It didn’t take more than a moment for the marble to start to act almost like a prism, reflecting (or was it emitting?) straight orange lines, at different angles, but on the same plane, radiating out 180 degrees in the shape of a fan. Was that what a vector was?

She couldn’t remember. She wished that Max was there to see it. But he’d been so strange (a bit cranky, really, unpredictable) since they’d been in London, who knows what he would say. He might just say she was imagining things.

She wasn’t imagining the reflection it cast on the ceiling, the pattern of symmetrical lines. It made her breathless somehow, a little scared honestly. She flipped the switch off for the chandelier and oddly, the marble seemed to hold onto the reflections for a moment, as if it had a power of its own, and then fade, barely lit by the faint glow from the burning light from logs in the fireplace, and then seemingly be at rest again.

Tess tentatively picked the marble up, frightened it might be hot or emit a spark itself. It was a little warm, but she reasoned the fire was lit, and it felt glass-like, just like a marble should. She hid it in the top drawer of the dresser in the bedroom, behind the socks, underneath the box of Swiss chocolates in the shape of dancing bears she’d bought for her Aunt Evie as a stocking present. It seemed a safe place to put the marble—hidden away, partly so that she wouldn’t lose it and also, to tell the truth, it kind of made her nervous to keep it out. What if it spun so fast it hypnotized her or made Max dizzy or moved objects around the room? What if the symmetrical lines were a pathway to . . . she didn’t want to think about that, the possibility that it could lead her somewhere else. Tess had had an experience like this in England before. She knew she was getting ahead of herself here, but putting it in the sock drawer seemed somewhat like a safety measure. She knew she didn’t want to throw it away. That didn’t even occur to her.

She wondered what Max would say if she asked about the spinning thing the marble had done earlier. He would probably say she imagined it or that it was some kind of gravitational pull or something, and that someone in the room had something it was attracted to—that made sense. Tess made a Note to self: ask Max if that was a logical theory?

She crawled into bed and fell asleep without even turning the bedside light out.