My breath catches. It worked. Those tiny sparks of magic I pulled from Doug and breathed into Jack before I left him at the clock . . . they survived. I feel them stirring inside him now, like an extension of myself.

That breath of Winter stayed with him, though the park, through the run and the storm on the bridge. It was inside him when he held the staff and killed Doug. But that would mean . . .

Julio bends down, gently prying the staff from Jack’s hand. No sooner than he picks it up, Julio drops it with a swear. The staff clatters to the ground. He shakes out his fingers, steam rising from his handprint where he touched the handle. “Shit, that’s cold!”

I take Jack’s hand, peeling back his limp fingers. His palm is fine—the calloused skin frigid, but unblemished where he held the scythe.

“I kissed him,” I whisper. “I kissed him at the clock before you pulled me into the ley lines. I gave him a breath of Gaia’s magic.” I had reached through my connection, into Doug, where Gaia’s magic was still clinging to me. I had pulled a few sparks of her magic into myself, the same way Doug had pushed it into me before I resuscitated the boy he killed. Only instead of concentrating on the fiery heat of them, I’d focused all my thoughts on the cold. On Jack. On the way his magic had felt when he’d first kissed me.

I gave him Winter magic.

“I wasn’t even sure I could. I wasn’t sure it even worked. Jack probably didn’t even know. But the magic must have been inside him when he took the staff. If Jack wasn’t entirely human when he killed Doug, then Chronos’s magic . . .” I turn, looking up at them. “It must have passed to Jack.”

Julio goes perfectly still. He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, holding tighter to Jack. Julio takes a step back from me. Poppy, Amber, Chill, and Marie . . . even Auggie . . . they’re all staring at me.

“Your eyes, Fleur,” Amber says, “they look like Gaia’s.”

I blink, touching the skin around them. I don’t see any differently. But as I look at each of their stunned faces, I feel different. I feel them. Each of them. As if I could reach out with my mind and touch their magic. I feel Amber’s heat. The ebb and flow of Julio’s breath. I feel the wind in Chill’s soul. I feel Marie’s and Poppy’s worry, and Jack’s pain. And something else . . . a magic I can’t quite place.