She hesitated a moment before answering. “He is.”

My breath stilled. My lips parted, but I didn’t speak.

“That’s what I came here to tell you,” Mom said. “He called Esther, to warn her what had happened. And it seems that whatever the Beneath did to unseal Verrick, it severed the link with Adrian. Resealing isn’t an option.”

“Is he”—it took me a moment to get the sentence out—“is he coming back here?”

Mom shook her head. “Not in the near term. Esther decided it wasn’t safe, and for once I agree with her. His brother, Elliott, is flying to New York to stay with him. He’s going to have a bit of an adjustment period, I’m afraid.”

Like waking from a seventeen-year coma. Everything he’d known about the world had altered. Nearly half his life had passed without him even feeling it, days and hours just evaporating into the wide, open air.

But he was unsealed. His heart would no longer sleep. My father had returned.

Leon’s parents never would.

I shoved the thought away, looking at Mom. “What are you going to do about Gideon?” I asked.

She sighed again, rubbing her forehead with one hand. “Honey…”

I crossed my arms. “Esther said to kill him, didn’t she?”

“Believe it or not, Esther didn’t venture an opinion.”

“She probably just took it for granted that you would kill him.”

“I may not have a choice.”

“But he’s not just Verrick anymore,” I insisted. “I know he isn’t. I felt it. He’s been so afraid, Mom. He doesn’t want to be Verrick at all. There has to be some other way.”

I leaned back against my wall and turned toward the window, where outside the sky had gone milky and gray in the dusk. Gideon was out there, somewhere. I knew he was. And there would be some way to bring him back. I just had to find it.

When Gideon and I were eleven years old, we’d gotten into our first (and only) major fight.

Thinking back, I couldn’t quite remember the cause of it, but the fight had been my doing; I knew that much. Gideon never could hold a grudge. There had been an argument, and then some name calling, and then finally I’d punched him in the stomach—and watched in horror as his legs buckled and he toppled to the ground. It had startled me almost as much as it startled him. I wasn’t certain what I’d intended, but seeing him there in the grass, gaping at me as he wheezed in air, had felt like a kick to my own stomach. I’d felt my cheeks burning. Instead of apologizing, I’d fled. Even now, years later, I could see that bewildered look in his eyes, like he couldn’t quite understand what had occurred.

Mom and Gram had told me to just apologize. They’d made chiding remarks about how my temper was its own punishment, and that I was only making myself miserable—but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to Gideon. For an entire week, I’d pretended he didn’t exist.

Then, one afternoon, Gideon had simply shown up at my house like nothing was wrong. He hadn’t even realized we were still in a fight—or that we were as far as I was concerned. He was over it and assumed I was as well. He’d invited me to some family outing and then asked if we had any ice cream. And that had been that.

Part of me kept hoping that was what would happen now. I’d step outside my house and find him there, waiting out in the yard, grinning his usual grin and wondering why it was that I looked so upset. It would all have been a misunderstanding, an argument easily forgotten.

It didn’t happen, of course.

Instead, the following afternoon, Gideon’s mother called to ask if I’d had any contact from him. They’d arrived home yesterday to find Gideon gone, she said. He hadn’t answered his phone, and he hadn’t returned. One of the neighbors thought they might have seen my car there yesterday morning. I told her I’d stopped by to see him, but the house had been empty. I asked her to tell me if she heard from him.

The Guardians were concerned that she would hear from him, I learned. Mom told me the Guardians had set up surveillance on Gideon’s house. As a precaution. And for the family’s protection.

“He wouldn’t hurt his family,” I insisted.

“Gideon wouldn’t,” Mom said. “Verrick might. I know you want to believe that Gideon still exists, but even if he does, at this point, which side of him is stronger is a complete unknown.”

I hadn’t heard from Leon. When I tried calling, it went straight to voice mail. He didn’t answer my texts. I considered just showing up at his apartment, but I didn’t want to make matters worse—and anyway, he could disappear whenever he wanted to. The ability to teleport gave him the perfect means of avoiding me.

“Just give him time,” Mom said.

There weren’t any sightings of Gideon or Shane over the next few days. Though the Guardians were on alert, and I knew Mickey was sending Mom any suspicious reports, both of them appeared to be lying low.

Then, Tuesday night, I arrived home from martial arts—where I’d gone in an attempt to clear my head—to find Tink sitting on my porch.

She was perched on the top step, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her hands. She glanced up when she saw me but otherwise didn’t move.

“How did you get here?” I asked, looking around and not seeing her car.

“I walked.”

“From your apartment?” Though it wasn’t precisely on the moon, it wasn’t what I’d normally have considered walking distance—especially since Tink was wearing flip-flops. Her short hair had been blown into whorls by the wind. There was a smudge of dirt on her yellow sundress.

“I wasn’t really intending to,” she said. “I just found myself here. If you want to give me a ride home, I won’t complain.”

I sat down beside her on the steps. The light was fading in the west, and little moths fluttered around us. Tink lowered her hand to flick a June bug off the porch, sending it sailing into the yard. She let out a soft sigh.

“You heard about Gideon,” I said. Not a question.

“You knew,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “Believe me. I didn’t even want to know. Please don’t be angry. I can’t have you mad at me, too.”

She was quiet a long time. She wrapped her arms around her knees—then sat up, straightening her shoulders. “Well, what are we doing about it? What’s our plan?”

I wasn’t certain what reaction I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. I blinked at her. “Our plan?”

“To fix Gideon.”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” I admitted. Or even if it were possible.

“But you’re working on it, right? Because I am not fighting him. I don’t care. I couldn’t deal with that.”

“Iris says I have to kill him.”

“And we’re taking the advice of your psychotic, Harrower-dating cousin since…when?”

“We’re not,” I assured her. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”

“Intervention? Exorcism?”

“It’s not like that. He’s not possessed. He’s…” I didn’t want to speak it. I’d been trying so hard not to believe it.

Tink said it for me. “He’s Verrick. I know. But can’t we just—seal him again?”

“He was linked to my father the first time. That was the reason it worked. They sealed both of them. I was trying to find information from Sonja, when she…”

“Oh.” She rubbed at her face with her hands. “God. This is so messed up.”

I stared down at the cement beneath my feet, the edge of green where the steps met the lawn, and breathed in the clean scent of the soil. A moth landed on my shorts, then floated back into the darkness with a dusty beating of wings. I thought of patterns, the way Gram had said that moments intersected, each connecting to the next, reaching endlessly back into the past. Not fate, she’d said. Reaction. And you couldn’t alter the past, but you could decide how you would react.