She put her fingers to her lips, went to her bedroom door and listened. Her parents were downstairs. She turned back to Fletcher, took off her jacket and showed him her arm.

“Wow,” he said.

She pulled back the sleeve of her T-shirt, revealing the whole tattoo. Long swirls of solid black tumbled from her shoulder. They twisted round her bicep, linking with angular slashes that ran from the triceps to just above the elbow. Between these shapes were a dozen different markings that, by turn, bisected, separated and joined the two sections. It was a sigil comprised of smaller sigils, a tattoo that China had never tried before. She was, however, confident it would work.

“I was thinking of getting one,” Fletcher said. “Not that, obviously. But a tattoo.”

“Of what?” Valkyrie asked. “Your own face? I can see you with a tattoo of your own face. That’d be typical you.”

Fletcher tried to smile. “Yeah,” he said. “It would. But I was actually thinking of just getting Stephanie across my arm.”

“Oh,” said Valkyrie. “Right. Well, you know, that’s … Listen, we haven’t had a chance to talk since … since she died. I’m sorry about that, I really am.”

“Don’t be,” said Fletcher. “I’m the one who ran. And when I got myself together enough to come back, you were going through your Surge. How was that, by the way?”

“Painful. You know when everyone tells you it’s painful? You should really believe them.”

“Oh, joy,” he muttered. “I can’t wait for mine.”

“Fletch, are you OK?”

He smiled again, but this time it wasn’t forced. It was sad. “I don’t know, Val. On the outside, I feel normal things. I’m in mourning, I miss her, I think I may have loved her, maybe. I feel all that, and I think about that. But then, on the inside, I feel terrible. Like, guilty. Because of the things she probably heard, and what she thought before she died, and what she thought of me and … So I have these normal feelings of loss, but I also have these selfish feelings of me, me, me. And I don’t know which is stronger. I’m not altogether sure I’m a nice person.”

“You are, Fletch.”

“But my sadness isn’t all about Stephanie. A lot of it is about me.”

“Of course. You’ve lost her. You’ve suffered a loss. You have to deal with that.”

He shook his head. “Other people don’t. Other people are capable of feeling sad for the person who died.”

“How do you know? Can you look inside their minds? Maybe everyone feels this exact same way when they lose someone they care about. I mean, mourning itself is selfish, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”