And now the journals are lost, too. I cannot help but feel it was for nothing. I miss the man I once was.

I apologize. I know that I sound dreadful. I wanted you to know. You are, perhaps, the only person who would feel their loss as profoundly as I do.

Your friend, Teddy Barrow

Tonight she was working the night shift at the station. As she sat back in the chair, she cued up “Venus in Furs” and Sam Gopal’s “Escalator,” then let Lou Reed’s wave of discordant strings take her back to that glorious moment on the trapeze. She could feel the beaded costume and the flow of the pent-up magic running through her veins. That heady power had infected her.

Teddy Barrow was right. So much had been lost.

Yet, there had been something bothering her, nicking at her—a theory she had.

Althacazur had been the ultimate seducer. He’d lured her to the circus, and when he thought she might die after absorbing Cecile, he was so desperate for a patron that he’d traded her for her mother. But in the seduction, he’d made her stronger than any of them. Even after the deal was sealed and Esmé was returned, Lara’s powers had remained. To prove her point, she stared at the clock on the wall. As she mouthed the words to Sam Gopal’s “Escalator,” spinning on the turntable, she noticed that it was ten minutes past midnight. She watched the second arm struggle to move, and she watched her phone hold 12:10 A.M. for more than two minutes. I stopped fucking time.

She typed a reply to Teddy.

Teddy.

Come to Kerrigan Falls. I have an idea. It’s crazy, but it might work.

—L

While Lara had stood in this field before trying to summon him, she might have missed the point of his instruction. He was always quick to tell her she missed the point. Perhaps he’d been right all along.

When she’d been cleaning her old room at Cabot Farms, she’d stumbled on the Rumpelstiltskin book; inside it was the pressed clover.