He moves through the house easily, with both the familiarity of long residence and Merlin night vision on his side. I stare at the dark shape of Sel’s back as he walks to the interior stairs at a human pace—for my sake more than anything, I’m sure. “Why can’t we turn on the lights?”

“Because the neighbors are nosy.”

Light filters in from a window on the second-floor landing, so I can see a little now, enough to make out the framed pictures of both boys hanging alongside us in the stairwell. Nick in a PeeWee football uniform, grinning wide. Sel at a violin recital, looking thin and dour even as a small child. I’m torn between a deep curiosity and the feeling that I’m violating Nick’s privacy.

Right as I get to the top of the stairwell, the LED-bright headlights of a luxury car flare through the large picture window. Sel grabs my hand, yanking me down as the car approaches. His fingers are five sizzling points that sear into my bones, and I cry out, yanking my hand away. He blinks down at me in confusion. My heart thuds against my chest so loud his sensitive ears must hear it. The car passes. A garage door lifts—but it’s the house next door. We exhale in unison.

I move to stand, but he presses me back with the flat of his palm on my uninjured shoulder. “Wait until they go inside.”

Once the garage door descends, he looks down at where I’ve started rubbing my wrist with my other hand. “I didn’t touch your wounded arm, or grab you that hard. Why did you scream?”

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “It felt like an electrical current. Like static, but worse.”

Several questions flash across his face before he decides on one. “You never answered me that night at the Quarry. Do you feel something when I look at you?”

I stand up to put distance between us, suddenly hesitant to talk about this part of my abilities. I haven’t mentioned how his gaze affects me, or any of the other more sensory parts of what I can do. “Yes.”

He stands. Looks at me like he’s trying to see inside my brain and assess its contents. “Explain.”

“It’s going to sound weird.”

“Weird is relative.”

Understatement of the year. “When you look at me, it feels… prickly. When you’re mad, your eyes feel like sparks.”

His eyebrows raise in the middle. A strange sort of tension runs through his shoulders—like anger, but not quite. He looks like he wants to press the issue, but instead he turns down the hallway. “We need to hurry.”