“No worries.” His tone is equally dismissive, nonchalant, but the tips of his ears are a deep pink.

Or maybe, in his case, it really is just the effect of the glowing screen.

“I should turn invisible now,” I say out loud, more to fill the silence than anything.

“Indeed.”

An awkward beat passes. Then another.

Nothing happens.

I keep waiting for the familiar chill to descend over my body, wash over me like a bucket of ice water, for the hair on my arms to rise, but all I feel is...warm. Whole. Flushed from my proximity to Henry, from the way he’s looking at me, his lips red in the places I pressed my fingers to; from the ballad still playing in the background, the soft piano notes tangling together, the vocalist singing throatily about love and loss and want and how it feels to be truly seen.

And I’m just standing here, as blatantly visible as ever, my shadow falling firm over the pavement at my feet.

“Perhaps you can try again later,” Henry suggests after about fifteen minutes of this. “Take a break and whatnot.”

“I can’t.” I shake my head fast. “There’s not enough time—for all we know, she’s probably already taken the art—”

“Then let her.”

I gape up at him, uncomprehending. “But that means—then I’ll fail the task—I can’t just fail—”

“Well, it seems like this isn’t something you can control at present.”

He’s right. He’s right, and it’s horrible. My powers have never been the most reliable, I know that, but to have them abandon me at a time like this, when Vanessa is right there in that café and I’ve traveled all the way here, feels like the worst possible betrayal.

“Come on.” Henry waves a hand. “Even if you do turn invisible in time, we might as well walk around while we wait.”

But I don’t turn invisible that night. What I end up doing instead is following Henry down the length of the crowded road, watching the screen glow and change scenes every few seconds, from a vast stretch of ocean to an ancient Chinese palace to a phoenix unfurling its fiery wings. He buys this inflated disk-like toy thing from one of the vendor carts parked outside a busy Zara shop, and even though I’m half-convinced he only wants to see me fumble with it and laugh at me, I try throwing it up in the air. It flies much farther than I thought, carried along by a mild breeze. We take turns with the disk afterward, until it inevitably becomes a ridiculous, intense competition to see how far we can throw, and soon I’m yelling at him to mark out the exact spot the disk hit the ground because I swore I won that last round.

And I almost forget about Vanessa and the art scandal and turning invisible at all.

I’m too busy watching the screen’s green-blue light move over Henry’s skin like water, the challenge set in the sharp line of his jaw as he makes his way back to me.