Colchester inches a bit closer. “You want me dead, boy, this is the only way to do it. You help me. Deliver your friends for the ritual, and you get a ticket to a brand-new world. I give you my word, and you give me yours.”

He puts out his tiny little hand to shake. Sparks leap from his fingers.

Eric goes over the words in his mind. As Merlin always said, words have power. Words can bind you. Bad things happen to a magician who breaks a contract.

This is why Merlin always said: never make a deal with a demon.

But Merlin’s dead, and Eric isn’t. Not yet.

He has been so empty for so long. The past two decades have been an open wound, a constant reminder that he used to be more. Now that he has magic back, he’s not sure he could survive giving it up again. He’s spent so much of his life worrying about other people. Trying to save them. Trying to please them. Trying to be like them.

And what does he have to show for it? A one-bedroom in Vegas and some Starbucks loyalty points.

Colchester is giving him a chance to never worry about anything again. To be safe. To be happy. To live his whole life over again, if he wants. To get it right this time.

Eric thinks it over for a moment. He takes the boy’s hand in his own.

He says, “Sure.”

15

Normal People Stumble Along

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The word keeps bouncing through Mike Keene’s head. He shamed his daughter and yelled at her and generally acted like an asshole.

All because he’s still guilty for what he did.

Part of him screams that he did his penance, that his punishment was more than his crime. It’s the small, selfish part of him, though. The little voice he’s always tried to crush, the part of him that is greedy and fallible and afraid. He knows when he’s about to get into trouble. It’s when he listens to that voice.

But he still hears it. It says things he’d never say out loud and this is one of them: there are times when he wishes his daughter was someone else. He knows it is not especially fair, and he doesn’t feel like a great dad at these moments, but he can’t get over it, either. There are parents who used to envy him. Carrie was so smart, so perfect, so good. She was a rule-follower, she was scrupulously honest, she was a top student. They wished their kids were more like her.

They had no idea. They couldn’t imagine what it was like, having to live up to the example set by your own child.