Iris does as she’s told. She holds her breath, too. And there it is again, that thrill in the blood. Hope—stupid, childish hope—fills her like a trembling, fragile soap bubble, effervescent and weightless. It feels like it would be a terrible jinx to even allow herself to think the word: “Hideware.”

She isn’t going to the top of the Spoke tonight, she knows that. She isn’t going to be drinking Sparklefroth with her friends on the top of the world. But maybe the old man has a trick up his sleeve. Maybe he had a couple tokens socked away for an important day. Maybe the former Resurrection Man has one more miracle to work. Her blood believes that all these things might be possible.

He sets something heavy in her lap, something far too heavy to be Hideware. That fantastic bubble of hope pops and collapses inside her.

“Okay,” he says. “You c-can look.”

His stammer disturbs her. He didn’t stammer BEFORE, didn’t stammer when he was still with her mother and still in the Murdergame. She opens her eyes.

He didn’t even wrap it. It’s something the size of a bowling ball, shoved in a crinkly bag. She peels the sack open and looks down at a cloudy emerald globe.

“Crystal ball?” she asks. “Oh, Daddy, I always wanted to know my future.”

What tripe. She doesn’t have a future—not one worth thinking about.

The old man leans forward on his bench, hands clasped between his knees so they won’t tremble. They didn’t tremble BEFORE either. He sucks a liquid breath through the plastic tubing up his nose. The respirator pumps and hisses. “There’s a m-mermaid in there. You’ve wanted one since you were small.”

She wanted a lot of things when she was small. She wanted Microwing shoes so she could run six inches off the ground. She wanted gills for swimming in the underground lagoons. She wanted whatever Amy Pasquale and Joyce Brilliant got for their birthdays, and her parents always saw that it was so, but that was BEFORE.

Something swishes, takes a slow turn in the center of the spinach-colored sludge, then drifts to the glass to gaze up at her. She is so repulsed by the sight she almost shoves the sphere out of her lap.

“Wow,” she says. “Wow. I love it. I really did always want one.”

He bows his head and squeezes his eyes shut. A tingle of shock prickles across her chest. He’s about to cry.

“I know it isn’t what you wanted. What we t-t-talked about,” he says.

She reaches across the table and clasps his hand, feels like she might start to cry herself. “It’s perfect.”

Only she’s wrong. He wasn’t struggling against tears. He was fighting a yawn. He surrenders to it, covers his mouth with the back of his free hand. He doesn’t seem to have heard her.