“I’m really missing him. That’s part of it. The other part is realizing that there’s so much you can get away with because most adults are so busy trying to live their lives and deal with a group of kids that one kid doesn’t matter. I think I’d be happier if I couldn’t get to my workshop at all because they were paying a lot of attention to me.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“It would be more happiness for a very short time,” Swansong said. “Then it might feel hollow. I’m glad that your work means we can spend time together like this.”

Kenzie nodded, excited and sudden. “Right!?”

Silent, I pushed the door to the unisex bathroom open, holding it for the others. Rain, Byron, and Erin hung back in the mall’s concourse while the rest of us went in.

There were people inside, a husband and wife with a baby that they were wholly focused on, taking up three sinks between them. I hung back until they were gone, as the Ashleys headed to the sinks furthest from the door, standing side by side as they peered at their reflections.

I hoped that Damsel wouldn’t be a bad influence on Swansong.

The parents left and most of the stalls were left empty. Only one stall to watch for, and we could situate ourselves where we weren’t overheard.

“There’s a dial built into it, you might have to tilt it to see,” Kenzie instructed. “That controls the scope of it. I would have liked to have two dials, because you can do an awful lot of exploration with two dials. Double-tap the surface to turn it on. Oh, let me help you!”

Kenzie helped Sveta with the hair clip. I took the moment to figure out my sun-shaped device. The dial required my fingernail to adjust. I double-tapped it to turn it on, and my world was swallowed up by a faint checkerboard haze, a transparent screen falling into place around my head and hands, where skin and hair were visible. The haze snapped out of existence as the device seemed to figure out where my eyes were, creating eyehole-shaped gaps in the screen, while instead creating greater-than and less-than blurs of shadow to frame my eyes.

A moment later, the checkerboard and the shapes were gone. My skin tone changed along my hands, my fingernails now artificially painted. In the mirror, I could see hair with darker roots and brighter highlights, twisty as if every lock or length had been wound tightly around a pencil or pen, not treated with heat, but guided in shape all the same. The eyes that looked back at me seemed more open.