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I meet his eyes and can’t help but give him a weak smile. “Were you now?”

“You’re right in my eyeline, it’s hard not to.” He pauses, licking his lips. I need to stop staring at his lips.

“Well, I’m fine. I feel better. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I can tell you,” he says and I look at him in surprise. “You were overly stimulated.”

“Stimulated?” I repeat and for some reason I feel my cheeks go red, betraying me.

He grins at me, realizing what he said. My god, he has perfect teeth, the kind of smile that gives you butterflies. “Yes, for lack of a better word. At least, that’s how these situations get for me. The senses, you know. They get overwhelmed. The people, the noise, the smells, the food…the wine? It all adds up. And if you’re not used to it, it can be too much.”

I think about that for a moment, because he’s right. “Is that what it’s like for you?”

He nods and looks out at the sea. “Yes. It’s one reason why I prefer either my own company or one-on-one. A reason why I teach smaller classes, not the ones in the halls. I can’t…focus when there’s too much happening around me. Wish I could.”

“Is that part and parcel of you being hyper-vigilant and reading the room whether you want to or not?”

“Most likely.”

“And yet you live in a city, isn’t that overwhelming?”

“It can be. But Sogliano has quiet pockets. And my apartment is quiet.” Though as he says it, a shadow passes over his face. Then he gives his head a shake. “Have you not been to the city?”

“Only when I was young. It was overwhelming to me back then, that’s for sure. The islands aren’t like that.”

“I suppose not. I wouldn’t know, of course.”

My eyes widen. “You haven’t been to the islands?”

He scratches at his chin and then straightens up. “No. I wanted to do a research trip to the Old Bones but…”

“The Old Bones?” I repeat incredulously. “Those islands are cursed. No one journeys there, not even us. Why would you want to go there?”

“I figured they might have answers.”

I don’t ask him about what he wants answers to. It’s better I don’t know. The Old Bones are a chain of forested islands northeast of Fernhollow where the trees grow too close and the paths change on you and the witches who still practice in the old way are said to live. No ordinary person goes. Those who have gone come back changed, or didn’t come back at all. Besides, you have to get through The Maw and the Deepwyrms first.

“You should look out for some of those students,” he says, after a moment, changing the subject. “Especially the boys. They could ruin you.”

I let out a small laugh. “Is that so? Well, perhaps I want to be ruined.”

“No,” he says, with a flare of his nostrils.

“No?”

“Not by them. Especially not someone like Kelwyck.”

I turn my head. He is looking out over the water again. His profile against the burgundy sky is formidable, the firm set of his jaw, his strong nose, which is long and faintly aquiline, the bridge rising in a small arch halfway down that keeps his profile from being symmetrical and too perfect. I wonder absently if that was inherited or broken in some past boxing match.

“Is that so?” I say. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”

He turns his head and stares at me.

“So what if I am?”

The breath goes out of me. I hadn’t been ready for the answer and he knows it. He takes a half-step closer and I can feel the heat radiating off him.

“Do I have a right to be?” he asks, and his voice has dropped into the register it had in the crypts the night he asked me to call him Baz for the first time, low and rich and intended for me and no one else. The lanterns from below catch the planes of his face and throw them half into shadow and half into red. “No, of course I don’t. You saw something in me. You know you did. And now, I fear you know my deepest, darkest secret. I fear you know the depth of my shame. The kind of man I am. Who I really am.”