"I'm a delightful instructor."
"You look like you might bite me if I fail the quiz."
"I might bite you if you pass it. Focus."
There's no real heat in the exchange. Just enough shape to keep fear from taking over the room. I put my hand in his. His fingers are warm and dry, his grip lighter than I expect. Cain'spalms stay steady at my waist, his touch quieting the static, but not blinding me. Ira remains near the window with his arms at his sides, watching the ward lines, the doors, the dead, and me. It should annoy me. It mostly does. It also makes the room feel less likely to split open under my feet.
Then Soren's magic enters carefully, slipping under my skin like warm light poured through a crack, green-gold and trembling with effort. He's tired. I can feel that now, clearer than I want to. The hollow place in him where Essren magic keeps eating at its own edges. The way the bond has made him stronger and more vulnerable at the same time. The way he's afraid of needing me and furious at anyone who might call that need weakness.
I swallow hard.
Soren's eyes narrow. "Stay with the room."
"I am."
"You're feeling me instead of looking."
"That sounds invasive."
"That sounds like you avoiding homework."
Cain's thumb moves once at my waist, grounding without directing. I let my eyes close.
The shop doesn't disappear. It thins.
The first layer is ordinary: shelves, glass cases, herbs drying from the beams, sunlight lying dull across the floorboards. Then Soren's magic sharpens the air, and the second layer slides over the first. The dead appear in pieces of memory and habit. The bakery woman near the front window, hands clasped around a brooch that's no longer there. Arthur by the map cabinet, offended even in death. The man by the radiator, gray and soft around the edges, forever warming hands he doesn't have.
They're disorderly. That's the first difference I understand. Normal spirits drift where memory takes them. They look atthings that mattered. They repeat old paths. They notice me only after they notice whatever grief has kept them circling.
"Messy," I whisper.
"Good," Soren says. His voice sounds farther away. "Messy means there's still a self in there."
I look deeper.
The shop changes again.
Near the library entrance, three spirits stand too still to be lost and too focused to be ordinary. They don't drift with the rest. They wait. One is a woman with a face cracked into porcelain lines, her dress torn and dark at the hem. One is a man with no eyes, only shadowed hollows where attention should be. The third is a child, small and silent, hands folded neatly in front of them like someone posed them there.
They're looking at me.
The sight goes through my ribs before fear can make sense of it.
"There," I say.
Cain's mouth brushes the back of my hair, not quite a kiss. "Stay with us."
I make myself breathe. Soren's magic brightens, and the lines appear.
Not chains like the one on the weak spirit by the door. These are thinner. Darker. Almost delicate. They trail from each spirit's throat, so fine I might have missed them if Soren's spell hadn't caught on the edges. They run through the air like black wire, cutting across the shop, through the walls, out into the city. I know where they go before I follow them. South. Past the apartments and traffic and old churchyard gates. Toward the Seminary.
My stomach turns.
"That light," I say, though it's not light exactly. It's the absence of it. "They're tied to the Seminary."
Soren swears under his breath. The word comes through the bond hot and shaking. Ira moves one step closer this time and doesn't stop. He still doesn't touch me. I can feel him there anyway, a wall he's trying very hard not to make into a cage.
The porcelain woman opens her mouth.
