“Just a very tiny sliver of one,” she said, unable to stop herself from giving him a radiant smile. It was the wonder that undid her. “Does it make it more or less magical if I tell you that, scientifically speaking, we’re all made up of stardust?”

He didn’t even hesitate, raising his eyes to meet hers. “More. Definitely more.”

Electric energy crackled between them. Mika held his stormy gaze for a long moment, her heart thrumming as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

“I should get some sleep.” His sandpaper voice sounded lower and rougher than usual. Very gently, he closed her fingers over the star shard, dimming the light. “Good night.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Two nights later, Mika was huddled over her spellbook, the end of her pencil in her mouth, trying to figure out the right rune to cast a tricky Keep Yourself Warm Even When Foolishly Swimming in the Sea in the Winter spell, when someone knocked at the attic door.

From the way Circe perked up, even going so far as to abandon the pig’s ear she had been ecstatically chewing a moment ago, the person knocking could only be one person. Mika was so surprised that she almost forgot to respond.

“Oh! Um, come in!”

The door clicked open. “Hey.” Jamie said from the doorway, rubbing the back of his neck. There was a bottle in his other hand.

The corners of Mika’s mouth curled irrepressibly up. “Hi.”

“I, er, could hear that you were still up, so I thought you might want a drink.”

“In that case, come forth and make yourself at home,” she said merrily, patting the rug beside her. “As you can see, Circe’s very happy you’re here.”

So began another pattern in Mika’s strange new life. After that second night, there was another, and then another, and so on. Jamie would bring the whisky, and Mika would set him to work helping her with whatever spell or potion she happened to be in the middle of, and they would sometimes say actual words to each other. These words might be about spells, or about the children, or about how the two of them had been mysteriously locked in the pantry together that day and Ian had most unconvincingly sworn up and down that he had had no hand in it whatsoever.

“How does he keep forgetting I’m a witch?” Mika wanted to know. “He had to have known I could spell the door open!”

“What did he expect us to do inside a pantry anyway?”

Mika couldn’t resist teasing him. “You can’t think of a single thing?”

She’d been hoping for a blush or a comically horrified look, but instead he held her gaze for a moment, his eyes dark, and she was the one who looked away first.