“It will be okay,” I told him.

“I had it! It was in my hands!” He showed me his hands, as if expecting the staff to materialize in his fingers. “In my hands! Eight hundred years!”

“I know,” I told him. “I know.”

He slumped forward. “I had it and I lost it. I lost it!”

“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get ourselves home before we both pass out.”

We climbed the stairs to my apartment. I had collapsed on the street, my body finally giving out, and we had ended up riding Roman’s horse after all. Roman moved like a zombie. Despondent didn’t even begin to describe him. If despair was liquid, he’d be dripping buckets of it with every step.

“I had it in my hands,” he told me mournfully, halfway up the stairs.

“I’m sure I have some honey in my pantry,” I told him. “And lemon juice. We can have a nice cup of hot tea.”

The landing smelled like fresh banana bread. Mrs. Haffey had been baking again. I slid the key into the lock and swung the door open.

A pair of familiar black boots sat in the shoe rack in my foyer, between my black pumps and my yellow work boots.

You’ve got to be kidding me. He didn’t.

“Something wrong?” Roman asked.

On the right, a row of hooks was attached to the wall—I usually hung my rain-dampened jackets there to dry out before taking them to the closet. A large black leather jacket hung on the middle hook.

I marched into my apartment. What must be a spare set of Raphael’s keys was in the round plastic dish where I normally left mine. In the kitchen a hanging pot rack had been installed over my dining room table. Raphael’s copper-bottomed pots hung from it, and in the corner, his wine cabinet sat next to my spice shelves.

I dashed out of the kitchen, almost knocking Roman over. In the living room three prized swords from Raphael’s collection hung on the walls. A picture of Aunt B in a dark frame was on the bookshelf next to the picture of my mother. Raphael’s beige and brown Jaipur rug covered the floor. He had double-stacked my DVDs in the media case and added his own, all pre-Shift movies he loved: the entire Rocky collection, the Godfather I and II, Commando, Tropic Thunder…

I tore into the spare bedroom. I had used it for weapon storage. A new desk sat by the window with a computer on it and a tall filing cabinet next to it. He’d made himself an office! In my spare room! A picture of Raphael and I sat on the desk next to the keyboard. He had his arms around me. I was smiling.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Roman asked.

“No,” I snarled.

“A male roommate?”