Ángel looked over the clothes Lily had brought him yesterday.

It was the first of September, and apparently up here that meant that summer was over. The weather had turned gray and blustery, and the wind whined and cried at the windows. Ángel’s Florida wardrobe of shorts, jeans, and T-shirts was already obsolete.

He now owned a forest-green heavy waterproof coat with a hood; lace-up boots with rubbery soles and insulated lining; three extra pairs of jeans and several long-sleeved waffle-knit henley shirts; some sweaters and sweatshirts; and one boho cotton smock shirt, like the ones she wore every day, in a soft sky blue.

Everything fit, even the boots: she must have made notes of his sizes when she unpacked his bag. He suspected she had spent at least a thousand dollars on clothes for him.

Oberon’s voice emerged from the security monitor. “Ángel, will you please come down to my office?”

“Okay,” Ángel said to the empty air. He padded barefoot down the stairs to Oberon’s office, nervous as a schoolboy called before the principal.

Oberon was behind his desk, as usual. Behind him, the white roses almost glowed, stranger and more Otherworldly than ever now that the weather had turned wintery.

“You’ve had an email from your friend Marissa Sommers,” Oberon said.

“I do?” Finally! Delighted, Ángel bounced a little on his toes as he approached the desk.

“You do,” said Oberon. “Please sit down. Chandler has some concerns.”

Ángel looked around and saw, to his surprise, that Chandler was standing in the corner, her face grave. A page of letter-sized paper was in her hand.

“This email seems to be in some sort of code.” She brandished the paper. Ángel reached for it, but she pulled it back.

“What?” Angel blinked at her. “Give it to me.”

Oberon said, “Ángel. Please sit.”

He looked from Oberon to Chandler. The envoy was, as usual, beautiful and strange and entirely unreadable, watching Ángel with the patient impassivity of a cat. Chandler stood as straight as a Marine in her navy pantsuit, dark braid shining, shoulders back. Nothing about her military bearing suggested that she was a woman who liked Broadway melodies or Looney Tunes marsupials.

Cold fright streaked down Ángel’s spine. Was he in trouble? What was wrong? He perched on the edge of one of the wingback chairs.

“The email,” said Oberon, “contains deliberate gender subversion in the salutation. Chandler thinks that this might be a signal to the reader to look out for a hidden message in the body of the email, which is, even to my eye, written in a very stilted manner. It closes with a signature that is not the sender’s name. It is, all in all, a rather strange letter, and I’ve judged Chandler’s concerns to be valid.”