While the endearment could have been addressed to anyone, the question made it obvious that it was Mika he was asking. She rolled her eyes. So he wasn’t that worried, then.

“I live with you,” she said. “When exactly do you think I see this hypothetical special someone?”

“So it’s been a while then,” said Ian, rubbing his skinny chin like a cartoon villain.

“A while since what?”

“He means since you had sex,” said Rosetta, without taking her eyes off the window.

Jamie choked. Ian shrugged as if to say, “Yes, that is what I meant.”

“Inappropriate,” Mika said to Ian. Her stern tone was somewhat undercut by the fact that she was trying very hard not to laugh. “It is categorically not your business, Ian Kubo-Hawthorn, but if you must know, it’s been a few months.”

“Was it serious?”

“It’s never serious,” said Mika. “I haven’t done serious since I was at university, and that was a huge, colossal, fuck-off ginormous mistake.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jamie look curiously at her.

“Is it the secrets that stop you?” Ian asked.

“It’s always the secrets,” Mika said. She flicked the indicator, turned left, and followed a sign for the A47. She thought suddenly of Hilda Kim, sweet, extroverted Hilda who had told the Very Secret Society that she was struggling with hiding a big part of herself from her fiancée. “I couldn’t fall in love with someone who didn’t know I was a witch. I think it would hurt too much. It’s why I never stay long in any one place, and never stay in touch with anyone I happen to meet while I’m there. If I get close to people, I’ll want to tell them the truth. And if I tell them the truth, I’ll probably lose them.”

“You don’t know that,” Rosetta objected. “You’re awesome. I refuse to believe anyone who knew you would turn on you.”

Mika’s heart became a puddle of goo. “You’re too pure for this world, Rosetta.”

“To be clear,” said Jamie, ruining the moment with his usual flair, “you’re saying you won’t live in one place for more than a few months because you don’t want to get close to people you might later lose, but you’re happy to bond with a dog and four fish?”