Yawning, Circe jumped off Mika’s bed and padded closer. She stopped in the open balcony doorway, uninterested in stepping out any farther into the cold.

“I’ve been thinking about what might happen if I combined star shavings, lavender, pollen, and moonlight,” Mika said to her. Circe blew out a sleepy breath. Mika nodded. “I know, I know. You think it’s a bad idea to put stars and moonlight in the same potion. You think they’ll be too powerful together, or that they’ll react unpredictably because neither comes from the earth.” She clicked her tongue thoughtfully, catching a luminous shard drifting past her. “But what if I combined them and something spectacular happened?”

Circe huffed, snuffled her cold wet nose into the side of Mika’s neck, and went back to her warm, comfy spot on the bed.

“You’re right,” Mika agreed. “It’s a bad idea. You’re such a good influence on me, Circe.”

It was always irksome when an idea went nowhere, but Mika knew by now that there would always be new ideas.

She’d just topped up about two thirds of the vial when, from below her attic balcony, she heard a quiet growl of pain. Circe’s ears pricked up.

The growl was, of course, unmistakable. Jamie probably hadn’t meant for anyone to hear him, but she was on the balcony and he must have had his window cracked open.

She glanced at her clock. Twenty past two. She’d noticed that Jamie slept very little, but this was late even for him. Why was he still up?

“Stay,” Mika said to Circe, who was obviously so warm, comfortable, and sleepy that she didn’t bother to dignify this with a response.

Laying her tools down carefully, Mika opened her door, slipped down the stairs, and avoided the creaky floorboards (When had she gotten so familiar with the house that she knew which floorboards creaked?) in her path down the hallway. She paused outside Jamie’s door, which was open just a sliver, and tapped her knuckles quietly against the frame before sticking her head in.

The room was lit only by a lamp on the nightstand. It was a very Jamie-ish room, which was to say it was perfectly tidy: every book on the shelves was ordered, a laptop and paperback (with a bookmark in, of course, because to leave a book open on its front was practically a capital crime as far as Jamie was concerned) were stacked neatly beside the lamp on the nightstand, and even the soft, round, grey rug was in the exact centre of the room. Incredible.

Jamie was on one knee halfway between the rug and window, picking up what looked like small pieces of broken glass off the floor. There was blood on his left hand.

“Cut yourself?”