Fairy nodded. She held up the pearl in front of him. “And we might have a chance right now.”

They ducked inside what had once been stables, a short distance from the shack. Broomstick wanted an enclosed space to catch the pearl if it flew off during an explosion, but the shack was where all their belongings were, and the toolshed next to it was too small to blow things up in.

The stables were long empty, the dividers rotten and caving in, but the space was still redolent of horse droppings and saddle soap. Broomstick would have walked straight back outside if Fairy hadn’t stopped him.

“If I can stomach it, you can,” she said.

He huffed, but he stayed and set his bag on the ground.

“Do you want the soul pearl?” Fairy asked, cupping it in her hand.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

Fairy chastised herself. Broomstick may have wanted to destroy Prince Gin’s soul, but that didn’t mean he’d get over his fear of the pearl immediately. She should have known that.

But she could help him salvage some of his pride by offering an alternative. “On second thought,” Fairy said, “why don’t we do this?” She found a bucket, turned it upside down, and set the pearl on top. “You can blow it up from there.”

He stopped gnawing on his cheek and laughed instead.

“What?” Fairy said.

“How long have you known me?”

“Um, your whole life.”

“And how long have I been blowing things up?”

“Since you singed off your eyebrows.” Fairy remembered that day clearly. Broomstick had somehow gotten his hands on fireworks—who in their right mind gives a five-year-old an explosive?—and he’d set it off in the tenderfoot nursery. The rocket had shot through a window, burst on a nearby tree trunk, and set the leaves and grass around it on fire. Plus, the sparks from the takeoff had burned the ends of Broomstick’s eyebrows, and they’d never grown back.

“Right,” he said. “And since then, I’ve never blown anything up without a test chamber.” He rifled through his bag and pulled out a metal box made of reinforced steel, several inches thick on each side.

“You’ve been lugging that around everywhere?” Fairy said. “No wonder your stuff is so damn heavy.”

“I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I could blow something up, but then the opportunity passes because I wasn’t prepared.” He smirked, and Fairy was glad to see this first small hint of the gemina she knew.