“This.” He gestured to me with one hand. “Speaking to you—one man to another. My plan, in other words, is to ascertain what your plan is.”

It did not escape me that he’d referred to me as a “man.” Or that we were having this exchange in civil tones. A far cry from how we had conducted our business the last time he’d visited me in this manner. Though I did not recall which mask had held me in its thrall then, the knowledge that it had not been Valor’s was enough to tell me I could not have been half so sane.

“Your appearance,” I muttered. “I must say, I do find it rather opportune.”

“O-opportune?” he stuttered, fully on edge once more.

“Indeed. One day sooner and you would not have found me so hospitable. Who knows what you might have discovered had you come a week from now? But providence, it would seem, can be bothered with my plight after all. Though not, it appears, until the moment it becomes someone else’s.” I laughed, and a backward glance toward Rastin showed he was far more disconcerted even than before.

“Tell me, Rastin,” I said, barreling on. “Your powers. Is it fair to assume they have grown since the last time you attempted to exorcise me?”

“I was mistaken to—”

“Answer the question,” I snapped. “Granted a second chance, do you think you could succeed?”

At this, he stood, openly galled now. I, too, could not help but be flabbergasted by my newest and perhaps even more insane plan, which I found myself uttering aloud in real time as it occurred to me.

“You are toying with me,” he accused. “You hope to lure me into a trap.”

“I am not.”

“You must be.”

“The exorcism,” I said in an effort to refocus him. “If I agreed to submit to it, would you try again? That is why you return here, is it not? Because you hope to find me in a state that would allow you to try again someday. And your heart. Surely it cannot be so damaged that—”

“It would be a cleansing this time,” he corrected, his concern over the fact that I might be tricking him lessening by a fraction. “And my strength in this matter is not half so important as the fact that I now know what it is I am dealing with.”

“And what, precisely, is that, Rastin? Please, if you would, enlighten me. For that’s a puzzle I myself have never gained a satisfactory answer to.”

“A cursed human spirit,” Rastin said.

“An unbreakable curse, allow me to remind you. And am I still human? Under what authority do you make such a bold assumption?”

“Just because a curse is irreversible does not make it unbreakable,” he argued, ignoring my question. “Every curse can at least be undone. Even one as terrible as yours.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked, not bothering to hide my skepticism.

Rastin spread his hands. “You said it yourself. Would I return to this house time and again if I did not? Would I be here now?”