I had to squint but I did as Arachne said, and as my eyes cleared I frowned. My hand looked . . . weird. Too much of the light was getting through around my fingers; it was like my skin was almost translucent. It was eerie and I looked away. “What happened to me?”

“Mist cloaks aren’t meant for extended use,” Arachne said. “You were starting to fade.”

“But . . .” I felt confused. My mist cloak’s always been the one magic item I’ve completely trusted. “It’s trying to help me.” Somehow I was sure of that. “It keeps me safe.”

“Imbued items don’t have a sense of proportion,” Arachne said. “They’re alive, but they’re not human.” She lifted a foreleg and I looked to see the mist cloak neatly folded on the next sofa over. “The cloak does try to help you. Its purpose is to hide its bearer, and that’s what it does. And it does it so well that if you wear it long enough, then nobody will be able to find you. Not even you.”

I looked at the folded cloth, fading into the sofa, and couldn’t help but shiver. “What happens then?”

“No one knows,” Arachne said simply. “I imagine the cloak still keeps them safe. Somewhere.”

I put a hand to my head. “I can’t do anything right, can I?”

“Focus,” Arachne said. “You can feel sorry for yourself later. There’s someone here to see you.”

I looked up in surprise. “Who?”

A flicker in the futures made me turn my head. Standing in one of the tunnel mouths, hand resting on the rocky wall, was Variam.

* * *

“You don’t look so good,” Variam told me.

“That’s about how I feel.” Variam and I were sitting opposite each other while Arachne sewed quietly in the corner. The orb lights set into the walls of Arachne’s cave were soft and muted, but they were still enough to hurt my eyes if I looked directly at them, and I still had that weird disconnected feeling. I could feel the mist cloak’s presence, resting quietly on one of the sofas, and even now I had the urge to put it on and hide. I pushed it away with a shudder; I wasn’t going to feel comfortable touching that cloak for a long time. “What’s been happening while I’ve been gone?”

“Those adepts showed up while we were at Luna’s,” Variam said. “One of them can track people, right?”

“Is everyone okay?”

“There wasn’t a fight,” Variam said. “They just hid outside. Think they were trying to spy on us.”

“Anne spotted them?”

Variam nodded.

“The Chinese kid’s called Lee,” I said. “He can find people—anyone he’s met, probably. Did they show up the night before last, or yesterday?”

“Night before last.”