“And just where do you think you’re sneaking off to?” Elias purred, dropping from the head of a carved green dragon.

Alex sighed loudly. “You disappear for ages, without a word, and yet you show up again at the most inopportune moments. I don’t know how you do it—you’re like the world’s most irritating ninja.”

Elias cackled. “I’m far stealthier than any ninja, trust me. And I come and go as I please; I am beholden to no one.”

“Well, I wish you’d be one or the other—here or not. That is all I ask,” Alex remarked, sitting down on the wooden ledge, knowing he was going to be there for the long haul. Walking below, in their crisp uniforms, was a band of soldiers who had chosen that exact spot, directly underneath Alex, to stop and have a lewd discussion. He could make out a few words, and they made him blush—far too rude for his ears.

Elias, however, had coiled downward to get a better eavesdropping position. His teeth flashed in a wolfish grin.

“Elias!” Alex hissed.

The shadow-man slunk back upward. “Spoilsport,” he teased.

“I presume you came to bother me for a reason?” Alex whispered, careful not to alert the bawdy men below to his presence.

“It’s more that I came to stop you for a reason,” said the shadow-man, shrugging his vaporous shoulders.

Alex frowned. “Stop me from doing what?”

“Now, you know I’m the last person on this planet who would seek to prevent you from delving into dark and delicious secrets, but on this occasion, I must clamber to the moral high ground. An unfamiliar spot for me, I’m sure you’ll agree, but nevertheless I find myself standing here.” Elias sighed. “You must heed the words of Hadrian on this occasion. It will do you no good to go sniffing out these… half-people, shall we call them?”

“I’m not sure that’s a polite term for them,” Alex remarked, raising a stern eyebrow.

Elias flashed a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. “I says it how I sees it.”

“Why shouldn’t I go looking?” Alex asked, moving the subject away from Elias’s lack of political correctness.

“They won’t do anyone any good,” the shadow-man said simply. “It’s worse than you’ve imagined. I should know—that’s where I’ve been all this time. You think I’d just run off and leave poor baby Alex alone, if I didn’t have a good reason? Perhaps you don’t know me at all.” He scoffed, feigning hurt.

“How is it worse than I imagined? You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Alex retorted, only to pause as Elias began to laugh. Did Elias know what he was thinking, or could he only make visual suggestions? Either way, Alex wasn’t happy about the shadow-man messing about in his mind. “Which reminds me, stay out of my head! That last one hurt—plus, I could have fallen.”

Elias grinned. “And I would have caught you!”

“Oh, yeah, I forget you’re not as incapable as you let on.” Alex glared, his mind flitting back to the half-formed vision of Elias carrying Ellabell toward the mountain, with the intent of leaving her to the wolves.

Elias had the decency to look ashamed. “Water under the bridge?” he asked, his voice comically high.

“Jury is still out,” Alex muttered, stifling a laugh. “Anyway, what’s wrong with the… victims?”

Elias visibly shuddered. “What isn’t wrong with them? To look at them, you’d think they were fine, but there’s a creepy blank stare that a lot of them have. I kept to the shadows, as I am prone to doing, but I swear most of them could sense me. A couple even tried to start up a conversation, but I was having none of it,” he said, inspecting the shadows where his fingernails should have been. “They’re broken… That’s the only way I can put it. They are damaged inside, wandering around like zombies.” Holding out his wispy arms, Elias began to do a humorous rendition of “Thriller,” stalking this way and that, getting himself distracted as per usual.

“Are none of them healthy?”

Elias let out a bored sigh. “Depends what you mean by ‘healthy.’ They can walk and talk, but they’re like ghosts inside. Sad little spirits trying to find something that has been taken away.”

It reminded Alex of the spirits he’d encountered in the vault, with their sad voices and fractured memories. Perhaps that’s what happened to a person if the extraction process went too far, taking them across the line between alive and dead.

“Aren’t you technically one of them?” Alex asked.

Elias made a rude sound. “How dare you! I am fully functioning, thank you very much. I might not be solid, but I have all my faculties about me still. There are no missing pieces here… except for the little bit you stole, but I can do without it for a while, just as long as you are near,” he said, batting eyelashes that didn’t exist.

“How come you’re not a zombie?”

“Because I didn’t have the same thing done to me,” Elias explained. “The spell used on me was a dark, vicious, nasty little thing, intended to create a supernatural being that could...” He trailed off, wincing, a look of sudden panic appearing on his face. For a moment, he went very still, as if expecting something bad to happen. Even Alex felt tense, watching the shadow-man frozen to the spot, awaiting a zap of light or a snap of electricity that would drag him away from the mortal world for good.

“Did you say too much?” Alex asked quietly.

Elias raised a vaporous finger to his lips, and the minutes ticked by in complete silence. Neither Alex nor the shadow-man dared break the tension, listening instead to the rustle of the treetops and the guttural laughter of the soldiers, way below.

After enough time had passed, Elias swept his hand across his starry forehead. “Phew! That was a close call! I have got to learn to keep this trap shut!” he said, chastising himself with a slap to the wrist.

“Maybe you can’t get punished while I’m carrying a pesky bit of your soul?” Alex suggested. It was a thought that had been bothering him for a while, especially once he had seen Elias moving so easily in the daylight, which he hadn’t been able to do before. Something had changed, and it had all started with the tearing off of the shadow-man’s soul. Somehow, Alex had made Elias hardier, less vulnerable to the vengeance of whatever otherworldly overlords he served.

The shadow-man seemed intrigued by this idea. “Could be… Hmm… Very interesting,” he remarked, tapping his chin silently. “Anyway, the long and short of it is, it was a different spell. I’m not saying where that spell might be, but if you really wanted to find it, I’m sure it would be easy,” the shadow-man said, making a point of opening his impossibly black eyes wide, to ensure Alex understood what he was saying without actually having to say it.

“Is it in the Book of Jupiter?” Alex prompted.

“Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t,” Elias replied.

Alex frowned. “But I asked a direct question.”

“Not strictly related to what you need to know, though,” Elias whispered.

“Are you going to be hanging around from now on?” Alex asked, secretly hoping the answer might be yes. If they were going to enter the fray, they would need somebody like Elias on their side, who could do things none of them could do, and could taunt the Head better than anyone else.

Elias grinned. “Perhaps I may, perhaps I may not.”

“Well, whatever you do, I think we might need you. If we don’t have any hope of greater numbers, we’ll need power, and you seem to have it in abundance, as long as you’re not saying something you shouldn’t,” Alex joked, deciding to be truthful.

The shadow-man looked taken aback for a moment, his gaze settling on Alex in the most perturbing manner. Elias almost seemed moved by what Alex had said, and Alex fought the urge to take back his compliments.

Alex grinned awkwardly. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

“Very well then,” said Elias, with no hint of sarcasm in his voice. “If you think you will need me, I will be there. You forget… and sometimes I forget too, but my job is to protect you as best I can, and I will uphold that task until the moment you no longer require my help,” he added, with uncharacteristic solemnity.

Alex smiled. “Thank you, Elias.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to catch the end of this conversation.” He flashed his teeth in a comical grin before slithering down the wall of the pagoda toward the congregated soldiers standing below, their laughter drifting upward.

With Elias’s attention diverted, Alex clambered back up through the window of the chamber. It was a tight squeeze, but he managed it, collapsing in a heap on the low divan that had been laid out for him. The room was pitch black, the torches blown out.

“Where have you been?” Ellabell’s voice pierced the darkness.

Alex grimaced. “If I said nowhere, would you believe me?”

Lighting a match that illuminated her face for a brief instant, the curly-haired girl lit one of the lamps that hung from the walls. A dangerous place to put a naked flame, so close to a structure built from wood, but so far nothing had gone up in flames, aside from Alex’s hopes.

“That would depend how you felt about lying to me,” she countered, fully illuminated now, as the lamp bathed the room in a soft glow.

“Awful,” Alex admitted.

Ellabell smiled. “Good. I’m glad. I know it’s none of my business, but I knocked and you didn’t answer. I shouldn’t have pried, but I opened the door and saw you weren’t here. You can’t just go running off without telling anyone. For all I knew, you could have been snatched by someone, or worse. It’s happened before,” she murmured, dropping her gaze to the floor. It wasn’t fast enough—Alex caught a glimpse of pain flashing across her eyes. Before he could offer any words of comfort, she continued. “There’s a price on your head, Alex, whether you like it or not, and you have to be conscious of that when you make these decisions. It’s like everyone keeps saying—the stakes are so high now, and if one of us goes missing, there’s no guarantee they’ll return safely.”

Alex walked toward Ellabell, holding out his hands for hers. With a shy smile, she reached out, interlacing her fingers with his.

“I didn’t go to the cave,” he assured her, knowing what she was thinking.

“I didn’t say you did,” she murmured as he pulled her to him in a tight embrace.

It had been a long while since they had been able to snatch a moment alone together, and it felt wonderful to have her so close. After the events at Kingstone, and the trepidation he’d felt leaving her there, not even knowing she’d have to deal with the chaos that had ensued, he was just glad to hold her again. At every turn, he was reminded how treacherous the magical world could be. And she was right, the stakes were improbably high now, and the moment for action would soon be upon them. Two days would go by in an instant, and then… who knew if any of them would come back in one piece? There had never been a guarantee. As much as Alex pined to see home and his mother again, he knew there was a decent chance he might never set foot in the ordinary world again, let alone see his mother’s face once more. He had chosen this path—the only thing left to do was walk it.

He kissed her hair gently, a freshly washed, jasmine-like scent filling his nose. “I saw Elias—he stopped me,” he explained.

She pulled back to look at him. “Elias stopped you?”

Alex nodded. “He said the survivors of Falleaf won’t be of any use to us. They’re… broken, to use his word. I think Hadrian might’ve been right; they aren’t strong enough to join our ranks, and I don’t think I’d feel right asking. Not now.”

“Those poor things,” Ellabell whispered, kissing Alex’s shoulder.

“We’ll free them soon enough,” Alex murmured, unwilling to listen to the niggling voice in the back of his head that said otherwise. There was still ample time for them to fail.

Ellabell smiled against his shirt. “Well, I’m off to bed. We’ve got a big day of planning ahead of us tomorrow,” she said, pulling away from Alex’s arms.

“Could I be cheeky and ask for a goodnight kiss?” he asked, locking eyes with her. She smiled gleefully, and Alex wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a more beautiful sight than her standing there, smiling at him in the romantic glow of the lamplight.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she whispered, and their lips met in a tender kiss.

Just for that one moment, that joyful bubble of frozen time, everything seemed right with the world. With Ellabell in his arms, his mind consumed by her, he had no room to think of vengeful royals, or cannibalistic silver mist, or the intricacies of a spell in which one false move signaled failure. It was just him and her, feeling the heartwarming glow of first love.