Steve and Ryan had been bickering over their new lyrics for so long that Dorian got bored and slumped down in an armchair in the corner, his sketchbook propped on his knees. Drawing Luce felt like falling into a familiar dream: a long, wave-rocked story that always seemed to pick up where it had left off but never actually got any further along, much less reached a conclusion. There was the same dark, spiky hair taking shape now on the page; the same long, smoky eyes; the mouth he’d kissed until the icy air numbed the rest of his face and all he’d felt was her. He hadn’t understood how awful it was going to be: waking up every day and performing all the normal, repetitive tasks without any way to know whether or not she was still alive. Drawing her was the closest he could come to touching her. He could call to her face where it lived like a secret deep inside him and watch it emerge onto the page, a ghost formed from paper and black ink.

At first, drawing Luce had made missing her just a little easier, eased the hollowness in his chest. Recently, though, his drawing had started to make him feel even worse, but he still couldn’t stop. Now he drew the sinuous curve of her tail in one smooth stroke of black, then added the fins sweeping up behind her head. In the past whenever he’d reached into the water to stroke Luce’s fins they’d curled in a shocked, sensitive way around his fingers. He remembered those fins now, pale green and translucent and sleek with silvery lights . . .

“Working on your comic book again?” Dorian hadn’t noticed Zoe coming over to him. One fuzzy black sleeve of her oversized sweater brushed against his neck as she perched on the armrest and leaned in. She pulled her legs up against her chest, rubber heels digging into the upholstery, and wobbled precariously. Apart from the sweater she was wearing tight black jeans and combat boots carefully splattered with hot pink paint that matched her shoulder-length hair, at least when the dye job was fresh. Right now her hair had two inches of brown roots and streaks where the pink had faded into a peculiar peachy blond. As usual she was leaning too close to him, until she seemed to be on the verge of tumbling into his lap.

“Oh—yeah,” Dorian muttered absently. Practice drawings for a graphic novel he was starting. That was what he’d told everyone. He’d also told them that his family had died in a plane crash. He wished everyone would stop asking him questions so that he could be relieved of the constant need to lie. It got tiring.