He plucked a shirt out of his hamper of dirty laundry, dabbed away the blood on his hand, and examined it. “It looks like just a few scratches. I don’t think there’re any glass slivers inside. Thanks, by the way,” he added, gesturing to the floor where the glass had been. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I stayed up to collect star shavings,” she said, and she smiled at the fact that he didn’t even blink. “Come on, I’ve got a balm upstairs that’ll get rid of those scratches in a jiffy.”

As she led the way out of his room, she snatched up the bottle of whisky and the remaining tumbler. When he arched an eyebrow, a most enviable trick, she shrugged. “What? I, too, have been known to drink myself into oblivion every now and then.”

Back in the attic, she poured out half a tumbler of whisky, drank about half of that in one gulp (and deeply regretted it because, no matter how many times she gave it another chance, whisky was always horrible), and handed the rest to Jamie. She found the balm in one of her crates of potions and handed him the jar. “Put a little of that on any scratches and let it sit for a few minutes.”

He did as he was told. While he waited, he picked up the tumbler. Somewhat appalled to find herself watching the movement of his throat as he swallowed, Mika turned away and went back to the meteor shower. The smaller of her two cauldrons was still bubbling, fortunately, and she gave it a stir, checked the thin curl of smoke coming out of it, and tapped a second silver spoon gently against the side of the cauldron.

“Why are you doing that?”

Mika glanced over her shoulder to see that Jamie was in the balcony doorway, leaning against the jamb with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, watching her. There were faint, exhausted shadows beneath his eyes, but he looked curious.

“The tapping? It’s like a song,” she said, a little too aware of how close he was. “Well, more like a mathematical formula, I suppose. It’s all about the pattern. It’s how I get the stardust to come to me. The sound and the cauldron smoke draw it out of the sky.”

On cue, a tiny, luminous speck drifted down into her free hand, light as a feather and as small as a grain of sugar. She held her palm out to Jamie. He blinked, straightening abruptly.

“Go ahead. It’s safe now that it’s in my hand. You can touch it.”

His hand wasn’t quite steady as he reached out.

“Jesus,” he said, letting out a short, low laugh threaded with wonder. “We’re touching a star.”