Xander’s at my door in the morning, bright and smiling way too much for how early it is.

“Where were you last night?” he asks.

I rub my eyes to give myself time to push an explanation to my lips. Did Roman tell him? Was helping me just part of his game to rile up Xander? “I can only watch Tomb Raider so many times,” I say. It’s not a lie.

“You weren’t here.”

I stare at him. He never looks for me in the evenings, and it’s not the first time I skipped out on movie night with Reina and Diantha. “You weren’t hunting?”

“Night off. Self-care and all that.” Something sharpens in his expression. “You’re not answering the question.”

I shrug. “I was with Willow.”

“Reina checked. She wasn’t here either.”

“What’s with the interrogation?”

He holds his hands up like I’m the one overreacting.

“We went out to one of the magical doors. Hers goes to an orchestra performance. I like music.”

“Sounds fun.” I half expect him to ask me to sing a tune I heard as proof, but he steps back. “See you at the training yard in fifteen?”

“Make it twenty,” I grumble.

He raises his eyebrows and stares pointedly at my flannel pajama bottoms. “You got it.”

It takes me only minutes to toss on a pair of jeans and get to Willow’s door.

When she opens to my knock, she’s unfairly bright and smiley just like Xander, and it hits me that they’re a matching set. And Roman and I are a matching set.

“Ava.” She’s surprised, but her warm voice is like opening the door to a cozy room with a stoked fire. “Come in.”

I step inside her room onto a periwinkle rug. Her walls are a soft beige and her furniture is white and polished and a pink velvet comforter covers her bed. The magic’s good. It looks like her.

“Did Xander come by to see you?”

She laughs. “Why would he do that? Is Roman trying to make a trade?”

Her smile is wide like it’s just a joke, but this time I’m sure it’s not real. Her illusion is cracking. There’s a tiny bit of hurt in the pinch of her eyes when she says it.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“What?” Her smile holds steady, like a magical shield of positivity, but it’s not magic. She’s just the type of person who smiles to hide the pain because she always had an audience: her siblings. She probably joined up with Roman because she couldn’t smile anymore, and now she’s doing it for me.

“You don’t have to keep smiling when you’re upset.”