I’m going to miss being an expert ice skater. Wonder what else he could make me miraculously excel at? I should take the bar exam.

I lace my fingers in his. Even through the cotton of our gloves, he gives off a shocking warmth. It pumps straight to my heart, turning me into a light, glowing from within.

I’m a force of merriment and cheer, he’d said. A feeling. That’s how it feels to be in proximity to Hall, too.

Hand in hand, we glide, breathing in the frost. Hall’s ears and nose are tinged pink, hair ruffling. “What’s it like?” I ask. “Being in a body after so long without one?”

“Like my magic is more compact, more concentrated. You’d think I’d find the body cumbersome, but I actually feel like a feather now. I’m all right here”—he gestures to himself—“instead of spread out, stretching around the world.”

There’s no nice way of putting this. I’ll have to be blunt.

“Ice skating isn’t going to make me a good person, if that’s your goal.”

“You’re already a good person. I have X-ray vision, I can see it. We’re only doing this to have fun.” His hand squeezes mine gently, and I could be imagining it, but I think the rink is growing. Broadening by the minute, so that our one last go-round stretches on. I glance over my shoulder at the Watson house, a tiny speck now on its piney ridge, shining with Christmas lights. Snow falls softly all around, but not directly over us. I ask Hall why that is.

He reddens, snowflakes belatedly speckling his hair as if, until now, they’d simply forgotten to.

“It wasn’t intentional. Sometimes the magic responds to my subconscious.”

“Why would you subconsciously not want it to snow over the skating rink?”

I can’t imagine why this would be a point of embarrassment. Before I can question him further, music begins to rise up, filtering out of the silvery, snow-limned trees. Louder, louder, vibrating through the blades under my feet. It’s like living inside a microphone as the Ronettes gather around it. Our surroundings have been magicked into loudspeakers, so that the trees, the geese flapping high overhead, every individual snowflake is emitting the sound Hall wants it to. I slide him an inquisitive look, but he faces determinedly forward. Is he trying to distract me?

A slow grin crosses my face. I think he notices it with his peripheral vision, because he fidgets. Scratches his cheek and turns his face farther away.

I hear an ever-so-faint clip-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones, shimmering sleigh bells, the crackling of a fire. I smell cinnamon, pine forest, peppermint, chestnuts. At first I think that Hall’s infused these details into the environment, painting a scene, but whenever he flings me out, away from his body so that I can then twirl back into his arms, I notice how the sensations recede, go quiet. He’s not making those sounds or scents. He is them. Being close to him is like huddling up before a hearth on the longest night of the year, a thick quilt wrapped around me, utterly safe and contented. It’s like closing my eyes, lambent light warming me all over, and drifting away in a golden tint of nostalgia, toy drummers, and childhood things.