Catarina Loss was with him. “A girl!” she said. “I’ve been knitting a blanket for her, but it isn’t done yet. Wilhelmina Yiqiang Ke Carstairs. That’s quite a big name for a very small baby.”

“Mina for short,” Magnus said. “Oh, she’s lovely, Catarina. She has Jem’s fingers. A musician’s fingers. And Tessa’s chin. So how’s our patient?”

“He’ll be fine,” Catarina Loss said. Then, “Though what was wrong with him in the first place isn’t quite apparent to me. He seems perfectly healthy. I’m due to teach a class. Will you still be here in an hour or so?”

“I’ll be here or somewhere close at hand,” Magnus said. “Come and find me when you’re done.”

When Catarina Loss was gone, Magnus said to Livvy, “Well. There is apparently something that you must say to me. And then there is something that I must say to you.”

Livvy said, “I know. I think I know what you must say to me. But first let me tell you about Idris.” And she told him everything she had heard Zara and Manuel say.

“We knew that sooner or later they plan to attack us,” Magnus said at last. “But now that we know they are spying on us, we will have to find out how. And perhaps if it is possible for them, then it is also possible for us to spy on Idris. But I don’t think we can risk you doing it again.”

“No,” Livvy said. “Because every time I get too far away from Ty, things start to go wrong. I start to change. I get stronger, I think. I can do things! Like I did with the conservatory. I broke dishes, too, and I think I almost hurt Tessa’s baby somehow. And Ty, it’s bad for him, too, when we’re apart. That’s why he ended up in the infirmary. Because I was gone too long.”

“Yes,” Magnus said. “Smart girl.”

“If I had stayed away longer,” Livvy said, “would he have died?”

“I don’t know,” Magnus said. “But the magic he tried to use to bring you back from the dead was dark magic, Livvy. Necromancy. A spell from the Black Volume of the Dead! And a failed spell, at that. When the spell failed, the thing that kept you here, that bound you, was Ty. Your twin. That’s not normal for ghosts. Most of them are bound to an object. Things like a ring or a key or a house. But you’re bound to a person. It makes sense that you need to stay close to Ty now. And that he has to stay close to you. I think that when you are away from him for too long, you become less yourself. More powerful. Less human. More a hungry ghost. Something dangerous to the living.”