THE DOOR CLOSED behind Jo and Eslar with the echo of a hiss, drowned out by the beeping, talking, and general buzz of the hospital.

“Huh.” Jo made the soft noise of appreciation while glancing behind them at what was now, ironically, another supply closet.

“What?” She hadn’t expected him to hear.

“Oh, sorry, just. . .” Jo looked around herself, at the men and women bounding by without so much as an acknowledgment in their direction. “It’s almost getting normal. Appearing out of nowhere, being nowhere. . . It’s less disorienting to use the Door now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Nothing in his voice indicated anything glad.

“How long did it take you?” They didn’t have time for small talk, a voice in her mind scolded.

“Not long. I came from the Age of Magic.” He reached up a hand and touched the tip of his long ear, as if for emphasis. “And it was far easier for me, after my entire race was eliminated,” Eslar murmured, drawing every ounce of Jo’s attention. She wanted to ask, to pry, but Wayne’s words were in her head again. Don’t ask the others about their wishes. It seemed the entirety of the Society was predicated on darkness and loss, and now really wasn’t the time anyway. “We should get moving.”

“We should,” Jo agreed, and let the idea of Eslar’s history go, for now. Perhaps forever. There was something too grim there. Something that may never be worth dredging up for all the curiosity in the world, regardless if that curiosity surrounded being friends with an actual elf.

“What do you need?”

“Access to a computer—” Jo stopped herself, realizing an explanation was likely to take longer. “I can find it myself. What do you need?”

“I know where the patient is already.” He’d already cased the place. It made sense, given the information he’d fed her before.

“Show me?”

Eslar nodded and started down the hall.

With their watches inactive, they were unknown guests in the research hospital’s infectious disease ward. Jo kept an eye on the different halls, numbers, and names, all of which were aesthetically identical otherwise. Several halls down from where they entered, one right, one left, and they stood before a door that had a touch screen outside displaying the name KELLER.

“This is him?” Jo asked, even though she already knew the answer. She knew far more about this man than anyone should.

Eslar merely nodded, leading them into the room and to the other side of the curtain partition that blocked off the patient from the medical equipment and world beyond.

The man in the bed, Mr. Keller, was a frail and skeletal form. He’d lost all his hair, from drugs or therapy, and had bruises along his arm leading to the protruding IV taped beneath the curve of his elbow. A monitor beeped next to him, breathing apparatuses sighed, and there were no other forms of life surrounding the terminal man.

Suddenly, it was as if the breathing machine was functioning for both her and him. Her lungs seemed to only fill in time with the slow and steady motion of the pump. Her heart only beat with the bright blue line of the EKG machine.

“Are you all right?” Eslar asked, softly.

She felt him there, at her side. A strong and stable presence when she otherwise had none. When she had been lost to the gravity of what they were about to do.

“The last time I was in a hospital. . . my grandmother was sick,” Jo whispered. Eslar remained silent, letting her ramble. “They thought she was going to die. . . But she didn’t, not then. She was such a strong healer, but not even she could fight that. I watched her waste away under my mother’s care for nearly a decade before she finally succumbed to the cancer that was eating her alive.”

If she had known about the Society, would she have wished for her grandmother’s health? She sacrificed herself for Yuusuke, but not her own flesh and blood?

“There aren’t enough wishes in the world to save everyone.”

Jo reluctantly admitted that she now understood why Snow hadn’t wanted her in the field prematurely. She understood why Wayne had cautioned her against trying to help the world outside of sanctioned wishes.

This was a different sort of heavy than weighing one’s own mortality. This was weighing one’s choices against the fate of the world, and wondering if you measured up enough to be worth the sack of flesh you were given at birth.

This was the thing that would fully detach her from the world. Because if she felt she was a part of it still, then she would defend it. And if she tried to defend it, the futility of it would drive her to madness.

“There are not,” Eslar said coolly. She wished he’d touch her, support her, comfort her; everything felt so shaky. “But wishes never really save anyone.”

Instead of walking toward her, he walked toward the patient. The long-haired elf appeared in Jo’s field of vision as he stood at Keller’s bedside, staring down at the mortal who seemed to be mere minutes from death.

“Only the living can make a difference. If you breathe, you have the chance to save the world. Not through a wish, but through the actions and infinite possibilities you create.”

Jo swallowed hard. She was fairly certain Eslar wasn’t trying to make her feel bad. But he was suddenly calling into question every choice she had ever made in life, every action taken thanks to the privilege of being able to draw breath.

“We help the living. We help move the needle, Jo. But the rest is up to the hands that still have warmth.”

She looked down at her own palms. They’d always been cold—icy from server rooms and too many hours outstretched and flying across a keyboard with machine-like precision. They’d been cold from birth, her mother had joked. Perhaps it was her magic that ran cold.

Maybe this was what she’d been destined for all along.

Jo balled her hands into fists. “I know what I need to do,” she reassured Eslar. “I’m not dissuaded.”

“Good.” He nodded. “I knew you would be up to the task.”

“How?” she whispered.

Eslar chuckled and shook his head. “Call it intuition, or experience. . . for whatever that’s worth from my lost time. Women can create life. Women can tend the fires of the hearth and fight in the wars to defend them. I never had a doubt in you from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her, and Jo couldn’t handle it. “Now you’re just flattering me,” she joked, trying to diffuse the situation. “You already had my help with the bribe. Didn’t need to butter me up too.”

“I know I didn’t. And it was more honey than butter.” Jo honestly couldn’t tell if Eslar was trying to be coy. Everything he ever said had that same matter-of-fact tone.

“Well, I’m going to go find a computer and see if my scripts are ready.” Jo started for the door.

“I’ll wait here until you return. When you do, I’ll heal this man. We’re down to hours left. . . So, hurry back.”

“I will,” Jo said without so much as a second glance. She didn’t need to be reminded of the stakes, even if she didn’t fully understand them. Then again, she never really knew what the stakes were for her jobs. She never grasped how a failure would affect her employers. Or whom a success would hurt.

All she ever needed to know was what she had to do next. As long as she knew that, she could keep moving forward.

Jo strode out of the hospital room, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie all the way down, and starting for a nurse’s station she’d seen on the way there.