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My pulse races. I cling to Drake tighter, like I’m a vine relying on him to grow.

With a sprightly jump, Dezeeves emerges from the ship.

“He’ll be here any second,” he chirps.

I speak through the lump in my throat.

“Who will be here?”

I sense him before I see him.

It’s a shift in energy. Like something wonderful is about to happen. But it will be short-lived. And painful. Leave you wishing it had never happened at all.

And then there he is, just cresting the mound of earth by the archway. He steps through it, face and skin shining in the sun.

I see him in pieces. His tall frame. Cheekbones.

His mop of copper-coloured hair.

The boy from the house next door is a man.

The boy from the house next door is alive.

He gives me a crooked smile, freckles popping in the light.

“Hello, neighbour,” my friend Cosmer says, flipping a small radio in his right hand and catching it. “It’s been forever.”

He looks down. Sees my hand in Drake’s.

As quickly as it came – and as quickly as he came, back into existence – his smile disappears.

CHAPTER 6

The Flight of the Hawker

It’s not a trick of the light, or blood magic.

Cosmer is really here, standing in front of me.

I stare without blinking, as though part of me thinks the moment I do, he’ll vanish once more.

I can’t reconcile the red shirt and brown leather jacket of his soldier’s uniform with the ragged clothes he once wore. The face that was once boyish and is now sharper, all angles. His hair, which used to be tangled, and is now combed through. It’s like looking at a stranger. A stranger who has taken my memories and is mocking me with them.

I can’t seem to speak.

But I do find myself letting go of Drake’s hand.

He faces me. “You know this person?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? Do I know Cosmer?

The Cosmer I knew wouldn’t have let us all think he was dead.

He never visited, which was apparently possible, if you believed crew rustlers.

He never wrote.

Letters did come down from the sky from time to time, mostly brought in by supply ships. But we never got one from him. Why?