Dean swallowed. “She doesn’t have to,” he said. “Think about it. Our powers… Don’t they feel more like curses? What she said to you about pain confirmed a theory of mine. Etherea taps into our subconscious and materializes our fantasies, correct? Well, some people have bad fantasies and believe bad things about themselves. Whatever Poesy’s method is, I think she filters etherea through our pain, and the result is a power that we fear. That’s a pretty ingenious way of making sure none of grow too power hungry or surpass her, I would say.”

Kane thought about Adeline, whose grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s. He wondered if she thought it was her fault that her grandmother’s memory faded so fast. And Elliot. Pragmatic, pedantic Elliot, whose powers forced him to live in the half-light of trickery and illusion. To hide among the familiar manipulations of his father.

Ursula was the most gentle person Kane knew. Ursula was the girl who had been torn apart her entire life because of her body and her strength. Ursula was the strongest among them, her powers the most brutal.

“What about your powers?” Kane asked. “What about your pain?”

Dean was silent. He had a way of watching things without looking at them. His eyes were always on the distance, but his body was open to Kane now, considerate and patient, waiting to be held.

“I can see things I should not be able to see, and I can go to places I should not go. I can run from anything, and in my life this has always hurt me.”

And he would say nothing else. Kane’s thoughts selfishly turned to himself. “But my eyes don’t glow.”

“That’s right.”

He passed his free hand over his temples, his burns now turned to scars. “So I’m not like the you and the Others.”

“That’s right. You’re the piece Poesy has yet to figure out. She didn’t give you power. You just have it, like her. Actually, you are like her in many ways. She thinks of you as her protégé, you know.”

Like her?

The thousands of charms spun in Kane’s mind, cut into kaleidoscopic shards that shredded him with their muted agony. His mouth went acidic. If he hurled off the bridge, would the vomit just float on the updraft as a gooey net of chunks? I’m not like her, he told himself. I would help those people, not keep them trapped for…for…

Adeline was right. They had no idea why Poesy kept those charms.

Dean squeezed his hand. “Still there?”

“What does she want with all those reveries?” Kane asked. “And who is she, even? And what is she?”