turned him into such a zombie.

Dan’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

He frowned. He wasn’t supposed to be on his phone during his shift, obviously, and it usually hadn’t been a problem- the only person who used to call Dan was Louise, and she knew not to bother him during work. Now things were a bit more complicated.

Dan glanced around. No one was waiting in line. The other cashier had gone on break. He couldn’t see any customers in sight.

Taking a risk, he dug his phone out of his pocket. He frowned. The name flashing across the screen was Sophie.

“Hello?” he said, pressing the phone to his ear and ducking down beneath the booth. “Sophie?”

“Hi, Dan,” came Sophie’s fragile-sounding voice. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m at work, but-” Dan said, and then registered the words. “I- is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Sophie replied, but didn’t sound too convinced. “You get off soon, right? Can you meet me? At that little park, by Nino’s?”

Dan blinked. “Um, sure,” he said, uncertainly. “Be there in twenty?”

“Good. See you.”

She hung up.

They were probably the longest twenty minutes of Dan’s life. Something about Sophie’s words made him feel uneasy. He’d never just hung out with her, one-on-one. Dan couldn’t imagine what she’d want to talk to him about. He hoped she didn’t need anything pressing.

Dan was extremely relieved when it was finally time to clock out. He hopped on his bike, making the trek over to the park. It didn’t take long to find Sophie; it was a small park, mostly just a little patch of green with a few trees and a swingset. He saw her sitting in the shade on one of the benches. Dan dropped his bike in the grass nearby and rushed over to sit on the splitting wood next to her.

 “Hi, Dan,” Sophie said. She was just staring ahead, not looking at him. It made him nervous.

“Hey,” Dan said, leaning an arm over the back of the bench, aiming for casual and cheerful. “You know, your call really scared me. Way to be ominous.”

He expected her to laugh at it, or to assure him not to worry. Instead, she just turned to look at him, saying nothing. Her expression was grim.

“Sophie,” Dan said, a little desperately. 

“So I have to talk to you,” Sophie said. “And I’m really, really sorry to ask this.”

Dan’s heart thrummed with anxiety. “What?”

She shifted on the bench, turning to face him and hugging her knees to her chest. She leaned her shoulder against the back of the bench. “What do you see,” Sophie said sadly, “when you look at me?”

Dan stared. “What do you mean? I just see…you.” Her red-rimmed glasses, her brown curls, her round eyes that seemed awfully sad for some reason. 

Sophie shook her head. “Not physically,” she said, like it was obvious. “I mean what you see when you look through the eyes of the ley line.”

“What?” Dan said, at a loss. “Sophie, what are you talking about?”

“You know.”

“I can guarantee you I have no idea what-”

“You have a direct connection to the ley line,” Sophie explained casually. “It means you can see things others can’t. You can see through things, sometimes. So try.”

Dan’s lips parted. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything about his conversation with Louise’s mother to anyone who wasn’t Louise. But…no. No one else should have known anything about it. 

“How could you possibly know that?” he asked, a bit uncomfortable. “Is it because you’re a bit psychic, like Louise says?”

Sophie let out a little sigh. She tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “No, Dan,” she mumbled. “I just know lots of things.”

Dan had no idea what to say. He couldn’t figure out what she wanted from him. They just looked at each other for a minute, lost, and then Sophie reached out her left hand and intertwined her fingers with his. 

“Close your eyes,” she instructed. “Think about Cabeswater. Think about the line, cutting through Henrietta, running right under our feet. And then look at me.”

Dan gave her a pleading look, and then grimaced, and then did as he was told. 

He closed his eyes. He tried to picture the ley line, traveling across the countryside, one long streak of pure magic. He tried to picture the looming trees of Cabeswater. He tried to think of how it felt, to be near plants, to know that one touch from him could somehow coax them to life. 

Dan opened his eyes.

At first it was all the same. There was Sophie, still sitting next to him. But then Dan took a deep breath, and focused on the ley line, and he felt a rush. Something…changed. Shifted slightly to the side.

It was like his vision blurred, narrowing in on Sophie. Suddenly Dan was very aware of her eyes, except he couldn’t quite focus on her irises; instead, all he could see was hollow eye sockets. Like holes, boring into him. The hand that was still gripping his was thin and skeletal. The paleness of her stopped being her skin and started being the white of bleached bone. Her spirit hung loosely from her body, the two separate pieces of her not quite in contact. 

A gasp like fear rose through Dan’s body. On instinct he pulled his hand back from Sophie’s, scooting back, rubbing desperately at his eyes. When he looked at her again, she looked like her normal self again. But he could still sense the previous image, nestled just beneath the one on the surface. 

“Sophie,” Dan said, voice crushed. “Are you…alive?”

She leaned the side of her head back against the wood of the bench. 

“No,” she said, and the word sounded very, very far away. 

Dan’s eyes closed. His head pitched forward of its own volition, coming to rest in his hands. 

It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible, that Sophie was dead, much less had been dead the whole time. Not Sophie, who petted stray cats with delight and wove crowns out of daisies to nestle in PJ’s curls and wore lumpy hand-crocheted socks that frayed at the edges. There was just no way.

“I don’t get it,” he choked out. “I don’t- how can you be-”

Sophie leaned over, slumping into his side, head resting on his shoulder. “I tried to tell you,” she murmured. “I tried to tell everyone. But no one would hear it.”

“How long,” Dan said into his hands.

Sophie swallowed. “Seven years.”

Dan sucked in a breath.

“Tell me how,” he said. “Tell me when. Tell me anything that will make this make sense.”

“Well,” Sophie said faintly. “I was murdered.”

Dan’s left hand reached out to grip the arm of the bench. He felt nauseous.

“It was three boys,” she said, much too matter-of-factly to be someone recounting their own death. “Three Aglionby boys. They were trying to wake the ley line, kind of like PJ did. Except they weren’t dreamers, like him, so they had to do it the old fashioned way.”

There was a pause.

“With a sacrifice,” Sophie finished. 

Dan’s hands slowly fell from his face. He turned to look at her.

“They tried to wake the ley line?” he asked shakily. “By murdering you?”

She nodded.

“God,” Dan said. He scrubbed a hand through his fringe. 

“I was just some girl they cornered,” she said with a shrug. “They chased me through the forest. Killed me with an axe they’d probably nicked from one of their parent’s sheds.  Except it didn’t work. They ended up fighting each other, and couldn’t finish the ritual. The police found them, in the end. Got two of them on killing the other. They never found me.”

It was confounding. Unthinkable, really, and yet Dan believed it wholeheartedly. The idea that there were boys from Henrietta- boys from Aglionby- that could hurt Sophie in any way, let alone murder her…it made his gut twist violently. But here she was in front of him, a ghost. It was hard to believe he hadn’t noticed all along. 

“What about now,” Dan asked hoarsely. “How are you- I mean you’re sitting right in front of me, Sophie, clear as day.”

She nodded, like she’d been anticipating this question. “Because I was killed on the line as part of a botched ritual,” she said. “I think my spirit got sort of…tangled up, in the energy of the line. It got tethered here. I’ve never passed on. I’ve just been…stuck here, not quite alive, not quite dead.”

Dan thought this sounded miserable. Somewhere off in the park, a screaming group of kids were playing football. Dan leaned back on the bench, letting out a deep sigh. 

“Right,” he said. “So why tell me now, then? Why tell me and not- oh, God. They don’t know. Phil and PJ don’t know?”

There was a growing horror in his words. This, above almost all the rest, was unthinkable. 

“I told you I tried to tell them,” Sophie said, in a small voice. “I think I sort of slip through people’s minds, like this. People have a really hard time remembering me, or sometimes seeing me at all. Anything odd just…gets brushed off. I think their minds weren’t ready to know.”

“But mine is?” Dan asked, incredulous. “Sophie, why me? Why now?”

She glanced at his face. And then dropped her eyes to the grass. 

“I think I’m slipping,” she said, voice barely a wisp.

It was like ice filled Dan veins.

“Slipping?” he hissed. He sat up straight on the bench. “Like…your spirit? You think you’re-”

“Passing on,” Sophie finished for him. She nodded miserably.

Dan could do nothing but remind himself to keep breathing. He scuffed his shoes into the soil, again and again.

“I’m much fainter than I used to be,” Sophie explained. She sounded so sad. “It’s harder to…appear like this. Normal, or normal enough. I think the ley line isn’t giving me enough energy anymore. Like, it’s noticed I’m not supposed to be here, and is…moving on. Turning its attention to other things. Letting me slip away, pass on, like I’m supposed to.”

Her voice sounded bitter. It was a tone Dan was unused to hearing from Sophie.

Dan swallowed. He rubbed his palms together idly. “Do you…want to?” he asked in a low voice.

Sophie took a breath.

“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t, I don’t want to just- fade away. Leave. Before, I was- you don’t understand, Dan, I was just floating for so long. In limbo. I wasn’t really aware until Phil came, until all the business with the ley line, until PJ dreamt Cabeswater. And this…” 

She squeezed her eyes shut, like it was all too much. Dan leaned their shoulders together.

“It’s been the life I never got,” she finished, voice shaky. “I don’t feel so much like a dead thing, most of the time. I don’t want to give that up. I’m not ready.”

A part of Dan was intensely grateful for this answer. He wasn’t ready to give Sophie up either. PJ, Phil and Louise certainly wouldn’t be.

“So what do we do?” he asked softly.

Sophie leaned her elbows on her knees. “I thought you might be able to help,” she admitted. “The line…it listens to you. I thought you could direct it back towards me. In other words, um. Ask it to give me energy again.”

Dan buzzed through possibilities in his mind. He ran through every magical encounter he’d had so far. “I’ve no idea how,” he said, aghast. “I mean- I can do a thing with plants, sort of, but I don’t do anything, it just happens. How would I…”

Sophie kicked at a blade of grass. “Do what you did before,” she instructed. “When you tapped into the ley line. Concentrate, and reach out, and- ask it? I think it will listen to you. If you…want to do that.”

The last sentence was tacked on, a bit guiltily. Dan scoffed, nudging her shoe with his. “Obviously,” he said. “Obviously I want to help. I- okay. Okay. Let me try.”

Sophie looked at him, a bit of cautious hope in her expression. Dan breathed in. He went through the same routine as before, closing his eyes, focusing his mind. Before long, he could sense Sophie in front of him. There she was, half-girl, half-dead thing. It still hurt to see her like this. 

Dan tried to reach out. There she is, he thought, praying the ley line could hear him, right there, it’s our Sophie, you have to save her. You have to keep her here with us. 

But somehow he could feel it not working. He tried to push towards her, but it was like there was a wall, encasing his mind. He was banging up against it, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get to her.

Dan made a frustrated sound. When he opened his eyes, Sophie was already giving him a sad, encouraging smile.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay, I knew it was- I knew it was only a possibility.”

“No,” Dan said, shaking his head over and over again, “no, no, we can- we can-“

“Dan,” Sophie placated, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m dead already anyway.”

“No, we have to fix it.” There were tears pricking at Dan’s eyes. He couldn’t take it, the idea of losing Sophie, of watching her fade away when he could have done something. 

An idea formed in his mind.

“Louise,” he said, springing to his feet. “Louise, she makes magic stronger for people, maybe she can help me get through.” He looked down at Sophie, wild hope in his eyes.

“Maybe,” Sophie said, sounding doubtful. 

“Let’s go right now.” Dan reached for both of Sophie’s hands, pulling her up from the bench. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, hot and urgent. “Let’s just go try, right now, and then we’ll know.”

Sophie laughed a little. “Okay,” she acquiesced. “Okay, if you say so.”

“Right! Let’s-” Dan paused. He frowned. “Well, I…biked here. Did you drive Phil’s car? We can…”

Sophie just smirked at him. “I’ll meet you there,” she said dryly.

Dan realized he didn’t want to know.

“Alright,” he said, shaking his head, “alright. I’ll, um, see you in a few minutes.”

Sophie nodded at him. Dan grabbed his bike and headed on his way.

***

The minute Dan dropped his bike in the Fox Way driveway and stepped up to the porch, there was a tap at his shoulder. There was Sophie, right behind him, where she definitely hadn’t been before. 

He nearly jumped out of his skin. “Wot?” Dan cried. “Oh, don’t tell me you can teleport now. Is that one of the advantages of being a ghost?”

Sophie smiled, giving him a little shrug. “I couldn’t do it much before, but now…I’m less present, than I have been. And it’s easy to appear here. There’s so much magical energy.”

Dan sighed, resolving to accept this explanation. He reached up to tap his knuckles on the door.

It was opened a minute later, by Louise’s mother. 

“Hi, Ms. Pentland,” Dan said with a little wave. “Is Louise in?”

“Yes, but-” Barbara cut herself off, evidently seeing something in their expressions. Her face fell. “I’ll go get her right now,” she said instead.

Dan and Sophie were led into the Fox Way sitting room. It was full of very soft, overstuffed blue furniture that felt like it was going to swallow you. The two of them huddled on the edge of a sofa.

Dan gazed out at the various statuettes and knicknacks adorning the room. It helped ground him somehow. 

Soon, there was the sound of tromping footsteps coming down the stairs. “What are you two doing here,” Louise asked, appearing in the doorway. “I was helping my cousin with- Oh.”

Like her mother, Louise paused when she saw their faces. “Oh, God,” she said faintly. “What’s wrong? You both looked like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Dan and Sophie looked at each other. Sophie cleared her throat. “Well,” she said.

And Sophie told her story, as she’d told it to Dan. Louise got exponentially paler and paler as she listened. She paced around the room, and then sat down, and then got up to pace again. She asked a lot of the same questions Dan had. Dan jumped in sometimes, filling in gaps when he could see Sophie getting overwhelmed. 

Eventually, Louise said “Oh, Sophie,” and squeezed her into a very tight hug, which Sophie allowed. And Louise slumped onto the sofa next to them, looking exhausted. 

“Will you help?” Dan asked, when it seemed like Louise had recovered somewhat.

Louise sat up straight on the sofa, looking incredibly offended. “Of course,” she scoffed. “Of course I will, let’s- let’s try right now.”

Dan nodded. He rubbed at his forehead, mentally preparing himself to- what had Sophie called it? Tap into the ley line. His head had started to go a bit fuzzy from doing it twice in one day. 

Louise looked nervous suddenly. “I can’t promise anything,” she said, catching Sophie’s eyes. “I’m not sure if- I’m not sure it will work at all.”

Sophie gave her a look that said I know, I know, don’t worry. 

Louise shook out her hands, taking a deep breath. “‘Kay, then. Let’s do this.”

She looked at Dan, who nodded. Louise splayed out a hand over the back of Dan’s neck. 

Instantly, he could feel a sort of buzzing. It was like the first time he’d felt the forest, in Louise’s bedroom. Like his senses were heightened. 

Yet again Dan shut his eyes. It was easy to find Sophie’s spirit now that he knew what to look for. It felt distinctive, to all the other energy around him. He found he could feel Louise, too- like a bright light, a sparkling firework at his neck. 

Things were clearer, this time. He didn’t have to work as hard. Dan tried to do the same thing as before, reaching his mind out towards Sophie’s, getting the ley line’s attention. And he was- he was so close. He felt that if he could just reach out, touch her with his mind, then it would work. The ley line would feel her, and feed itself into her. Dan pushed and pushed. There was no wall this time, not really, but he just couldn’t get quite close enough. He pushed and pushed, straining his mind, straining whatever magical muscles he had- and he was so close, he was so close-

“Dan,” said Sophie’s voice, feeling like it came from a million miles away. Distantly, he was aware that she had put her hands on his shoulders, that she was shaking him. His eyes were still closed. There was a roaring in his ears, but it wasn’t so much a sound as a current of energy. Everything else faded away.

“Louise,” Sophie was saying, voice quiet but urgent, “stop touching him, let him go.”

The hand on his neck disappeared. It was like a brilliant firework suddenly went out, and he was left in darkness.

Dan gasped. It felt like he’d been submerged in cold water. His eyes flew open, and it took a few seconds for him to adjust to where he was. He realized he was sweating, forehead soaked. His head was spinning.

“Dan,” Sophie said, almost fearful, gripping his shoulders and staring into his eyes. “Are you alright?”

He looked back at her, dizzy. “Think so,” he croaked out. 

“What happened?” Louise demanded from behind him. 

“It almost worked.” Dan pulled his sleeve down and wiped at his forehead. “I was- I was almost there, Sophie, Louise’s energy pushed me in the right direction. We should try again, I was right there.”

Sophie’s eyes were boring holes in him. She shook her head, slowly.

Louise leaned forward so she could see both their faces. “Was I too much?” she asked nervously.

Sophie was frowning, still studying Dan’s expression. “He almost got lost,” she said in a low voice. “His mind isn’t used to it. It was too much at once. It could have hurt him.”

Dan shook his head, mind still focused on their singular goal. “I was fine, nothing would have happened. Listen, we’ve got to try again. We’ve got to.”

Sophie shook her head again.

“I’m not risking it,” she said, with an undeniable air of finality. “This is- this is messing around with dangerous forces, Dan, it’s not something to take lightly. I shouldn’t have- I shouldn't have asked.”

Sophie ducked her head, burying her face in her hands. She looked small and defeated and barely-there, like the ghost she’d been the whole time instead of the girl Dan had come to see as a friend. 

Dan opened his mouth to protest again. He had to try again. They couldn’t just let Sophie slip away, like- like- like she’d never been there at all. He couldn’t just watch it happen.

Louise put a hand on his shoulder, drawing him back. She shook her head.

Dan closed his mouth in defeat. He leaned all the way back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling.

“This isn’t us giving up,” Louise said firmly. “This goes for both of you, alright? I live in a whole house just full to the brim with magical people, we’ll- we’ll talk to them, we’ll find another solution. Anything is possible with the ley line. There are dozens of ways to communicate with it, even if you don’t have a direct link like Dan. We’ll find a way to keep you here, Sophie. We’ll find a way.”

It reminded Dan of what Louise had said to him when he’d been crying on her front porch, freshly certain Phil was going to die. There was something about her voice that made you want to believe her. That made you think maybe there really was another way. 

Sophie peeked up from her hands. “You think so?” she asked, and the question broke Dan’s heart a bit.

Louise set her jaw. “Absolutely certain,” she said.

Sophie leaned back on the sofa, copying Dan. “Then I guess I’ll just have to believe you,” she said. She glanced over at them both. “You’re good friends, you know.”

Louise smiled at her. Dan gave her a thumbs up. All three of them laughed, a bit weakly.

They sat there, staring at the ceiling together. All of them were exhausted. Dan thought they might just stay there all day, and then his phone buzzed.

He fished it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and sighed.

“It’s Phil,” he said with a grimace. “God, the other two don’t know. What should I do? Let it go to voicemail?”

Sophie pursed her lips, thoughtful. “Just answer it like normal,” she said finally. “Tell him we’re at Louise’s.”

Dan nodded. He clicked the answer button, holding it up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Dan!” came Phil’s excited voice from the other line. It made his heart hurt. “You’re off work, aren’t you? Want to come over? PJ’s attempting to make lasagna and I can’t tell if it’s going horribly or not and Sophie’s out so I need someone for moral support.”

He has no idea, Dan thought mournfully. Absolutely no idea that his life’s about to tip sideways.

“Um,” Dan said, a bit awkwardly. “She’s actually with me, right now. We’re both at Louise’s.”

“Oh.” Phil’s voice sounded a bit strange, for some reason. Laced with surprise. “Really? What are you guys up to?”

Definitely a bit strained. Dan supposed it was very rare for him to be hanging out with the other two Monmouth kids without Phil. Then he registered Phil’s question, and realized he had no idea what to say.

“Um,” he said, and then held his hand over the speaker. “What do I tell him?” he hissed to Sophie.

Sophie drew in a breath. And then held out her hand.

Wordlessly, Dan passed her the phone. Sophie’s face did something complicated, and then she held it up to her ear.

“Phil?” Sophie asked brusquely. “Hi, yes, it’s Sophie. Listen. I want you to take that blue jacket we found in Cabeswater, open the inside pocket and look at what’s in it. Yes. And then come over to Louise’s. Bring PJ with you.” Her voice broke on the last part. Unceremoniously, Sophie pressed the button to hang up and tossed the phone back to Dan.

Dan and Louise both stared at her.

“The jacket?” Louise asked. “Why the…”

“It was yours, wasn’t it,” Dan mumbled. Somehow he just knew.

Sophie’s eyes dropped to the ground. She nodded. 

“Yours?” Louise asked, looking incredibly sad.

“The jacket I died in,” Sophie said morosely. “It must have been lost, in Cabeswater all these years. Until the ley line decided to give it back.” She swallowed. “I had my wallet, in that pocket. It will have my license in there. My name, my picture, the year I was born. I think- I think they’ll figure it out.”

Her voice broke again. She took her glasses off and cleaned them with her shirt, just for something to do with her hands.

“Oh, Sophie,” Louise said softly.

“I hate to have them find out like that.” Sophie’s voice was barely a whisper. “But I can’t see the looks on their faces. I just- can’t.”

They waited. Dan’s phone rang, and then Louise’s, and then Sophie’s. They ignored all of it. 

Eventually there was the sound of tires squealing into the driveway, and then a loud pounding on the front door. They all three looked at each other. And took a deep breath.

Sophie answered the door herself. There were Phil and PJ, looking as completely and utterly miserable as Dan had ever seen them. Phil threw his arms around Sophie’s neck the minute the door opened. PJ stood behind, silent, face blotched and ugly with tears.

***

It was the worst, most miserable conversation Dan had ever been a part of, and he barely even had a role in it. 

For the third time that day, Sophie told her story. They all sat around the Pentland kitchen table, Louise and Dan passing a bag of crisps back and forth while PJ and Phil kicked and screamed and were finally forcibly dragged into the realization that their best friend was a ghost. Whenever PJ stopped crying for a minute, Phil would start. Sophie, whom Louise whispered that she had never ever seen cry, was sniffling right along with them. How could we not have known, Phil cried, and when Sophie gave the same practical explanation she’d told Dan, Phil just said, But we still should have!

There was a slow, horrible sort of realization that worked through Phil and PJ, as they came to terms with just how much they did not know about Sophie. “You’ve lived in Monmouth with us for over a year,” PJ spluttered, but they could not recall exactly how they’d met, or when she had moved in, or if she paid rent. They didn’t know where she went to school, because it couldn’t have been Aglionby, but surely Louise would have picked up on how she didn’t go to Mountainview either. When pressed, they could barely even come up with her last name.

There was an incredibly dark look in PJ’s eyes when Sophie recounted her murderer. When she assured them that all parties involved were either dead or in prison for life, his expression relaxed. Dan could picture PJ marching right up to their front doors, seven years later, and ringing the doorbell.

“Sophie,” Phil’s tears-wrecked voice said, when the explanation was through. “You said seven years ago.”

Her eyes flicked to his across the table. A sort of resignation made its way across her face.

“Yes,” Sophie nodded.

Phil bit his lip.

“What day,” he asked, like he was afraid of the answer.

Sophie held his gaze. “July,” she said, flatly. “The nineteenth.”

Phil looked like he was going to be sick, right there on the table.

Sophie gave him a slow nod.

It was like Phil’s face cracked open. He rested his arms on the table, burying his face in them.

The others all looked at each other. “What?” PJ asked, voice buzzing with anxiety and emotion. “What’s special about that day?”

“‘S when I died,” Phil mumbled, not looking up from his arms.

A hush fell over the table.

Louise’s lips formed an O shape.

“Someone is dying on the line when you should not,” Dan recited, his tongue moving nearly of its own volition. “So you will live when you should not.”

“Sophie,” PJ said, in shock, “Oh, my fucking god, it was Sophie the whole time. That was the trade. That was-”

He cut off, as Phil finally raised his head. He stared across the table at Sophie. 

They both just looked at each other, for a long time. Neither said anything.

Dan thought about watching Phil reenact his own death behind Monmouth. He thought about Phil curled up on his bed, talking about what it felt like for his heart to stop. He pictured a nine-year-old Phil, overcome by a thousand tiny pinpricks of venom, learning that he was going to live because somewhere thousands of kilometers away a sixteen-year-old Sophie was being murdered in the Henrietta woods. 

They were all tied together, weren’t they. Inexplicably.

Phil slid his arm across the table, extending it as far as it would go. He stuck out his pinky finger. Waiting. 

From her seat on the other side, Sophie did the same. She reached out, and gently touched her left pinky to his. 

“Thanks,” Phil said hoarsely. 

“You’re very welcome,” Sophie whispered back.

They both withdrew their arms, sitting back up in their chairs. It was like everyone took a deep breath.

“Well,” Phil said, and he sounded like himself again. “Well, you saved me once, Sophie. By accident or fate or- whatever. So now we’re going to find a way to save you.”

Everyone nodded. Sophie’s eyes crinkled.

“You think so?” she whispered.

“I don’t care how,” PJ said, and the words sounded definitive. “I promise you. We’re going to find a way.”

***

“Hey! Dan!” PJ called excitedly, sliding into the seat at the lunch table next to him. “Come look at this!”

It had been several days since the revelation about Sophie. Since then, every free minute had been spent looking for a solution: asking Sophie for every detail she knew about the ley line, cornering Louise’s relatives, even flipping through the few old books on magic in the Henrietta library. So far they hadn’t come up with much of anything. Dan couldn’t help but think that this was because they had already found the solution, and had just decided not to go through with it. But he didn’t say that out loud.

Now, Phil was waiting in the ridiculously long Aglionby cafeteria line. Dan and PJ sat with their packed lunches in one of the tables at the back corner. 

“What is it?” Dan asked, between bites of his sandwich.

PJ gave him a conspiratorial smile, fishing a small object out of his pocket. He scooted next to Dan until their shoulders touched, blocking the view of anyone else in the room. “Take a look at this,” he said in a hushed voice, holding up a small sphere.

Dan peered at it. It was a sleek bronze color, like an old-fashioned astrolabe. There was a seam running around the middle, accompanied by etched writing.

He found himself a bit entranced. “What does it do?” he asked.

PJ grinned, almost bashful. “I dreamt it last night,” he said. “I wanted to call it ORBMASTER 3000, but Sophie told me that was stupid.”

Dan let out a giddy laugh. It was still hard to fathom, that one of his friends could create things from dreams.

“Look here,” PJ continued. “It rotates, through four sections.” He twisted the sphere along the seam. Dan watched as it clicked, settling through four different partitions.

“What does it do?” Dan asked, looking closely.

“It has four languages.” PJ traced a finger along the writing. “English, Latin, Italian- well, that one might have been my personal bias, sorry- and…”

His thumb brushed over the last word. Dan squinted down at it, but it was a set of loopy shapes that he couldn’t quite read. “Is that in our alphabet?” he asked, frowning.

PJ shook his head. “That,” he explained, “is the language of Cabeswater, I think. Or- not just Cabeswater, but the ley line. Of…magic.”

Dan breathed in, eyes cutting to find PJ’s. “Magic has a language?”

The other boy nodded. “It’s like when I hear the voices in Cabeswater,” he said, laying a palm down on the table. “It’s not- it doesn’t feel like English. But I can sort of work out what it’s saying, because I helped make Cabeswater, you know.” He blushed a tiny bit. “Or at least, that’s what I think happens.”

Dan smiled a bit, nodding and taking a sip from his water bottle. “And you think this thing will…help translate?”

“Yes,” PJ said happily. “I think if you’re standing in Cabeswater, and you have this, anyone would be able to understand the voices. And…maybe the ley line would be able to understand you better, too.”

Dan nodded again, slowly. He ran through possibilities in his mind. 

“I don’t know,” PJ said, quieting a little. “I thought maybe…if we could communicate more easily…we could tell it to help Sophie, you know.”

He looked remarkably sad. Dan felt the absurd urge to reach out and pat his hair. 

“I think it could definitely help,” Dan said brightly. “It’s a really good start, PJ, seriously.”

PJ beamed at this. It warmed Dan’s heart to see. No one had taken the news about Sophie harder than PJ, whom Dan thought Louise was probably right about when it came to being massively in love with her. 

“It still doesn’t seem real,” Dan found himself saying. Then he huffed at himself. “I mean, um. You just dreaming things into existence.”

PJ shrugged. “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I can’t just make anything, but if I picture what I want, and it’s small, I can usually get away with it.” He smiled faintly. “I just wake up with it in my hands in the morning.”

Dan hummed. He took another bite of his sandwich. “Do you ever dream the same thing twice? Like, infinite chocolate bars?”

PJ laughed a little. Then his expression turned more serious. “Well,” he said. “I dream a lot of- cures for stings, you know. Gels and salves and magic EpiPens. I stash them all over Monmouth.”

“Oh,” Dan said softly. His heart ached. He thought of every time he’d seen a wasp nest in Henrietta, every narrow miss Phil must have had.

They sat there, silently eating bites of their lunch, thinking of Phil. Thinking of their friends, who made it really hard to protect them.

“You know,” PJ said, in a low, controlled voice. “My dad died last year.”

Dan blinked. “I’m sorry,” he said instinctually.

“‘S alright. He, um. He was a dreamer like me. Could do all the same stuff. But he started selling some of the things he dreamt. There’s this whole black market for magical items up in London.” PJ stirred his spoon through his thermos of soup. “He fell in with some shady people. It got him killed.”

This seemed like an incredibly heavy conversation to be having in the Aglionby cafeteria. Dan just stared at him, slightly shocked.

“Shit,” was the only thing he could think of to say. “That’s awful, Peej.”

PJ gave him a grim smile. “It’s part of the reason I live with Phil. He was really- I mean, I was a mess, and he was there with me every step of the way. And I just keep thinking- god, I just lost my dad, and now Sophie…”

 He trailed off, staring glumly down into his soup. “PJ,” Dan whispered.

“Just doesn’t seem fair,” PJ mumbled, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. He made a noticeable effort to collect himself, turning to give Dan a faint smile. “Sorry to get all serious. I just-”

Dan poked him in the shoulder. 

“It’s going to be alright,” he said, and was surprised at how much he believed his own words. “She’ll be fine, okay?”

PJ took a deep, stuttering breath in. And nodded.

A part of Dan had already made up his mind. Had made up his mind days ago.

***

Dan didn’t have a lot of dreams, or at least not ones he remembered. So it was surprising, when he went to sleep one night a few days later and blinked his eyes open in the haze of dreamspace. Immediately, he knew he was in Cabeswater. It was dimly lit, mist hanging in the air, moss drooping like waterfalls from the branches. Dan tried to take a step and found he couldn’t move.

None of his limbs were responding. His brain panicked. Dan looked down, and- and he couldn’t see himself at all. He wasn’t there. Instead, he found the edge of a tree trunk, a beech with rippling bark. Dan couldn’t tell if his body was encased in the tree, or if he was the tree itself. 

He wondered if PJ’s dreams were similar to this.

Thunder rumbled ahead. There was the sound of swishing moss. If Dan had lungs, he would have inhaled sharply as a figure emerged from the haze. 

It was him. 

An identical Dan appeared, brushing aside hanging moss, slowly stepping towards tree-Dan. Dan watched his other self with shock and unease. There was something off about him, like there was nothing behind his eyes.

Other Dan watched him, like he could see where his eyes should be. He paused, just a few yards away. He opened his mouth and said, “Pay attention.”

It didn’t sound like Dan’s voice. It was like there was someone else underneath it. 

Other Dan knelt on the forest floor, reaching out a finger and dragging it through the soil. He traced a pattern in the dirt, point after point, until it connected into a pentagram. Other Dan stood, right in the middle of it. 

His blank eyes bored into Dan-that-was-a-tree. He said, “Now.”

Thunder crashed again, up ahead, and then too fast for him to process lightning came down and struck the tree.

His vision was a blur of white. Every molecule of Dan was electric. He was convulsing, even though he couldn’t be because he didn’t have a body, and then he did because he was stumbling forward out of the tree, all height and gangly limbs, himself again. Dan heaved in deep breaths, holding his shaking arms in front of his face, still feeling like he was on fire. 

He realized he had stepped right up to the other-Dan, still stood in the center of the pentagram. He glanced up into the other boy’s eyes, and quick as a flash other-Dan had reached forward and grabbed onto his shoulders. He held, tightly, keeping Dan firmly pinned in place. 

“Do you understand?” asked other Dan, and the words still sounded wrong, somehow. “Hands. Eyes.”

Dan stared at the identical him. He felt the lightning coursing through his veins.

“I understand,” he said, because he did.

Other-Dan nodded. “Soon.”

Then Cabeswater was gone, and everything was white. 

Dan gasped awake, hurtling forward on his mattress. He was drenched in sweat. His legs were tangled in his bedsheets. He fisted a hand in his hair, glancing around and slowly letting his body come to terms with the fact that he was back in his bedroom.

He took in several deep breaths. “I understand,” he said, to no one but the walls.

***

It was a Saturday morning. Dan had work in an hour but it was the last thing on his mind. He was biking to Louise’s so fast his calves burned with effort. 

Because the dream had been trying to tell him something, hadn’t it. It didn’t matter if it was Cabeswater and the ley line communicating with him directly or just his mind working through things he already knew; Dan had gotten the message. He’d fallen back asleep and then woken up that morning with the knowledge fresh on his mind. He felt high on adrenaline.

This will work, he thought, dumping his bike in the Fox Way front yard and letting himself in, this will work. 

Several of Louise’s aunts and cousins said hello to him as he passed, and he waved back while rushing through the house. He near-sprinted up the stairs, flinging himself down the hallway and barely waiting for Louise to respond to his knock before throwing her door open.

“I know what Cabeswater needs,” Dan blurted out, hand still on the doorknob, panting and out of breath.

Louise made a little squeaking sound, looking up from where she had been reading a book on her bed. “Jesus Christ Dan,” she said, placing a hand over her heart like an offended grandmother.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dan said belatedly, shutting the door behind him. “It’s just that I figured it out.”

Louise’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “Figured…what out?”

“Just think about it. Cabeswater already told us what it needed.” Dan splayed out on her bed, feet kicked up in the air, because it was Louise and he knew she didn’t care. “It told us directly. Hands. Eyes.”

Louise grimaced and set her book to the side. “But we never did puzzle that out. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes complete sense. Look, Louise. What Cabeswater needs is a host.”

Louise looked mildly concerned. Her brow was furrowed in concentration.

Dan huffed, frustrated. “I’m a hundred percent sure. Cabeswater, and the whole ley line, they have all that magic but they don’t have a body. I think they need someone to work through, a human, someone who can sort of channel all that magic and act for them.”

“A host,” Louise repeated loosely. Her eyes looked far away.

Dan nodded emphatically.

“And how did you come to this conclusion?”

“Um, a dream. It’s not really important. Louise, you’re the magic expert here. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dan looked at her with big, imploring eyes. He kicked his feet idly back and forth. Louise tried to meet his stare, and then something in her deflated. She looked resigned.

“I think you’re right,” she murmured, letting out a sigh. “My mum, and aunts, they’ve been…seeing the same signs.”

Elation rose in Dan’s chest. So he wasn’t crazy. He scooted off the bed, getting back to his feet, and started pacing in circles around her bedroom. 

“Do you know what this means?” he asked, almost giddy. “If Cabeswater gets a human host, I mean. That person would get a direct connection. As direct as you can get. Louise, this is how we save Sophie.”

Louise looked at him. Her eyes were unreadable. Louise was hardly ever unreadable. 

“Dan,” she said. “Look at me.”

He paused in his pacing. His eyes found hers.

“This is not something we can mess around with,” Louise said, and her voice was as serious as he’d ever heard it. “I mean it. It’s too dangerous.”

A hot feeling of frustration filled Dan’s chest. He leaned one hip against Louise’s desk. “I don’t get how you can just dismiss this,” he said, and hated how his own words skewed whining.

“I’m not dismissing it. We can- we can talk about it. But this is serious, Dan, this is a permanent thing you’re talking about.” Louise was gesturing wildly with her hands. “We’re dealing with ancient primordial forces of magic, I mean- we have no idea what would happen if a person just offered themselves up to it as a host. They could lose themselves. They could lose what makes them a person, their whole humanity.”

Louise was earnest and imploring. Dan bit his lip. He stepped back over to her bed, collapsing onto it on his back.

“I understand,” he said with a sigh. “I get it. It’s risky.”

“We can explore it as an option,” Louise said comfortingly. She sounded relieved. “I just don’t think anyone should go rushing into sacrificing themselves as some kind of ambassador to the ley line, Dan. Who knows what would happen to them.”

Dan nodded. He stared up at the ceiling. Louise had written a poem up there, in faint pencil. It was funny, how fanciful and sensible she could be at the same time. 

“I get it,” he repeated. “We’ll find another way.”

He tried to make the words sound convincing.

***

There was a dinner party at Monmouth that night. Or, really, it was just take two of PJ’s attempted lasagna. Dan had found that he loved Monmouth desperately. He never felt out of place there, like he was invading someone else’s space. It was so wondrously strange and silly and cozy, like a second home, even though he didn’t live there. He had found himself hanging out there as much as possible in the last month or two.

“Danny!” Phil shouted happily, when Dan made it up the stairs onto the second floor. “You’re finally here! We’ve been waiting ages!”

“Sorry all of us can’t be rich and unemployed,” Dan sighed with a shrug.

“Amen to that,” Louise said from the table. Dan walked over and gave her a fist bump. 

“PJ’s almost done, come play this with me,” Phil beckoned, cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV with a controller in his hands. 

Dan plopped himself down onto the wooden floor next to him. “Is Sophie around?” he asked a bit nervously. 

He waited for Phil’s and Louise’s faces to drop. In the time since learning Sophie was a ghost, it had gotten harder and harder for her to appear. Sometimes they didn’t see her for days on end. Every time they worried she would never come back again. 

“Hi, Dan,” came Sophie’s voice, sticking her head out of the little Monmouth kitchen (which was really more of a kitchenette, and barely even deserved that name.) She looked…herself. Slightly less pale than she’d been lately. 

Dan’s face lit up. “Sophie!”

“It’s been a good day,” she said. “And it’s a lot easier to appear with Louise around, letting me feed off her energy a bit.”

Louise dragged the dining chair away from the table and over next to Phil and Dan. “I’m a very efficient battery,” she said smugly, settling back down. Dan flicked at her knee, because he could. 

“Sophie!” This was PJ’s disembodied voice. “The noodles!”

“Oh, right.” Sophie gave Dan a little smile, as if to say I’m okay, look, I’m just fine, I promise. And she ducked back into the kitchen. 

Dan smiled in return, even after she had disappeared from sight. And you will be, he thought. I’ll make sure of it. 

It took him a second to realize that Phil was batting at his arm urgently. “Focus, focus, Dan,” he whined. “Crash Bandicoot time.”

Dan chuckled. “Alright, alright. I’m going to fucking destroy you, by the way.” 

“We’ll see,” Phil quipped. He tossed a controller into Dan’s lap. The game started.

Dan sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Phil, gaming through Crash Bandicoot levels. Louise watched with fascination from her chair, cheering for either of them in different intervals. They laughed and jostled each other and shouted at the screen. They were often distracted, because every minute or so PJ either babbled or yelled nonsense from the kitchenette. Dan couldn’t help giggling, at all the clanging pots and dramatic shouts and Sophie’s unimpressed fussing. 

“Cooking really brings the chaos out of him,” Phil explained fondly, after a particularly loud THE WORLD’S FIRST CIRCULAR FOCACCIA, SOPHIE! was heard from the kitchen. Louise snorted.

Dan ended up winning. “No!” Phil moaned as the game over screen flashed, dramatically tossing his controller. “My dignity!”

“Yes! What did I say!” Dan cackled like mad, Phil sputtering in protest. Phil eventually reached behind him onto his bed and grabbed a pillow, batting at Dan’s face incessantly while Dan just laughed and tried to dodge. He wrestled it away from Phil’s grip while Louise jumped from her chair and scrambled out of the way. Dan whacked at Phil, mercilessly smacking his face. Phil squealed and covered his head with his arms. 

“Mercy!” Phil wheezed, falling spread-eagled onto the floor. “I accept your dominance!”

Dan just hiccuped with laughter. He tossed the pillow onto Phil’s prone form. 

“You boys,” Louise said, sighing loudly. Dan stuck his tongue out at her. 

“GET TO YOUR SEATS, EVERYONE!” PJ called out then in a booming voice. “DINNER IS SERVED!” 

“I can’t eat dinner,” Phil moaned, face still hidden beneath the pillow. “I’ve died.”

“Get up, you big baby,” Dan snickered, but kicked away the pillow and held out a hand to Phil. Phil smiled and took it. 

The two of them and Louise wandered over to the dining table and sat down. PJ and Sophie emerged from the kitchenette, pots and pans in both hands. PJ had on a cartoonish chef’s hat and a Totoro apron. 

“High fashion,” Dan commented, and PJ winked obnoxiously at him.

“You’re in for a treat,” PJ said, in an exaggerated Italian accent, laying his two dishes onto the table. “Authentic Liguori lasagna and focaccia. Prepare to be amazed.”

“And maybe let PJ eat it first,” Sophie suggested in a loud whisper. “In case it’s poisonous.”

“Hey!” 

PJ and Sophie took their seats. They all passed plates around, reaching across each other and getting spoonfuls of food. Dan pushed Phil’s water glass out of harm’s way three separate times, and by some miracle it remained upright. 

“If you’re all so mistrustful,” PJ sighed, once everyone had gotten settled, “I’ll be the martyr and take the first bite. One, two, three, fuck it.”

PJ stabbed some lasagna onto his fork and ate it. A second later he gave everyone a thumbs up.

“Good for consumption,” he assured. The whole table burst out laughing.

They ate the rest of dinner, talking and giggling and getting second helpings. PJ really could make a good lasagna. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a nice home-cooked meal; he was so used to pulling things out of the freezer. They played cards afterwards, and then another game that Phil couldn’t quite remember the rules to so they mostly made it up as they went, and then PJ finally wheedled everyone into playing Catan. After the third round of losing terribly, Louise announced that she was just so tired and she had to go home right that minute.

Dan was sad to see her go. It had been…such a nice night. It was normal, like they were just a regular friend group, who ate dinner together and played card games, no magic involved. It was like they were all completely safe, and alive, and had no imminent threats of doom hanging over them. 

After she had left, PJ asked if anyone wanted to play another round of Catan, and received several pointed looks. Phil’s phone started ringing before anyone said anything. His ringtone was, apparently, Lovegame by Lady Gaga. For some reason this made Dan’s heart flutter. 

“Saved by the bell,” Phil whispered, which PJ rolled his eyes at. “Oh! It’s my mum. Sorry, let me just chat with her for a second, I’ll be right back.”

His voice sounded small and happy and fragile in a way that made Dan’s ribs ache. As absent as his own mother was, he still couldn’t imagine being away from her for that long. 

Phil pushed his chair back, standing and pacing over to the other side of the room, closer to his bed. Dan could hear him saying “Hi, Mum!” and that was about it. He thought for a moment that he’d like to hear what Phil Lester talked to his mum on the phone about, and then realized how weird that probably was.

PJ started packing all the Catan pieces back into the box. Sophie leaned in towards him, then, and whispered something into his ear. Dan tried not to listen, but it sounded something like not sure how much longer. 

PJ gave her a mournful look. He murmured something back, which Dan again tried not to hear, but was inexplicably “Don’t want to do anything fun without you, though.” It made Sophie laugh softly.

Dan drummed his fingers on the table idly. PJ placed the lid back on the box and yawned dramatically. “Guess I’m pretty tired too,” he said, altogether not very convincingly. “I might hit the sack. That okay, Dan?”

“‘Course,” Dan said instinctually. “Do you want me to head out too, or-”

“No, no, Phil stays up all hours of the night. Sorry if he takes forever on the phone, though, him and Kath can go for hours.”

Dan made the mental note that Phil’s mum’s name was apparently Kath. 

“Anyway. Stay as long as you like. Night!”

“Night,” Dan said with a chuckle. PJ gave a little salute and unceremoniously retired to his bedroom.

Sophie was still at the table. She gave Dan an apologetic little smile.

“He’s on this crusade to never let me feel left out,” she said, as if Dan was owed an explanation. “It’s a bit cute.”

“Very thoughtful,” Dan said, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Sophie gave him a look, that said don’t push your luck, and then quirked an eyebrow at him. “Plus,” she said nonchalantly, “it gives you a bit of time alone with Phil.”

Dan blushed furiously.

“Sophie,” he spluttered. “I don’t know what you’re trying to imply here, Miss Newton soon-to-be Liguori-”

Dan cut himself off, and stared at the empty chair in front of him. Sometime in between blinks, Sophie had faded away in front of his eyes. He swallowed. It really was now or never.

“Dan!” Phil called, skipping back over to the table and tapping at his shoulder. “I’m back, sorry, I just told her I’d talk to her tomorrow. Hey, where are the other two?”

“Went to bed,” Dan said with a shrug. It was true enough.

“Oh.” Phil’s brow furrowed, and then he shrugged in return. “Thank god, really, I was getting tired of losing games to Peej. Hey, want to play some Mario Kart or something?”

This sounded heavenly. “Sure,” Dan said, with a little laugh. “Sure, why not.”

They resumed the same position as earlier, cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV. Phil pressed some buttons on the console, booting up the system and grabbing them both controllers. He spent a minute clicking through the menu screen. 

Phil groaned. “Oh, this is Peej’s account, dammit. Let me just go ask him if we can-”

Phil pulled himself to his feet, not even finishing his sentence, and headed in the direction of PJ’s bedroom door. An awareness flickered on in Dan’s brain.

The thing was that the second floor of Monmouth Manufacturing was a vast expanse. It would take a while, for Phil to cross the floor over to PJ’s room, and his back would be turned the whole time. The desk was very close to the TV. And on top of the desk, sitting in plain sight, was the strange translation sphere that PJ had shown Dan at lunch the other day. 

Dan’s heart thudded in his chest. He froze instead, too scared to move. Phil’s was knocking on PJ’s door, now, back still turned. PJ called something out and Phil opened the door, stepping inside. He was entirely hidden from view.

Dan jumped up and grabbed the sphere, as quickly and quietly as he could. He shoved it into his bag, that he’d tossed next to the TV when he’d first come in. He zipped it up, making sure the lump wasn’t obvious, and set it back where it had been. And he returned to his previous seated position.

Dan blew out a breath.

Phil returned mere moments later, shutting PJ’s door and jogging back over to Dan. “He says we can do anything we want on his account as long as we leave him alone to sleep peacefully,” Phil reported happily. “Which is what I expected, but still. Polite to ask.”

Dan could do nothing but nod. He felt a bit sick. 

They settled back in. Mario Kart opened. Dan’s fingers tapped anxiously at the controller, gripping it with sweaty palms.

“Think you’ll beat me at this one?” Phil asked, while they were waiting for it to load.

This, at least, Dan could smile at. “No question,” he said. “Sorry to reveal this, but I’m a bit stupidly good at Mario Kart. Practically a mastermind.”

“Okay, Mister Prodigy,” Phil said, rolling his eyes. “As long as you don’t attack me again.”

“Hey!” Dan said, a laugh startling out of him. “You started it!”

“And you escalated it! That was practically abuse!”

“Don’t start a pillow fight you can’t finish, mate. That’s my advice.”

Phil giggled. He was looking at Dan, really looking, a startling amount of affection in his eyes. It made Dan want to hide, a little bit.

“What?” he asked, a bit flustered. 

Phil laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just that when we first met you would barely talk to me. Barely look at me. And now look at us.”

Dan could feel the tips of his ears turning crimson. “Can you blame me,” he scoffed, fiddling with the controller. “Aglionby boys usually don’t like me very much.”

Phil just smirked. “Can I tell you a secret,” he said, and leaned in ever so slightly. “Agliony boys don’t like me much either.”

Dan blinked. Their faces were very close. “You’re lying,” he said, eyes dropping down to his lap. “Everyone at school loves you, you’re like the golden boy.”

Phil shrugged. “The other students only like me because the professors and administration all know me. And sure, I’m friendly with lots of people, but only on the surface. They don’t know me. I mean, imagine if they knew that I was gay and believed in magic.” 

If it had been Dan saying those words, they would have been sarcastic and bitter and hollow. But it was Phil, and so he said it like a joke, like it didn’t matter to him at all, like it was everyone else’s loss and that was that. 

“I’m really not sure which one they’d have more of an issue with,” Dan said, with a small, unsure smile. But Phil barked a laugh. 

“You’re right,” he said. “Maybe I should run a poll.”

They snickered together until they realized that the game had been ready for some time. 

They played Mario Kart well into the night. Dan won most of the time. When it finally got late enough that they were threatening to fall asleep on each other, Dan announced that he really should go home. 

Phil protested, trying to get him to stay the night. Dan tried to point out that he hadn’t brought anything with him, and Phil said that they definitely had an extra toothbrush lying around somewhere and he had plenty of clothes Dan could borrow. Dan imagined wearing Phil Lester’s clothes and tried to avoid blacking out.

Eventually Dan said that his mum was expecting him, and that got Phil to sigh and give in. Apparently he put a lot of stock in the imaginary authority of mothers. 

“Night, Phil,” Dan said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He had nearly forgotten what he’d done, confused at first at how heavy it was.

“Goodnight, Danny,” Phil said with a yawn. “Be extra super careful biking home.”

Dan smiled at him. And he left.

***

Dan did not bike home. 

He should have, maybe. But he had made up his mind. He was fixing everything, tonight.

It was a long way to go on a bicycle, but it was past midnight now and there was barely anyone on the roads. Dan had gotten used to biking long distances throughout his car-less life, and anyway, he was determined. He pushed through the ache in his legs, following Henrietta’s main street as it wound its way to the outskirts of town. Finally, Dan caught sight of what he was looking for.

Cabeswater looked even more eerie at night. Dan stepped off his bike when he got close enough, dragging it onto the grass on the side of the road and leaving it lying there. It was so dark. He wasn’t sure if this was the same spot they always entered, but he didn’t think that mattered. 

Dan didn’t waste time. He reached around into his bag, grabbing the flashlight he’d stashed in there and clicking it on. One flimsy little beam of light was all he had to light his way into the forest. Dan stepped inside. 

It was dead silent. He kept getting convinced he could see things moving out of the corner of his eye. Dan tried to walk in a straight line, so he could find his way back out, but other than that he mindlessly trudged forward into the trees. God, it really was very dark. Dan’s skin crawled.

Eventually he decided he was probably in deep enough. He felt surrounded, held, by the forest on all sides. Dan took a deep breath and blew it back out.

“Guess it’s time,” he murmured to himself.

He tried to picture what the ley line had shown him in his dream. Copying what he’d seen his other self do, Dan knelt on the ground. He dragged a finger through the dirt, his attempt at a pentagram, and it didn’t end up looking very neat but he figured that was probably okay. Dan stood back up, dusting his hand off, and took another breath.

He set the flashlight gently on the ground, letting its dim light cast a beam out into the forest, and reached back into his bag. Dan pulled out PJ’s dreamt sphere. It was heavy in his hand. He twisted it, listening to it click once, twice, three times, until he was sure it was on the setting for the language of magic.

Nothing happened right away. Everything was still silent. Heart pounding in his chest, Dan cupped the sphere in his palms and held it out in front of him.

“I’m not entirely sure how this works,” Dan said, trying to project his voice. It felt strange, to be talking so loudly in such a quiet forest. “But I heard you. I’m here.”

There was a whooshing sound, like wind. Dan blinked as he watched the trees around him sway, leaves knocking to the ground, but inside the pentagram not even his hair moved. He was absolutely certain, then, that some part of Cabeswater was listening.

“You just have to promise me one thing,” Dan continued, swallowing thickly. “If I do this, then whatever happens to me…whatever you end up doing to me, you have to protect Sophie. You have to give her enough energy to stay here.”

The wind got louder, transforming into a whistling sound. For a brief second, Dan almost thought he could hear the hiss of a Yesssss, but in the next moment it was just the sound of the wind again.

Dan sucked in breaths. “Okay,” he said, closing his eyes. “Okay.”

It was time. The ley line was listening, and because of the sphere, it could understand him clearly. It had asked for him, and he had come.

The words just spilled off of his tongue, natural and immediate. “My name is Dan Howell,” he said, eyes squeezed shut, “I do this willingly. I am already connected to the ley line, so I know this will work. I offer myself to Cabeswater as host. I-”

“DAN!”

The scream came out of nowhere. He could barely hear it above the sound of the whipping wind. Dan’s eyes flew open. He looked over his shoulder, half in shock. 

And there- there was Phil, shoving branches aside, sprinting towards Dan like both their lives depended on it. Dan felt like he was back in his dream. He couldn't move.

“What are you doing?” Phil screamed, desperately, hair flapping in the wind. “Stop it now, Dan, stop it, you can’t-”

He was still running, fighting the wind, getting close now. Dan realized, absurdly, that Phil wasn’t going to let him finish. He wouldn’t just scream, he’d try and stop Dan.

No. Sophie’s life was on the line. Dan didn’t move from the pentagram.

“Cabeswater!” he screamed, at the top of his lungs. “I will be your hands. I-”

Phil jumped at him in a flying tackle. All the breath was knocked out of Dan’s lungs. They both crashed to the ground in a heap, Phil landing on top of him. The minute Dan was knocked out of the pentagram, the wind beat at his skin. But- but if the wind was still whooshing, did that mean-

The ritual had been started, Dan realized. It was too late. They couldn’t stop it.

“I will-”

Phil flailed a hand towards him, trying to cover his mouth, but Dan reached up to grip at his forearm and hold him away.

“I will be your eyes,” Dan choked out finally. 

Phil looked down at him in horror. 

The wind cut off abruptly. There was nothing but silence.

And Dan’s vision exploded in light.

It was like the dream again. Every cell of his body was on fire. His ears were ringing, like he’d been caught in an explosion, and everywhere all he could see was green, green, green. When he breathed in he breathed soil. The blood pumping through his veins was sap. He was the forest, and the forest was him, and-

And then it all fell away, as quickly as it had come, and he was just Dan again. There was no more blinding light, just the darkness of the forest. He blinked his eyes open, squinting, struggling to see anything at all.

It wasn’t silent anymore, but that was because he could hear the sound of Phil crying. Dan realized that Phil was holding him, cradling him in his lap, one finger ghosting over the swoop of Dan’s fringe. Dan thought, in his disorientation, that they’d been in this exact position a few weeks ago with the roles reversed.

“It’s okay,” Dan managed to say, and he heard Phil gasp in a breath. “It’s alright, I’m fine.”

“Dan,” Phil cried, sniffling. “Oh, what did you do, why did you-”

“Phil.” Dan’s eyes wandered up to the starry sky. “Sophie will be alright now.”

Phil seemed to attempt to take this information in. He nodded his head up and down a few times. “And what about you?” he asked, voice hoarse and wrecked. “Louise told you how dangerous it was.”

Dan’s cloudy mind couldn’t quite figure out when Phil and Louise would have talked about that conversation. Dan’s eyes closed. “It had to be me,” he said softly. “I had the connection built in already. It was reaching out to me. I had to be the host.”

Phil was shaking him. Dan couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or just because Phil was trembling that badly. “I can’t believe you,” Phil said, and sounded utterly miserable. “I can’t believe you would just come out here, offer yourself as some kind of sacrifice, without telling anyone-”

A sound like a sob worked its way through Phil’s throat. Dan’s heart ached. He tried to muster up a sense of guilt and couldn’t find any at all.

Dan realized he was suddenly very, very tired.

“Let’s go home, Phil,” he said, reaching up to grasp at Phil’s elbow. “We’ll deal with this later, I promise, we’ll- we can figure everything out tomorrow. But let’s go home.”

Phil stared down at him for a second. And then, to Dan’s surprise, he shook his head no. 

“I’m not letting you bike home alone,” Phil said dismissively. “I’m not letting you just- leave, after you did a ritual on yourself. What if Cabeswater does something? Tries to do too much? What if your- what if your heart just stops, in the middle of the night, and no one knows? Please, Dan, come back to Monmouth with me. The bed’s big enough for both of us.”

“Phil,” Dan said, voice breaking on the word. “I don’t want to be- what if I hurt you? What if I explode into a pile of leaves in the middle of the night, or something, and slice your eyes out? I don’t want to…”

Phil gave him a look that was not altogether very happy. “I thought you were fine,” he said, and the words had a sharp edge to them. “I thought there wasn’t anything to worry about, that you had thought it all through, that it was a good idea.”

Dan exhaled, at a loss. “I didn’t say all that,” he said weakly, but didn’t protest anymore. “Fine, I’ll- fine.”

A look of relief crossed Phil’s face. “Good. Good. Let’s go, then.”

Phil helped him to his feet. Dan felt a bit fragile and unsteady, still, so the other boy kept an arm around his shoulders. Slowly, they navigated their way out of the forest. Dan cursed at himself for not doing this in the light of day.

They eventually made it out, emerging back onto the side of the road. The orange car was parked right next to Dan’s abandoned bike. A thought bloomed in Dan’s brain. 

“Phil,” he said, climbing over the guardrail. “It’s just- it’s just you?”

“Yeah.” Phil grabbed Dan’s bike without even asking, carrying it over to shove into the trunk. “PJ was out cold.”

Dan paused, staring at him. “And you drove yourself?”

Phil shut the trunk. A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Told you I had a license,” he said, and if it had been a different day, and a different time, Dan would have laughed.

They got into the car. Phil managed to start it, to pull back onto the road. It felt strange to be driven around by Phil.

They were silent most of the ride back. They passed barely anyone on the roads, which Dan was grateful for. He leaned back against the headrest, watching the buildings go by.

“Phil,” Dan asked, very quietly. “How did you know what I was doing? How did you find me?”

Phil glanced over at him.

“Dunno,” he said in a low voice. “I just had…a feeling. Like…”

Like you needed me.

The words hung in the air between them.

***

Phil got them back to Monmouth successfully. Dan texted his mum that he’d be out for the night. He wondered if she had even noticed he wasn’t there.

They opened the door onto the first floor. Dan nearly jumped out of his skin. Sophie was standing there, right in front of the door, waiting for them.

Even in the darkness, she looked more solid than Dan had ever seen her.

Phil sucked in a breath. Sophie’s eyes bored holes in the both of them.

“Sophie,” Dan tried to say, still standing in the threshold, “I-”

She stepped forward. She took his face in both of her hands.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Sophie whispered. She stood on her tiptoes, tugging his face down towards her. She kissed the tip of his nose. “But thank you.”

Dan stared at her, aghast. A smile slowly bloomed across his face. A million questions flashed through his head, but before he could ask them, he realized that Sophie’s face answered all the important ones.

She was here. And she was here to stay. It had worked.

All the stress and worry and emotion faded to the background of Dan’s brain, replaced by joy.

“Let’s go to bed,” Sophie said, with a sigh. She tried to turn around and head for the stairs, but not before Phil crushed her in a hug from behind. It made her smile.

They went upstairs. Sophie disappeared into her own bedroom. Phil wordlessly tossed a set of pajamas at Dan, who changed in the bathroom and delicately tucked himself into the far side of Phil’s bed.

Phil lay next to him. Dan tried not to notice Phil’s eyes on him. He rolled until he was facing outward, and tried desperately to sleep.