“I will. Tell Kevin I said hi, and I’ll catch him next time.” I scratched Brillo behind the ears and headed out to the car, my mood darkening with each step.

“What’s wrong?” Lena asked.

“Fawn’s a good person.” I laid my coat out on the trunk and emptied the pockets. “She’s had two knee surgeries and a hip replacement that I know of, and she’s still hurting. I could fix that. One sip from Lucy’s Narnian cordial, or the healing swords from Saberhagen or Lackey . . . we’ve cataloged more than a hundred books we use for magical healing.”

“So why not help her?”

“Part of the Porters’ mission is to conceal magic’s existence from the world,” I said flatly. “If I heal Fawn Shamel, where do I stop? Who decides who does and doesn’t deserve relief? The books would char and rip open long before we could help everyone, and the magical chaos leaking through those books would create more damage than we’d fixed.”

“That’s bullshit,” Lena said flatly. “You can’t heal everyone, so don’t help anyone at all?”

I snapped a rubber band around a role-playing game tie-in, then picked up the next. “I know, I know. I’ve been over it again and again with Ray, with Pallas, even with Doctor Shah.”

“Would anyone know if you snuck back inside and slipped a drop of Lucy’s potion into her drink?”

“Probably not,” I admitted. “And every one of us can start making exceptions for the people we care about, until sooner or later our secret escapes, and the world goes crazy.”

“Crazier, you mean?”

I sighed and turned back to the piles of new books. There was no way I was fitting even a fraction of those into my jacket. It was time for a wardrobe upgrade. I opened up an old paperback and pulled out a long, brown coat.

“What is it with you and brown jackets?” Lena asked.

“There were two reasons I wanted that jacket,” I said as I slipped the new one on. It was a little long, but not horribly so. “Doctor Who—the tenth doctor, specifically—was one of those reasons.”

“And the other?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Firefly?” I shook my head. “You and I have work to do when this is all over.”

Lena watched as I shoved book after book into my pockets. “Maybe the Porters are just worried about protecting their own. Helping others is a good thing, but not if you destroy yourself in the process. Look at how much you’ve pushed yourself over the past two days, magically. How much more can you take?”