Charlie glanced toward the mirror, took three steps sideways, and waved at her reflection. Her reflection waved back, nothing more or less than what it seemed. “Auntie Catherine can’t break the surface of the mirror to pull me in. Fucking shit!”

“Allie’s barred her.” The quilt slid to the floor as he threw himself out of bed. “She knew that before she sent you to Calgary.”

Charlie whirled to face him. He almost backed up, pushed by the intensity. Almost. “Say that again.”

“She knew that before she sent you to Calgary?”

“She knew she didn’t need the viburnum before she got to Calgary.”

“Sure, whatever.” Jack didn’t see the connection, but he’d seen Charlie tap out that same complicated rhythm on her thigh lots of times over the last four years, white noise to help her put the pieces together. “Look, I could go out the window, get bigger and you could jump. We ride off into the sunset. Well, you ride. I fly.”

“Shhh. Thinking.”

“You are reaching the end of my patience, Jack Archibald Gale!” The grid over the door flared orange. The varnish began to bubble.

“Leave him alone, Auntie Bea!”

Allie. Stepping up to defend him. Him, but not Charlie. That was weird.

“He’s using sorcery to protect her.”

“Of course he is, he’s hers.”

That sounded like . . .

“Even if they can’t do anything about it.”

...the same stupid shit.

“I thought she was yours,” Auntie Bea sniffed.

He’d never noticed before how completely useless his door was at blocking sound.

“She can pass through any reflective surface.”

It took him a moment before he realized that totally off-topic statement had come from inside his room, then he turned to see Charlie staring at . . .

...a completely innocuous spot on his wall beside his second-season Continuum poster. “Uh . . . Charlie?”

“I can do this,” she told him, her brows nearly touching over her nose. “I can. It’s nothing more than reaching a bigger audience. No, the same audience, but really juicing the arrangement.”

“What are you talking about?”

The argument in the hall paused; they were listening, too.

“Definitely not bigger.” Charlie’s left hand rose up by her shoulder, the fingers curling into familiar patterns. “It’s more . . . like singing louder and rounder at the same time. No, like shaping the music with the rests. Caesurae. Fermata.” She focused suddenly on Jack’s face and, this time, he couldn’t stop himself from stepping back when she grinned. “Birdseye!”

“Don’t you mean bull’s-eye?”

“Not this time. Say something to me.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter. Words off the top of your head.”

“Okay, um, I still like you . . .”

The notes she Sang slipped between the words.

“. . . more than I should.”

Alone in his room, he sighed, and opened the door. “She’s gone.”

As Auntie Bea brushed past him, Allie pulled out her phone.

“Mama Mia” rang out from the floor, muffled by a fold in the duvet.