We finally stepped through the portal together, which delivered us into the hall outside Gwydion's magical artifact collection. Beyond the huge wooden doors carved with an image of the world-tree, we could already hear Gil and Gwydion bickering again. We stood still for a long moment, both of us still gathering ourselves, shaking off the high emotions like we could just leave them behind on the other side of the portal.

"That guy," Ethan said. "You said his name was Gwydion?"

I nodded. Ethan looked at the doors, frowning.

"He sure is something," Ethan said, shaking his head.

"At least he's helpful," I said with a shrug. "And his collection is pretty amazing."

"Hot too," Ethan said, giving me a sideways glance. I looked back at him and laughed under my breath.

"Yeah," I admitted. "Yeah, he's pretty hot."

Ethan grinned, a weary expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. But he was trying.

"You watch a lot of British TV don't you?"

I blew a frustrated breath out through my nose at his obvious amusement.

"One, yes," I admitted. "Two, shut up. Three, do not tell Cole. I would never hear the end of it."

He chuckled, low and quiet, but I was glad to cheer him up at least a little. That didn't stop me from being embarrassed though.

"Come on," I complained, despite my smile. "I had a long Jane Austen phase, okay? Regency romance is a huge industry!"

He was still laughing, shaking his head as he trailed off.

"You interested in him?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I was into him when I thought he was a lawyer. That crashed and burned a little bit when I found out he was responsible for the candle thing. But he is helping with your curse, and he didn't strand me in the weird upside-down fairy land when he could have, so he seems basically decent. I'm still on the fence. And we probably have bigger things to worry about anyway."

"Just in case," Ethan said with a shrug. "Same rules as Cole. Be safe, let me know. Otherwise, he's fair game. Although, dating the Fae is probably bad news. I don't know. We'll have to ask Cole and his new book."

"You after him too?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. He shook his head, wrinkling his nose.

"Not really my type. I was more into the Hardy Boys than Jane Austen." He gave me a mischievous look, and I gave him a playful punch in the arm.

The conversation we'd had in the alley still hurt, but something about this easy, goofy conversation did a lot to set me at ease. Just knowing we could still joke this way. That things hadn't changed. At least not yet.

The volume of the arguing in the other room spiked, and I winced.

"If I do decide to date him, remind me not to piss him off," I muttered.

I gave myself a little shake to clear out the last of the lingering awfulness. Things were going to be okay. We'd fix the curse. We'd stop Aethon. We'd live happily ever after in a big house with a dog. I was going to make that happen, no matter what. With any luck, a little of Rosamunde Tzarnavaras's stubbornness had made it through the generations to me.

"I'm going to look for a bathroom," I said, shaking my head as the sound of arguing got louder again. It sounded like Gil was attempting to drown Gwydion out by singing. Or Gwydion was trying to drown out Gil's singing with swearing. "I'm a mess."

"You're beautiful," Ethan assured me. His voice was subdued, but he already had his smile back in place. The raw, vulnerable pain he'd shown me in the alley was already vanishing behind walls so well built I hadn't even realized they were there. "I'm going to look for Cole. I need to... tell him the plan. In case you don't want to keep up your side of the agreement."

He grinned, though it didn't reach his eyes, and tweaked my nose playfully. I tried to smile back at him, but it was a weak attempt with mascara running down my face.

He headed off down the hall, and I went the opposite direction. I hadn't gone far before I realized how stupid a decision that had been. Gwydion's house seemed to be pretty much endless, and the subtly unreal geometry of its architecture seemed to have been lifted directly from a Kubric film. I passed a statue of a woman with a vase and went down a long hall, turned right four times, and ended up on a balcony. Confused, I turned around and went back down the same hall, made the same four turns, and landed in a ballroom. Windows on interior walls showed different landscapes from windows a foot away from them on the same wall. I climbed four flights of stairs before I realized it was the same flight, somehow not getting any higher and ending at the first landing again every time. And none of the hundreds of doors I must have looked through had a single God damn bathroom.

Eventually, I heard voices and followed them eagerly, more so when I recognized them as Ethan and Cole.

"So, what do you want from me?"

"Nothing, Cole, Jesus. I just want you to… to understand."

I slowed down abruptly at the volume and accusatory tone of Cole's voice, realizing I was walking up on a private conversation. They were in a small room off one of the impossible stair cases, the door ajar. I hesitated outside it.

"To understand what exactly?" Cole said, his voice sharp, defensive. "I don't know you. You're just Vexa's pet werewolf to me, alright?"

There was a long moment of silence, and I could almost see Ethan's wince. I heard him take a deep breath.

"You don't need to push me away," he said slowly. "I'm… probably not going to be around that much longer anyway. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to take anything from you. You don't need to try and keep me at arm's length. I'll keep my distance on my own, if that's what you want. I won't even speak to you again after this if you want."

"I fucking wish."

"Fine. Fine, I won't speak another word to you after this unless you talk to me first. I just— After this morning, what I said at breakfast, I just wanted to be sure you didn't misunderstand—"

"Misunderstand you and your girlfriend hitting on me?" Cole laughed, the sound harsh as the cawing of crows. "Don't flatter yourself. It's not the first time I've been badly invited to a threesome."

"That's not— it wasn't—"

"What? Are you backpedaling then? Worried I might actually take you up on it so you needed to get your no homos in? You might as well stop now if that's the case because trust me, I wasn't interested anyway."

"Would you just listen?" Ethan said, loud enough to make me jump and Cole fall silent. I took a step away from the door. This was a very private conversation, and I'd really been listening too long already. "I don't… I don't have that much longer, alright? I can't fix what's wrong with me. I've tried."

There was a long moment, punctuated by nothing but the creak of springs in a sofa as someone sat down.

"You figured out what your curse is about, huh?" Cole guessed, his voice quieter, less defensive. "Dude, I could have told you it was that five minutes after meeting you."

"Then you know why I can't break the curse."

Silence hung for a moment, and I retreated another step, worry about Ethan warring with my better senses.

"So, what do you want?" Cole asked again, wary.

I heard Ethan sigh. "I just want to make the time I have left as good as I can. Make things right for Vexa. Try to have as few regrets as I can manage."

"I'm not going to—"

"I know. I know. I'm not asking you to. But you're the first time I've— the first person I've—" He paused, a harsh frustrated breath as he tried to find his words. "I just wanted you to know it wasn't a joke. Or an invitation to a threesome. I'm probably not going to be hitting the dating scene any time soon, so you'll probably be the only one I ever, you know, ask. I just wanted it to be— You know, it's the one time I really gave it a shot, even if it was stupid and pointless and I just— I just wanted you to take it seriously."

My heart twisted in my chest, pity and grief making me want to burst into the room and hug Ethan, or slap him and tell him to stop planning for the worst, to stop giving up before we've even tried. But instead, I stood where I was, feeling guilty for eavesdropping on top of everything else, while the silence lingered, a minute ticking past without so much as creak of the sofa.

"So, you've really never even hit on a guy before?" Cole asked at last, breaking the silence. I assumed from the quiet that Ethan had nodded. "Well, that explains why you're so bad at it anyway."

A quiet, stifled half laugh.

"Yeah, sorry. Lack of experience."

"I'd give you some tips, but chances that you'd get to use them seem pretty slim."

"No shit."

Another stretch of silence.

"So, who was your first crush?" Cole asked out of nowhere. "You know what I mean."

"You'll think it's stupid," Ethan said after a moment, his voice almost too quiet to hear.

"Yeah, probably. First crushes are always dumb."

"You know that old Hercules show?"

"Kevin Sorbo?"

"I told you it was stupid."

"Ah, I can't say shit. Mine was probably worse."

"Don't hold out on me. I told you mine."

"You're all depressed and quiet till you see a chance to embarrass me, huh? Fine. James Marsters. You know, from Buffy."

"I feel like I should have seen that coming."

"Fuck you."

"Somehow I figured you for more of an Angel guy."

"Fuck you!"

Ethan laughed, the first real laugh I'd heard from him since learning about the curse. Cole laughed too, more subdued, embarrassed. "Fucking Angel. Do I seriously look like an Angel fan? Don't answer that."

I finally remembered how to move my legs and slipped away as they continued talking about nineties cult TV shows. I'd tell Ethan I'd heard them later. Hopefully he wouldn't be too upset. Despite the small breach of trust, I was glad I'd heard them. I didn't want Ethan to have regrets either. I was too upset myself, too tangled up in all of this, to comfort Ethan the way he needed. And obviously Cole shared one thing with Ethan that I never could. I could do my best to understand his sexuality and support him, but I'd never really be able to see it from his perspective or relate to it the way another bisexual man could.

That stung a little to think about, that Cole had this connection to Ethan that was completely out of my reach. Jealousy gnawed at me for a minute before I squashed it down. I had a connection with Cole that Ethan didn't have too, since we were both necromancers. And I was glad Ethan had someone he could share that part of his life with, especially since it was clearly such a sore spot for him. I'd talk about it with Ethan later. Even if I knew being jealous was stupid and wasn't going to act on it, it was never a good idea to ignore that kind of thing.

I'd learned that the hard way from previous boyfriends. I'd had a few with all the communication skills of particularly terse cinderblock. When you didn't talk things out, minor annoyances and anxieties compounded into major resentment and irrational insecurity. It was much better to address things immediately. Even if there weren't really any steps that could be taken to 'fix' whatever the issue was, just being understood by your partner and knowing they were aware of it helped a lot. Like this one time I—

I stopped walking abruptly, realizing I was back on the damn repeating staircase. Or another one of the stupid things, as there seemed to be several. While I was busy patting myself on the back for my excellent relationship skills, I'd managed to get completely lost in this damn magic labyrinth of a house again. I fully expected a smug and bedazzled Gwydion to pop out from behind a corner in iridescent tights any minute, practicing his contact juggling and accompanied by a chorus of baby stealing puppets.

Irritated by my own stupidity (Why didn't I just stay near Ethan and Cole? How did Ethan find Cole in this M.C. Escher bullshit anyway?) I reached for a little of great grandma Rosamunde's stubbornness and kept going. I'd never find my way back to the room where Ethan and Cole were, so I could only go forward. Ethan had probably used his magic werewolf nose to track Cole, now that I thought about it. Why the hell had we split up?

I discovered something worse than the hall that turned right four times. Instead of completing a square, it dumped you in a different impossible room every time you walked down it. It was a sparsely decorated hall that turned both right and left at least five times apiece, then absurdly, impossibly, infuriatingly, ended with a big blue door with a brass demon head knocker. The same big blue door with the brass demon head knocker I'd entered the hall from to begin with. Except the room I'd entered the hall from originally was no longer behind me. It was just more hall.

I sensed that, somehow, just possibly, I had fucked up.