Jamie dropped his head back against the armchair and put an arm over his eyes. Would it do any good to point out to her that it was one o’clock in the morning, he’d been asleep less than an hour, and he was decidedly not up to discussing whether or not to violently dispose of the new tutor? No, probably not. Just as it would probably be useless to remind Terracotta that nobody liked being woken in the dead of night by a murderous child in a ghost-white nightgown.

“Jamie,” Terracotta persisted. She perched on the arm of his chair, shoving his elbow unceremoniously out of the way.

Resigned, Jamie opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep reading in the library, like he did quite often, and he’d turned off all the lights except for the wall sconce above him. It was a soft, golden light, but it illuminated the stubborn expression on Terracotta’s face perfectly. Even perched precariously as she was, her back was straight and her arms were still tightly crossed. She had a direct, unwavering stare, one that she tended to deploy masterfully to get her way, but Jamie had gotten wise to her tricks a long time ago.

“Give it up, brat,” he said, tugging on one of her bare toes. “She’s coming, whether you like it or not.”

Terracotta scowled, which he had no doubt was supposed to be intimidating but instead had the unfortunate effect of making her face even cuter. Which was something Jamie would never tell her, of course. “Why? We don’t need her! You don’t want her here, either.”

He didn’t deny it. “Where’s this coming from?”

“I don’t trust her,” she said.

Jamie winced. She sounded so much like him. Had he taught her to be mistrustful of everyone and everything? An eight-year-old?

“You don’t know her, Terracotta,” he said. “Neither do I.”

“But you met her, didn’t you? When she came here the other day? What was she like?”

He thought somewhat wistfully of Altamira, who asked things like, “Why is the sky blue, Jamie?” and of Rosetta, who was all “But why didn’t either Romeo or Juliet even check for a pulse?” and wondered why Terracotta never asked him easy questions.