With a sigh, David whipped off his glasses, replacing them with a pair of sunglasses that he had hanging in the front of his shirt. “I’m guessing you can see it?” he asked, and I stepped closer. Behind me, I could hear the stereo system blasting “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” so I knew the little kids were still practicing.

Momentarily distracted by that, David gazed past me before shaking his head slightly. “This place is—”

“It’s a total freak show,” I confirmed. “But we can worry about that later. Why are your eyes all... like that?”

Reaching up, David ruffled his hair. “They just are, okay?”

“That is like the least acceptable answer in the history of unacceptable things, most of which, I should add, involve your wardrobe,” I told him, folding my arms and trying not to notice the clatter of plastic gemstones. “David, what’s going on?”

For all that his eyes were freaking me out, I wished I could see them right now. I could read a lot in his face—the tightness of his mouth told me he was going to be stubborn about this, the tugging at his hair meant he was nervous—but his eyes would’ve told me more. How freaked out he was, for example.

“I’ve been trying some things,” he said, and I blew out a breath that ruffled my bangs. A few days ago, I’d thought about how much I didn’t like him alone in that house, obsessively going through Saylor’s things. Hadn’t I thrown myself into time with Bee and pageant practice to distract me from our breakup? What had David been distracting himself with? It wasn’t like he could see the future anymore, after all. Alexander had seen to that.

But if that was the case, why the heck were his eyes Oracled out? Again, I remembered him in the Fun House, floating in front of me, his eyes nothing but that golden light.

My knife at his throat.

Pushing that image away, I leaned in closer. “What kind of things?”

He’d tugged his sleeves over his hands. The music had stopped now, and I could hear Sara calling for all the Miss Pine Grove girls, but I kept my gaze on David. “What. Kind. Of. Things?” I repeated, and David looked straight at me. Even through the dark lenses of his glasses, I could see the twin sparks of light there.

“Visions,” he said in a low voice. “Alexander’s spell doesn’t work anymore.”

That startled me so much that my baton nearly slipped from my suddenly numb fingers. “What?” was all I could manage, and David’s mouth turned down at the corners. For the first time, I noticed that he looked even thinner, paler. Almost like he was fading away right in front of me.

“I don’t know why or how,” he continued, “but the other night, I... I saw something.”