The door to the room—to the cell—creaked open and Wesley didn’t need to look to know it was her. It was always Zekia and never Ashwood, as though the Kingpin could rarely stand to see his prodigy so weak and useless.

“You look less tired today,” Zekia said. “Did you sleep? I couldn’t sleep a wink with all those people out there.”

By people, she meant the dead.

Wesley turned to her. “It’s not like you don’t deserve to be haunted a little bit, kid.”

Zekia laughed, like Wesley was very naïve and she found it very funny.

“They’re not haunting me, silly,” she said. “Just letting me know that they’re there. Clogging up my head with all the futures they could have had and the things they wanted to be before they died. I don’t mind it so much, but the worst of them are the ones who think they should have lived. Like anyone deserves to die.”

Wesley thought lots of people deserved to die.

Probably both of them included.

“You’re not a Spiritcrafter, kid. You can’t talk to the dead.”

“I didn’t say I was talking to them. They’re talking to me. Or just existing around me and getting their alternative futures all muddled in my brain. Don’t they bother you?”

“No,” Wesley said. “But then again, I’m not crazy.”

Zekia’s smile twitched, but she swallowed whatever emotion she didn’t feel like feeling at that moment and walked toward him. Her dress bounced up and down with her steps.

Zekia always wore a white dress, just as she always dressed Wesley in suits—like he was a doll she’d been given and that she cherished as her favorite toy.

“I could teach you,” she said.

She knelt down next to him.

“Teach me to be crazy? I’ll pass.”

Wesley kept his eyes on her hands, waiting for her to snap her fingers and let the silver slivers of her magic trickle around his wrists and loosen his restraints.

But she didn’t.

Instead she put her hands on her hips and shook her head admonishingly.

“I could teach you to master your magic like Amja was helping me to do,” she said. “When you learn, you can help me and all the other Crafters we’ve found be safe again and for always. The new realm we’re going to build will be so much stronger with you, Wesley. Two Intuitcrafters to lead them would be the best thing they could hope for.”