Fletcher looked at him. “Have you found a cure for Tanith yet?”

“Start talking about something else.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“You’re mad that you don’t know how to help her,” Fletcher said, “and you’re mad that you haven’t found her yet, aren’t you?”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about? Because I don’t see what this conversation will lead to, other than annoying me.”

“You asked her out.”

“Fletcher, I have things to do.”

“You asked her out, finally, and she said yes. She kissed you, then went away. And that’s the last you saw of her before the Remnant got into her. And now she’s out there somewhere, no one knows where, but she’s out there with Billy-Ray Sanguine.”

Ghastly looked at the kid and said nothing while he waited for the flash of anger to fade. He saw the hurt in Fletcher’s eyes. “This is about Valkyrie?” he asked.

The boy looked at the floor again. “We broke up. She broke up with me. I’m sorry. I know it’s different. I know Valkyrie hasn’t been possessed and she’s not gone, not like Tanith is. But… you loved Tanith, and then all that happened. You had her, you finally had her, and you lost her. How do you deal with that?”

“I drink a lot of tea. Fletcher, I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve been in love too many times to count. I’d like to say it gets easier, but it doesn’t. The pain you’re feeling now is the pain you’re going to feel again and again. The advantage of having lived through this is that I do know I’ll come out the other side. The pain lessens. You manage to distract yourself until the distractions become more important than the thing you’re distracting yourself from.”

“Do you think she loved you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know. If she did love me, then I wasted a lot of time thinking about it instead of doing something.”

“I don’t think Valkyrie loved me,” Fletcher said, and suddenly laughed. “I’m sorry, this is so stupid. You probably think I’m just a stupid kid. I don’t know anything about love or any of that.”

“You know enough for it hurt.”

The smile faded. “Yeah. She said she loved me. She made a joke, said something and then said ‘and that’s why I love you’ and I latched on to it. Like an idiot. I decided to believe that this was her way of telling me how she felt. But she was making a joke. And I knew she was making a joke. But I wanted to believe it so much.”

The kettle boiled. Ghastly made two mugs of tea while Fletcher talked on.