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  Camille’s eyes widened. “We don’t need to bother him.”

  “What’s this, now?” Luke poked his head out of the kitchen. “Ah. Yeesh.”

  “Scaredy-cats.” She dropped the bone on the newspaper. “The bone isn’t even the worst part. I’m pretty sure this is belladonna and hemlock.”

  “Damn. Overkill?” Luke said.

  “Very kill,” she replied.

  Luke walked back, heading deeper into the apartment. Camille kept picking apart the bag.

  Jeremy recognized crinkled feathers and more slivers of bone, but a lot of it was ground to dust. “How can you tell the pieces apart? It all looks like dirt to me.”

  She tilted her head. “It smells different. And the vibes feel different.”

  She meant magic—nothing Jeremy would be able to perceive. He put his chin in his hand as she sifted through the dust.

  When Luke returned, he’d changed his button-down and khakis for a white T-shirt and green basketball shorts. Jeremy looked down before he stared again—he hadn’t been prepared for that, the shape of Luke’s body different and clearer in the room.

  “We’ll have to burn those.” Luke touched the chest of his T-shirt. “Just didn’t want to get smoke on my clothes.”

  Camille was watching Jeremy expectantly—that had been directed at him. It stung, that Luke needed to justify something as simple as changing his clothes. Like Jeremy was going to get offended. “Oh,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  If he struck up a conversation and finally got the nerve to ask Luke to hang out, Luke would definitely say yes. Whether he wanted to or not. It made Jeremy’s skin crawl. He needed a sign, even the tiniest clue—a too-long glance, any touch at all—that Luke might really be interested.

  Luke had one earbud from his headphones in, the other bouncing against his stomach, and he put a box on the table. “Going to get some stuff together. Grab me if you need anything.”

  Camille waved him off. She worked in silence, sorting and taking notes, as he left down the stairs and returned with a tall saint candle and a lighter. After he put them in the box, he hiked the waistband of his baggy shorts up his hips.

  Jeremy looked away quickly, but Camille hadn’t caught him watching. She was glaring at Luke and asked, far too sly for the words, “What are you listening to?”

  “This playlist Max sent. He’s on his way over.”

  Camille’s jaw dropped. “No.”

  “Sure.” Luke shrugged. “He texted me. He likes rituals.”

  “Luke.” Camille spoke with the significant weight of someone trying to be patient. “We have to respect Jeremy’s time.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” Jeremy said. Camille made a fleeting exasperated face, and Jeremy understood too late that she didn’t actually care about his time.

  “He doesn’t mind, see?” Luke nodded to Jeremy. “Max is all right; you’ll like him.”

  Jeremy pressed his lips together and looked sort of near Luke’s eyes, and nodded. Here was his sign—Luke was hanging out with another boy. Jeremy was interested to meet him like he’d be interested in picking a scab.

  “Max is not all right. He is a trial sent to test me.” Camille’s accent stretched like pulled taffy on the words, and she sounded like her mother. Luke ignored her, walking toward the kitchen.

  Jeremy studied her slumped posture. Was this actually weird, or was it one of those things other people knew how to handle and he could never figure out? He rallied a smile. “Do you need help with anything else?”

  Camille bolted up. “I’m so sorry! Yes, I’ll get back to this.”

  “That’s okay.” But she was back to work, and no matter what he said, she’d just apologize again, on and on… Instead of trying, he shut up, and tried to go back to being invisible.

  Chapter Three

  Luke’s parents’ voices, fast and sharp, carried from the front room as he went downstairs, but when he opened the door, they fell silent. They had the wide-eyed faces of two kids caught stealing treats. “What?” he said. “What did Alexei say?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Yuri said. “How’s it going up there?”

  “Just getting some stuff. We’re almost ready to burn everything.”

  “Take it out back, then,” Helene said. They glanced at each other and back at Luke, examining him like he might have gotten a secret tattoo while they’d been gone.

  “Will do,” he said. “You two keep it weird.”

  Helene huffed a wry laugh, and he shut the door to gather supplies from the backroom shelves. Luke’s mother had designed this room to make customers believe in and buy magic, covering the floors with secondhand rugs and putting pink and purple bulbs in the lamps. It was comforting, the dim light and familiar routine and the heft of a half-empty bottle of lighter fluid in his hands. He focused on the music in his earbuds, breathing with the beat. It was the last playlist Max had sent him, and he had half an hour to come up with an opinion on it.

  The long morning’s anxiety had sunk under his skin, and now he was worried about Max in that same borderless, unmanageable way. Music was the only thing Max would talk about sincerely, and if Luke could catch that thread and draw it out, maybe he could unravel the rest of Max’s defenses. The problem was, Max liked the weirdest stuff. Luke listened to whatever was slick and fast on the radio, and he didn’t have the language for this one topic Max cared about.

  This song was some experimental hip-hop situation. Max had texted him the link with a message that said this made me think of you, and Luke had liked that so much he ought to have loved anything. But he couldn’t understand what made the rap parts special, and the only thing that sounded unique was that it disappeared into long interludes of ambient noise that made him miss the beat. It got grating if he listened to it for too long.

  He hated it.

  He hated it so much he couldn’t figure out why it made Max think of him, and the only explanation he could come up with was that it was hip-hop and he was brown. He wanted it to be something more specific than that, but if he asked Max to explain, then Max would know he hadn’t understood it.

  He threw a tub of table salt in the box so hard that both Jeremy and Camille jumped. Camille didn’t say anything, but she pursed her lips to say, Look, you are already upset.

  Luke took a deep breath.

  Camille turned back to her notes, scribbling. “I’m almost done.”

  Jeremy reassembled the mojo bags for their destruction. All the handling had taken the edge off the spell that had made them, but Luke could still feel their vibe. These were almost metallic, the jaw-jangling cringe of biting down on aluminum foil.

  Luke and his family had gotten a lot of mileage—money for jobs, favor from the Kovrovs—out of his skill, and they made it sound like a noble calling or remarkable gift. Often, Luke felt that way, too. But just as often, he was great at uncrossing because harmful spells were annoying, and he broke them for the same reason he’d smack a mosquito buzzing in his ear.

  They set up next to the trash cans in the narrow alley behind the store. Jeremy took careful, picking steps. “This is glamorous.”

  Camille opened her mouth and closed it—guessing the risk of a joke misfiring before she spoke. “I bet Alexei only does magic at midnight, wearing a robe.”

  Jeremy paused, wide-eyed, and nudged her with his shoulder. “Robe optional.”

  Camille laughed out loud. “I get it, Rasputin.”

  Luke shook his head and got to business, dropping the mojo bags on the ground. He centered himself, standing tall over them. Pushing out a breath, he let it all go—the Kovrovs, his parents—because this was his part. He wasn’t up on the politics or the clothes, but an uncrossing, he could always do.

  He pulled a St. Michael’s candle and a long lighter from the box. Lighting the candle for defense was a formality, but today it felt heavy in his hand. Meaningful. He focused and found himself thinking he should give them to Jeremy. He hadn’t come up with that himself, so it
must be something important. He didn’t know what Jeremy’s skills were, but he knew his own.

  Jeremy took the objects with a small, knowing smile and spoke a few Russian words as he lit the candle. The flame caught and grew, its strength impressive and then impossible in the breezy alley. It stood still in front of Jeremy’s chest like a glass sculpture of fire.

  Jeremy held the candle in both hands, pushing its flame safely away from himself as it licked and crackled higher in the air. Only his whispering lips moved. The candlelight cut up the shadows, catching the bones and hollows of his face.

  Luke had never seen Jeremy do magic—and had never seen any Kovrov do something so subtle. Searching, he uncovered another memory: Jeremy as a little boy, too shy in a roomful of attention to blow out the candles on his cake and hiding in a grown-up’s lap as the light dazzled.

  The flame settled, flickering on the wick, and everyone exhaled together. Jeremy lifted that distant, alien face as he pulled the candle closer. “Now.”

  Luke drew a circle of salt around the bag and dribbled a rough star of lighter fluid inside. “Get ready to jump back if it spits.”

  He touched the lighter’s flame to the fluid and reeled back. The flame danced over the droplets before catching. The picking had taken the worst edge off the bags, but Luke hunted down that aluminum foil cringe.

  The trick was to be stronger than the wicked thing. Luke could perceive the crossing in perfect detail—how it tasted, smelled, how it made his tongue curl in his mouth. Then, he could decide how the world should be instead, clear of that awful feeling. It worked because he was the only person who could do it; because he was the only person, it had to work. He felt the cringe, and imagined it clear, and held both of them in his head until only the one he chose was true. The cringe let go, and the flame over the bags soared up in a yellow pillar.

  Behind him, Jeremy’s gasp echoed its whoosh, and Camille said, “Show-off.”

  Luke grinned over his shoulder as he moved back. Jeremy stared, rapt, with the candle close to his chest. Camille nudged it forward. “Careful. Fire bad.”

  “Oh, right.” Jeremy pushed it away.

  “I think you can put it down now,” Luke said, but Jeremy shook his head and kept the candle steady. He stared raptly at the fire except for quick glances toward Luke, like there was something he was watching for or studying.

  A hot blue core bloomed at the center of the flame. Luke reached to pull Jeremy back as the fire sparked and popped, but Jeremy was already hopping forward, whispering over his candle with his face gone hard and sharp again. The salt held, and the flame settled.

  Camille caught Luke’s eye and tapped under her chin. His jaw had dropped. He snapped it closed and said, “That was slick.”

  Jeremy glanced up, smiling quickly, and hunched back over the candle. “It’s… nothing, really.”

  Luke would have liked to know how that worked, but he could tell a brush-off when he got one. Instead, he turned back to the flame and let himself get entranced. It was easy to gaze at the still flame inside the salt, to be drawn into it. Its glow got brighter as the shadows in the alley grew deeper with the turning sun. Luke was so dazed he might have been asleep on his feet, until a lilting voice cracked the silence. “Look at you, hanging out with the trash!” Max called.

  Chapter Four

  Jeremy went from feeling underdressed to seriously grubby. Sweat stuck his hair to his nape and his T-shirt to the middle of his back, and this boy was fresh from an air-conditioned car. Max was shorter than Jeremy but built more like a grown-up, wider in the shoulders than the hips, and he had yellow-blond hair shaved close in the back and long over his eyes.

  Jeremy knew him from Instagram, too, a ghost who flitted through Luke’s pictures. The first time Jeremy had clicked through to Max’s profile, he’d thought Max was famous—there were lots of pictures of him singing on stages, and other singers and concerts—but it seemed he was just more interesting than Jeremy.

  Luke greeted Max with an open arm and his name. It took him a long time to get through three letters, Mmmmax. If anybody said Jeremy’s name like that, he’d probably immolate. Max only dimpled and tucked himself under Luke’s arm.

  Camille scoffed quietly. “Sorry about them.”

  Jeremy’s heart was loud in his ears, each beat ripping a gap between his head and the alley. Parsing comments on social media was a whole different thing than seeing Luke put his hand on a boy’s hip to squeeze him close.

  “I can’t stay. I have a thing,” Max said brightly. “But I thought I’d come see the magic.”

  Luke’s face did something terrible, melting with hurt and then turning rock-hard to cover it up. Camille made another little scoff.

  Max, though, had his eyes on the pillar of strange fire.

  Luke turned his attention there, too. “Jeremy brought us a couple of curse bags to burn.”

  “Ah, hey. I’m Max.” The boy twisted under Luke’s arm, a hand half-extended, but eyed the candle Jeremy held and pulled back. “Were you cursed, too?”

  “No, no,” Luke said before Jeremy could answer. “His family does magic.” He caught Jeremy’s eye. “Max is a normal. We met when I uncrossed his family.”

  “A normal!” Max shoved into Luke’s side. “You are the most basic, you can’t talk.” There was a joking quality to his voice, but it didn’t land. Ice radiated off Camille, and Luke’s forehead crumpled.

  Jeremy glanced down the alley, itching to flee. Luckily, the spell shattered, and the fire deflated, billowing more smoke than flame as the cloth caught.

  “Careful.” Luke stepped back, pulling Max. “You don’t want burning cayenne in your eyes.”

  “Eww,” Max said.

  Jeremy licked his fingers and pinched out the candle. “I think that’s it. Thank you for your help.”

  “No problem.” Luke took the candle back.

  “Can I walk you to the street?” Camille asked. Jeremy let her lead him down the alley, though he could get himself back to the sidewalk. Did he seem so helpless? He’d done powerful magic for them—he’d really helped that ritual. Luke had barely even noticed, preoccupied with beautiful Max coming over to be mean to him.

  As soon as they were away, Camille started whispering again. “I’m sorry about that. He’s a little brat, but Luke is obsessed with him. We didn’t mean to be rude.”

  Jeremy’s chest felt tight, like he’d been running all afternoon instead of standing still. “It’s okay. I’m not—I can talk to people, too.”

  That had come out weird. Camille leaned away, taken aback. “No, of course. Anyway, thank you.”

  Jeremy nodded. “You, too.”

  He burst onto the sidewalk like he’d escaped there. He was never going to understand it, so he turned his attention away, to the whole evening he had to himself. He inhaled the scent of tar from another neighborhood’s street. Maybe he would get dinner somewhere on the way home. Maybe he’d stop at the comic shop. Maybe—

  Maybe that sheet of warm, creamy white gleaming in the syrupy orange of the low sun was a Bentley Flying Spur, and maybe loads of people in Luke’s neighborhood drove those. Or maybe not.

  Katya stepped out of the driver’s seat and around the front. She was professional in a pressed uniform and tight bun, but she threw an arm around Jeremy as she opened the door for him.

  Alexei, waiting in the back seat, slipped his phone into his jacket and clapped his hands. “Your majesty! We’ve been awaiting your report.”

  “It was fine.” Jeremy buckled in as Katya pulled the car into the road. “Camille made some notes for you about the bags, and Luke burned them. Oh, and I met his boyfriend.”

  “Bullshit.” Alexei nudged Jeremy’s arm, his face already lighting up in anticipation of a story. Teaching him Instagram had been the worst mistake of Jeremy’s life.

  “Mmmmax.” Jeremy shoved back. It was probably a lie—even he knew enough to know the quick, raw hurt on Luke’s face wasn’t how it was supposed to be—
but maybe it would shut Alexei up.

  Alexei twisted in his seat like he might be able to see through walls into the Melnyks’ alley. “Well, that’s great, then.”

  That sounded like a rabbit hole to some patented Alexei manipulation, so Jeremy ignored it. Because he’d said boyfriend out loud, he imagined it—the way Max’s body had tucked into Luke’s side—except in his secret mind, Jeremy imagined himself there. Luke was made of broad, sturdy squares, handsome in the effortless way of old movie stars, and there were few things in Jeremy’s small life he liked better than looking at him.

  The fantasy had gone sour—something was lost. It was fun to imagine Luke wanting him for real, not himself in someone else’s place.

  Though no one was asking, Alexei elaborated. “He’s definitely queer, open to dating. You’re practically in.”

  He was practically invisible. Jeremy didn’t answer, so Katya said, “Get a life.”

  “I have a life,” Alexei said, broadly suggesting other individuals in the car did not. Jeremy winced. As if he wouldn’t love a life like Max’s—concerts and parties and boys. Getting attention from someone as smart and talented as Luke Melnyk wasn’t even the most interesting part of Max’s day. Jeremy wasn’t allowed to have all that, staying safe behind the part of himself that was too scared to try.

  “Lay off,” Katya said. “The Melnyk kid has a boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend.” Disgust dripped off Alexei’s words. “Who cares about that? Not some fifteen-year-old.”

  “Boundaries, Alexei,” Katya said.

  “Oh, that wasn’t that bad.”

  “I’m seventeen,” Jeremy said.

  “Surely not.” Alexei squinted like Jeremy might grow an extra limb.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes.

  “Well, the young prince wants him,” Alexei said. “And a Kovrov gets what a Kovrov wants.”

  Katya’s voice dropped an octave. “Boundaries, Alexei.”

  Alexei harrumphed. Jeremy slouched against the window. He’d stared too long once or twice, and Alexei was playing bored king, moving people around like chess pieces. Even Alexei and Katya talking about him like this made Jeremy want to melt into the car. If Luke figured it out, Jeremy would just expire. “I know you wanted a story, but I don’t have one. We see them once every six months, and it’s always awkward, and he doesn’t like me. It’s not going to happen, so just let it go.”