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I go in before my toes fall off.

Still using candles because the bulb is still out. Gage is at the sink washing two mugs that don't need washing. His jacket hangs off the back of a chair. Sid is on the third stair, doing his impression of a stone lion.

I hop up on the counter, which puts me almost at eye level with him, and I sit there long enough that he turns around.

"There's something I never told you."

His hands go still on the towel.

"Before you told me anything, before Evelyn, before any of it." My voice comes out steadier than I expect.

"The mirror wrote THIRTEEN DAYS. I told you that part. Not the rest."

"What's the rest?"

"Every mirror in the shop fogged at once. The vanity, the gilt oval, the little compacts in the case. All of them writing the same two words." The candle nearest my knee leans, straightens. "And there was a woman standing behind where my face should have been. Tall. Thin. All black. She raised her hand and pointed at me."

Gage doesn't move for a long moment. Then he folds the towel in half, and in half again, which is what he does instead of swearing.

"Why are you telling me this now?"

That's the question I've been asking myself. I lift one shoulder. "I think it's because I've spent a week being furious at everyone who keeps things from me, and at some point that stops being righteous and starts being hypocritical."

He crosses the kitchen. Doesn't touch me. Just puts himself close enough that I have to tilt my head back.

"Thank you," he says.

"It's way overdue."

"I know what it costs you." His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second before they come back up.

"I'd have told you sooner. No. That's a lie. I'd have told you eventually, and that's worse."

I laugh, and it surprises us both.

Then I ask what's been bothering me.

"Gage, are the lines mine?"

He goes still again. I've asked him this before and every time he's dodged the question.

He doesn't this time.

"Yes."

The word sits in the pit of my stomach.

"Wards, seams, bindings. Anything that was drawn to keep something to one side." His voice is low and careful, like the words have edges. "They're not yours to own. But, they're yours to move. You could stand outside a locked door and it would want to be open, because you're standing there."

My hands are cold. "Then the woman at my window told me the truth."

"That's why it worked."

I look at the candle by my knee instead of at him. "Why did you keep dodging it?"

"Because the second you know you're the door, you spend the rest of your life wondering whether everything that gets in came in through you." He says it flat, like a man reading his own charge sheet. "I wanted you to have a few more days without that."

"That wasn't yours to decide."