The snow was falling thick and light, laying its gauzy veil across the Market. She squinted through the flakes and saw a boy with dark hair. James, she assumed, and hurried toward him, her hand up to shield her face from the snow. She hoped he would not ask her what she had been doing. His protectiveness could turn quickly to scolding, as was, she suspected, the nature of older brothers—

But it was not James. Out of the hazy white night, he evolved like a shadow: a slim boy in shirtsleeves, the snow falling around him, but not on him.

“Jesse,” she breathed. She hurried up to him, the hem of her skirt dragging in the snow. “Is everything all right? Can anyone here see you save me?”

A small smile touched the edge of his mouth. “No. You will look as if you are talking to yourself. Fortunately, that is not an unusual occurrence in the Shadow Market.”

“Have you been here before?”

“No. I’ve seen pictures, but the reality is far more interesting. As always, Lucie, following after you has opened up my world.”

She kicked at a bit of snow, wondering if she should mention her conversation with Malcolm. “I thought you were angry at me.”

“I’m not angry. I’m sorry about what I said outside the Ruelle. I know you are doing what you are because you care about me. It is only that—I am fading faster, I think. I forget, sometimes, where I have just been. I know Grace will have come to talk to me, but I will not recall it. I find myself in the city, and its roads seem like foreign passages.”

Panic jangled her nerves. “But I am getting so close—to finding someone who can help us. To finding out what happened to you, what enchantments were put on you, so they can be reversed, undone—”

Jesse closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, all pretense of smiling or lightness was gone; he looked unguarded and vulnerable. “You have already done so much. If it were not for you, I would have faded a long time ago. I knew something was keeping me anchored here, when by all rights I should have vanished. For these past months, I have been able to see the moonlight reflected on the river, feel the wind and rain against my skin. I remember what it is to be hot or cold. To want things. To need things.” He looked into her eyes in wonderment. “All those things are real for me again, as nothing else has been real to me since I died—except for you.”

There was a hot ache in Lucie’s throat. “Those feelings are the proof that you belong here, with the living.”

He inclined his head toward her. “Command me to kiss you,” he whispered urgently. “Tell me to do it. Please.”

She looked up at him, her hands clasped, shivering. “Kiss me.”