“How are you studying bees? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bee in this part of Glasgow,” I ask, horrifyingly curious despite myself. “I’d figure all the gulls had eaten them.”

“We found a way,” Resha answers in a tone that makes me fully convinced they have a beehive hidden behind their father’s electronic repair shop.

I like the Hussain twins — despite their skill with fire — but at this moment I’m deeply relieved that this is our last tutoring session before I leave for America. Fadwa heard about a man in the Pacific Northwest who can peer into souls and eat out the evil inside, so here I am: finishing my last lesson and preparing to pack up the few things I have in this manky, cold flat so I can travel halfway around the world again after what will probably be another dead end.

I just hope this newest miracle cure doesn’t involve ram’s blood. I’m really over ram’s blood. It always manages to get in my shoes and dry out my curls.

And it tastes awful; it’s more sour than human blood. Sticks to your teeth.

“I need water,” I mumble, pushing myself away from the table and toward the kitchen. Fadwa steps back to let me pass, and her large handbag smacks into me. I fight the urge to ask her for the millionth time what she keeps in there. Usually it’s books. But once it was a skull, and I don’t think it was fully human.

“Happenin, wee man? You look like death warmed over,” Fadwa says cheerily, reaching out to pat at my head. I can’t help myself; I flinch as her arm comes near me. She pulls it back immediately, the smile falling from her face.

“Thomas, are you okay?” she asks, her eyes creasing with worry behind her large glasses. I take a deep breath, then another, then nod.

“Fine,” I say, reaching out to pat her arm in a pathetic failure of a reassuring motion. “Just another migraine.”

She easily interprets what I’m trying to convey: that I had another nightmare during waking hours. For the third time this week. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to my fucked up visions, but they’re getting more and more frequent, and I have absolutely no idea why.

Neither does Fadwa for that matter, which is only mildly terrifying, as she’s the best magician I know. Far better than me — probably even better than Cormac Macrae, my old guardian. (Though, I suppose there are a lot of magicians out there who are better than Cormac was, but when I was a kid, isolated on the Isle of Mab and being taught by the only other magical human I knew, he seemed like the most powerful person on earth.)