Until now. Kenzie had been trying to talk to him these past few days, but Alex had worked hard to avoid him. He still felt bad about having used the power on him, even in defense. But ever since that confrontation, Alex hadn’t felt a flicker from inside the tin toy, despite long nights of trying.

His stop drew near. Alex stowed the robot away. As he stepped off the bus, he stood gazing back the way he had come. Just weary traffic trickling homeward through lengthening shadows, just his town’s familiar streets slanting away in the rain. He searched around, not knowing what he expected to find.

For the past week or so, he had been plagued by a dim feeling of being followed, the faint, nagging sense of eyes on him. He had started to suspect that what he sensed was only his own guilty feelings about having kept the robot when he was supposed to have got rid of it forever.

Beyond the rooftops, a white sun was sinking through smoky blue clouds. Alex shivered, zipped his coat at his throat, and hurried for home. Spring was here, but it felt like winter didn’t want to let go.

II.

HOMEWORK

After dinner, Alex went to his bedroom, closed the door, then stood considering the overdue homework stacked on his desk. His eyes drifted to the collection of old toy robots on the shelves above, gathered like a bright, waiting little army. Slightly dusty now.

He sat at the desk, and pulled a sheet from the pile.

Quadratic Sequences

1. Determine the nth term of the sequence 3, 8, 15 . . .

He looked at the numbers without seeing them. He heard his mum laughing at something Carl said downstairs. Rain rapped at his window as wind hit the house with sudden violence.

He flipped open his laptop and looked at the real homework that had been consuming his time, private projects of his own. The folder filled with his research on the golem legend was open. He hadn’t found anything beyond what he already knew. Nothing he could understand, anyway. Beside it, in another folder marked SALT, he’d started to compile every strange old superstition he could find about the stuff, folktales about its power to protect and ward against evil. He’d given up. There had been too many.

He keyed in the same news search he checked every night:

Vltava River Prague Bodies

Nothing.

He returned to his math, then instantly abandoned it. He crossed the room and knelt to reach under his bed, pulling out first the old toy robot, then a piece of plywood that had once been part of a kitchen drawer but now served as a makeshift drawing board. A large sheet of paper taped over it bore sketches for a book cover he was supposed to be designing for art. He removed that, uncovering beneath another project of his own.