BY THE TIME Hadley wakes up, David is gone.

          He's been thorough. Nothing left behind. Hadley props himself up on the bed and looks dismally at the spot on the floor he'd begun to think of as belonging to David. Just up and gone. He might as well have never been here in the first place.

          Hadley reminds himself that he would have left anyway. A week. No more, no less. David was supposed to leave, and Hadley has no right to feel this childish hurt, even as he thinks of last night and David's bloodshot eyes. And the graveyard. And the snow fight. And the woman. And Hadley watching the orange glow of a street light glide over David's sleeping face and damn nearly crashing the car because of it.

          Odd, how it all felt discrete and disconnected from each other. None of it could have possibly occurred in the same night.

          Hadley gets up from his bed and sits on the floor. If he deludes himself hard enough, he can still smell that catch-all scent that hung around David. Cheap deodorant, sweat, that faint cloying perfume of another world.

          It's unfair, Hadley thinks, that David gets to coax him into companionship, into a camaraderie borne out of a week's worth of idle conversation and alcohol, and then leave without so much as a goodbye. Hadley would have expected a note, at the very least.

          Stupid.

          He's been feeling pretty stupid for the past couple of days. Instead of doing all the things he should have been doing—asking questions, asking how curses worked, asking why David wanted to break his curse in the first place—he's been doing, what? Nothing. Going to the gym and dragging along David. Talking to David about normal, banal, ordinary things, and David had been more than happy to go along. Conversations where Hadley told more than he intended to and David listened and laughed and snuck in a snide remark where he could. Hadley had been, much to his own surprise, completely taken by David. Interested and intrigued and not just because of the magic that always seemed to be radiating off of him. No, not just because of magic.

          Hadley knows desire. He's felt it enough to recognize it. There is nothing new about this. The only thing difference here, one that actually matters, is that this particular flavor of want is insidious and slow, a knife that he didn't even feel until it struck bone. And now it was in so deep it would be impossible to get rid of it without losing some part of himself in the process. 

          It doesn't help that David could be his potential death.

          And then his phone rings. He lets it ring for a solid minute, doesn't answer it. He watches it shake on his nightstand, and he considers if he has it in him, this early in the morning, to answer a call.

          It stops ringing. Hadley lets out a relieved sigh. It starts ringing again.

          Okay. He reaches out, grabs his phone. Looks at the name. Frowns. Answers the phone.

          "Hey," he says. "What's up?"

          "Do you know where David is?"

          Hadley hadn't thought someone like Vic could've ever sounded so panicked.

          "No?" Hadley says, and pushes himself to his feet. His stomach churns with unease. "I thought you'd know. What's wrong?"

          "We're fucked," Vic says, and she isn't saying this to him, but someone on her end. "No, he's not with him." Someone answers back, and it sounds a lot like Hassan. "Okay. Shit. No, send Benji, not Francis. He's good with the Coterie. Yeah, fuck Charlie. We need to be covert about this."

          "Victoria," Hadley says, because the tone of her voice only makes him more uneasy. "Why do you need David?"

          "Long story," she says, distractedly. Someone says something on her end and Hadley knows she's turning her head away from her phone when she answers. "No—no, she can't be coming now. Wait, what—" a pause—"she's sending that skinny white kid? Okay. Hell."

          "I'm fine with long stories," Hadley says, for the sake of bringing her back into this conversation.

          "Shit, I can't talk right now. Coven's gonna have our head. I'm sorry," Vic says. "Last night was really fucked up, it was. Just—could you just let me know if you find David? Let anyone know. Please."

          Hadley thinks of a dog, a woman with the same exact shade of russet brown skin as David.

          "I'll let you know," he says. He closes his eyes. "I'll try and look for him."

***

HE DOESN'T GO up to the house immediately after he parks the car.

          He's staring at his phone.

          Coming back in 2 days. Meet up sometime? I've spent enough time with my family to last me a lifetime.

          A message from Gregory. Gregory, who belonged to a life before David and magic and graveyards. A tether to an old life. Of course Hadley says yes.

          Sure. just lmk when youre up for it. im free whenever.

          Hadley glances at the house. There are Christmas decorations hanging outside of every single house, even David's. It's funny, in a way. The guy who let blood onto a grave, the guy who dragged Hadley through a different dimension, the guy who talked to ghosts was the same person who lived here and celebrated Christmas. He, who seemed a god in his own right.

          Hadley gets out of the warmth of the car and heads towards a god's shabby rundown brownstone house across the street.

          The door swings open before he even rings the bell.

          David's mother—Josephine, Hadley corrects himself—is standing there, looking at him.

          "Hello," she says. "Are you here for David?"

          Is she reading his mind?

          "No," she says. Her mouth curves, just a bit. "I didn't have to read your mind for that. You're pretty obvious about it."

          "About what?"

          "Do I have to say it?"

          Oh.

          The floor seems incredibly interesting. There's a welcome mat. Hadley never noticed that the first time he was here.

          "I'm not going to tell him," she says, and she sounds so much like her son, the way her voice lilts with amusement.

          "That'd be incredibly embarrassing," Hadley says. He hasn't looked up at her face.

          "It would. If you're wondering where he's gone, I don't know." When Hadley glances up at her, he sees that she's watching him intently.

          "Why don't you call the cops?"

          Her eyebrows rise up so far up her forehead that Hadley's afraid that it's going to merge with her hairline.

          "Call the cops?" she says, and she snorts. "On a black boy?"

          His ears start to burn. "Um. Right. Sorry."

          She says nothing. Behind her, the house looks warm and inviting and Hadley wants nothing more than to go inside, and maybe she senses this, because she steps aside and says, "Come in."

          He does, and immediately, Billy comes bounding through the house to greet him.

          "Hey there," he says.

          Billy looks up at Hadley, and there's disappointment in his beautiful dog eyes. Poor guy must have been expecting David. Hadley gives Billy a consolation pat.

          "Coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate? Fruit juice?" Josephine asks.

          Tea actually sounds good, but Hadley would hate to impose. "I'll pass, thank you."

          She shuts the door behind her, cutting off a gust of cold air. And suddenly it occurs to Hadley how truly awkward this situation is. Here he is, in David's home, without David. With his mother. How do you talk with a magician's mother?

          Billy starts scratching his ear, and Hadley's heart melts.

          "We got him at a shelter," Josephine says, unannounced. The living room and the kitchen are connected and Hadley can see that she's moved into the kitchen to make tea. "Carter and David wouldn't stop begging for a pet, so I took them to the local shelter, told them to pick whatever they wanted and they picked the dirtiest, mangiest dog they could find. And look at him now."

          Hadley steps into the kitchen and takes a seat, next to a cluttered table. Billy follows, and idles around Hadley's feet. Hadley looks at him, and it's hard to picture Billy as dirty or mangy, what with his clean yellow fur and the aura of wellbeing that seems to radiate off of all happy dogs.

          Hadley had wanted a pet, once. When he brought it up to his mother, she'd said something about if he couldn't take care of himself, how did he expect to take care of another living thing?

          He must've been eleven. Still young and naïve enough to believe that if he asked, just nicely, quietly enough, he'd get what he wanted with every cell of his eleven year old body. 

          "How old is he?" Hadley asks, reaching his hand out to scratch Billy.

          "Billy? He's about five or six years." She glances at the dog, who is very much enjoying Hadley's affection. "But he acts like he's still a puppy."

          Josephine starts the stove, puts a pot of water onto it. Hadley watches for a moment, until a question starts burning away in his chest.

          "Is it okay if I ask about David?" he blurts out.

          She smiles, a real full blown smile, and the resemblance to David is startling. She hasn't turned away from the stove.

          "Under the condition that I can refuse to answer any question you throw at me."

          It's something, which is better than nothing.

          Hadley sits up. "First question. What is he?"

          "He's my son." The water starts simmering. Josephine dumps the tea into it. "But that's not the answer you want. Is it?"

          "No," Hadley admits. Billy has left the kitchen, gone to do whatever it is that dogs do. "He's not just a wizard or magician or whatever, is he?"

          "What makes you think that?"

          "It's just—it's just that—" he falters, for a second, remembering things he'd rather forget—"last night. He did magic, I think. But I don't think it was magic. It was something else."

          "Define magic," Josephine says, simply.

          Hadley frowns. "What?"

          "I want you to define magic."

          "An otherworldly force manifesting itself in various ways in our world that could be harnessed by certain individuals?"

          Josephine actually laughs, and it tapers away into another smile. "That's a good definition. What about his magic didn't seem like magic?"

          "I don't know. Just weird." He thinks of red on white and says, "Let out his blood on snow."

          Josephine stops smiling. The tea boils. She mutters something under her breath and turns down the heat. Hadley hears the faint, distant and obnoxious bass of electro music, from somewhere outside of the house, on the street.

          "Can you say that again?" Josephine says, glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. "Blood on..?"

          "Snow," he finishes.

          "I'll have to talk to him, once he gets back," she says, looking more disappointed than anything. "He should have known better."

          He watches her turn off the stove, move the pot over onto the counter and pull out a strainer from one of the kitchen drawers.

          He knows better than to ask what's wrong. Even if he does, whatever reason she must have for being upset at David about blood must be beyond him.

          He has to change the topic. He looks at the table, at the grocery lists and quarters and pennies scattered around. There's a book that's been read often, judging by the creased spine. How to be both. The author's name is obscured. He fishes around in his head for a question, but some of these are questions you don't just ask someone's mother. Is your son interested in men? Do I have a shot, even if he's going to kill me? Could you persuade him not to murder me? So he asks an inane, boring, safe question.

          "What's he going to major in?"

          Josephine pulls out a green mug from a cabinet. "He isn't going to college. Next question."

          This surprises him. David is smart, in his own way. And if Hadley's a good judge of character, David's curious too. College seemed a good place for someone as quick and clever as him. "Why?"

          She takes another mug out. This one is blue, and it's missing a handle. "Because he doesn't want to. And I know he can't. He knows he can't. Next question."

          "Okay," Hadley says, dissatisfied with her vague answer. He casts about for another question. "Who's Charlie?"

          The question is a mistake. He knows it as soon as the words are out, as soon as Josephine goes still. For an agonizingly long second, everything in the kitchen ceases to move. Out of habit, an apology starts forming itself on Hadley's tongue. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't know better.

          Josephine slams the cabinet shut, hard enough for Hadley to jump up in his seat.

          "No more questions," Josephine says, her voice hard.

          Hadley's spent enough of his life around anger to recognize it. The clenched jaw, the tight-lipped expression, the twitching nostrils. Anger looks odd on David's mother, like she isn't used to it. She pours out two cups of tea through the strainer, all the while struggling to keep her anger down her throat.

          Josephine looks at him, and Hadley wonders what's on his face for her face to soften like that.

          "Oh, honey," she says. She sounds sad when she does. "I'm not angry at you."

          Hadley hates how much he's reassured by that. "I know."

          "Doesn't make it any easier, does it?"

          "No."

          She sets both of the cups on the table. Only now does it occur to Hadley that she's made two cups of tea. A kindness.

          "You looked like you needed something warm," she says. "I'm guessing you like tea."

          She doesn't need to guess. Both she and Hadley know this but this must be another kindness, in a way. She probably knows how much sugar he wants, how much milk he wants, but she asks anyway.

          "Sugar? Milk?" she says.

          "Just sugar is fine."

          She takes the green mug, the less damaged of the two, and takes it to the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen.

          "If you're wondering who Charlie is," she says, and Hadley can hear how difficult it is for her to speak, "he used to be Carter's best friend. David's too."

          "You don't have to say anymore," Hadley says, even though he wants to know more.

          "I wasn't going to." She puts in a healthy amount of sugar into Hadley's cup. "You're supposed to be asking questions about David, not someone else."

          "I don't know if I can think of any more questions," he says, as she hands him the mug. "Not any questions you'd ask someone's mother, anyway."

          Her mouth twitches, just barely. "I'm not going to answer any questions about my son's sex life."

          Hadley is shocked into a laugh, which devolves into a cough. "I wasn't going to ask. Really. As much as I want to know."  He adds, quickly, "I was joking. I don't really want to know."

          "Mhmm." She pulls up a chair and sits opposite him. "I'm not going to say anything. Just going to have some of my tea." As if to make her point, Josephine takes a long sip from her mug and sets down the cup. "Good stuff."

          She looks at him expectantly. Hadley takes a sip and nearly burns off his tongue, and Josephine leans back in her chair with satisfaction.

          "Aren't you worried about him?" he asks, trying to get a feel for his own tongue again.

          "I'm always worried about him," she answers. "The world isn't exactly kind to boys who look like him. I'm always afraid for him. I'm just good at hiding it."

          She's started tracing a pattern on the table. Up, down, across, diagonal and side to side. Hadley watches the motion for a while, sipping his tea, mulling over her words in his head.

          "He's safe, though," she says. "I'm sure of it."

          He almost asks if they share a special bond or something, but he decides it's a stupid question. Instead, he asks, "Are you a magician? Like him?"

          "I had the gift, once," she answers, a little nostalgically. "I still do. But I don't use it much and it doesn't need to be used. So, no, I'm not like him. Not all that much."

          The conversation lapses into a natural silence. Hadley lets it. She's finished her tea, and Hadley's only halfway done with his. Billy comes trotting back into the kitchen, and Josephine absent-mindedly scratches his head.

          "You can come over for Christmas, here," she says, still scratching Billy. "Or New Year's, if you want."

          Is she taking pity on him? Regardless, it's an enticing offer.

          "I'd love to," he says.

          Another silence. Hadley finishes his tea. Josephine takes her hand off of Billy and picks up the book on the table, flips to a dog-eared page and starts reading.

          "I should," Hadley says, "get going."

          "Before you go," she says, not looking up from her book, "David left behind some of his clothes when he went over to your house. He was supposed to pick it up a few days back. He never got around to doing it."

          "I don't think he'll be coming over to my house any time soon."

          "You never know," she says. She puts down her book and gets up from her seat. "Let me just go ahead and get it for you."

          Hadley gets up, too. "I'll get it. It's fine."

          She scowls at him.

          "Seriously," he says. "Just tell me where his stuff is."

          "On his bed," she says, sitting back down onto her chair. "Grey satchel. Can't miss it."

          "Thanks for the tea," Hadley says.

          "You're welcome."

          She goes back to reading her book, like Hadley's not in the room anymore, which makes it a whole lot less awkward to walk out of the kitchen and into David's room.

          The door is unlocked, just slightly ajar, as if begging to be opened. Welcoming him. Hadley pushes the door open.

          The room is virtually the same since he last saw it. Still has David written all over the place—from the junk on the floor to the sunlight streaming through the curtained windows, making dust motes dance. Hadley could stay here forever. 

          The satchel is right there, on the bed. All Hadley has to do is grab it and leave and be on his merry way. And maybe he would have, if he wasn't stupid enough to let his feelings sneak up on him.

          He sits on the bed instead. It groans under his weight, and he wonders, idly, what other sound this bed would be capable of making if two people were on it.

          Here is where David slept. Here is where David dreamt. Here is where David lived. And now, Hadley is here. It's an act of transgression. He shouldn't be here when David isn't. But, still, he lingers. He paces around the room, careful not to step on anything thrown onto the floor. His hands burn with the need to reach out and touch the walls, the posters, the glowing curtains, the evidence of David's existence.

          Everything is strangely silent. The air turns cold.

          "You're taking an awful long time."

          Hadley finds—much to his own chagrin—that he's getting used to these rare and spontaneous visits. He looks over his shoulder to find James sitting on the bed, cross-legged. Same as ever. He casts no shadow, doesn't make an impression on the bed.        

          "What are you doing here?" Hadley asks.

          "Same as I've always done," James says. "Watching."

          "Creepy."

          "She might think you're creepy, if you spend a few more minutes in here. Not everyone is as oblivious as you are, you know," James says. He sounds bored. "People can get suspicious, unlike you."

          Hadley glances at his watch.

          "Don't worry," James says, and his voice crackles, like static. "You've got about five more minutes before she finally suspects something. The mother."

          "Josephine," Hadley says.

          "Same thing. Anyway, carry on. I would hate to get in the way of your investigation."

          When Hadley looks back to the curtains, he sees that the dust motes have stopped dancing. They hang in the air, suspended.

          "What did you do?" He breathes the words and reaches out, passes his hands through the sunlight. This is surreal.

          "A favor," James says. He looks pale and washed out. Parts of him have started to flicker. "Hurry up. Time waits for no man."

          "But you're not a man."

          James's grin is, for the first time since Hadley's met him, completely guileless.

          "Maybe that body isn't entirely wasted on you," James says. The way he says it makes it sound less backhanded compliment, more fronthanded insult.  "Do go on."

          "Don't need your permission," Hadley mutters under his breath, making his way towards David's overcluttered desk, the back of his neck prickling with the feel of James's stare.

          There's the picture of David and Carter at the beach—the only picture in this entire room—right next to a battered laptop that's probably seen better days. There's a SAT prep book that looks like it's been used as a chew toy. Takeaway menus, second-hand comics, and an alarming amount of trashy magazines. Nothing out of the ordinary. Which irks Hadley. If David would just offer some outward evidence of how much of a wonder he was, this would have been easier. Hadley wouldn't have been dumb enough to fall for a miracle.

          It's just strange to reconcile the boy from last night—the one that made ghosts appear and disappear and move through the fabric of space like it was air—with the boy that lived in this room and left junk everywhere else and was so painfully, agonizingly human that it almost hurt to even consider the possibility that David might be his undoing.

          That is the whole appeal, Hadley supposes. Fall for someone who you can't trust, but do anyway. Possible and impossible.

          He puts his hand on the desk.

          "There," James says, the word a gasp. "There's something there." His voice is warped and distant, and when Hadley turns to look at him, he doesn't see James. Only a wisp of a boy, dissolving into air. His face is blurred, as if someone's smudged it all up.

          "Where?" Hadley asks.

          James continues to dissolve.

          "Okay," Hadley says, turning away. "You do that."

          Hadley checks the three drawers below the desk. The first one is just full of quarters and pennies and receipts. The second one is full of amulets and necklaces. Cheap-looking. Some of them are the exact same as the one around Hadley's neck. They look like they're staring up at him.

          He closes the drawer. And he pulls open the last drawer.

          At first glance, there's just a file and some notes there. But Hadley knows enough by now not to trust first glances. He pulls out the first and the only file he sees, and he opens it.

          It's blank.

          No. It's not blank. There are pictures and there are letters and there are words but they do not register in his head. Hadley sees a picture of an incredibly familiar looking man sitting somewhere incredibly familiar surrounded by incredibly familiar people but the thought, the impulse, the connection he should be making just does not happen. He sees it laid out before him, but he does not. He sees it, but he does not. These are words written in a language he knows, but he can't read them.

          He turns to glance at the bed. James is gone. But not completely. Time has not gone on yet.

          Hadley takes the notes out of the drawer. It's the same. He knows these words, they're there, right there, but he can't understand them. It's the most frustrating feeling in the world.    

          One does not think of magic having a scent, or an aura, or of someone like Hadley—bland as they come—sensing it. But a week and more living and breathing and sleeping in the same room has attuned him to David's—he doesn't know what to call it. Aura. Aura will have to suffice. In any case, these notes have been messed with, intentionally. By David. He can feel it. He'd done something. Something to prevent Hadley or anyone else from reading it.

          Anyone else. Nobody goes through these measures if they don't think someone's going to go through their belongings. Or steal them. Precautionary measures, and Hadley has a hunch that it isn't against him, but against something else.

          What is David so afraid of?

          Time goes on. Billy comes into the room. Hadley takes the photo his head refuses to make sense of, folds it and tucks it away in his pocket. Billy watches him do it with reproachful eyes.

          "Don't look at me like that. Your owner's probably going to murder me."

          So why is he feeling so remarkably calm about it?

***

DOES A GHOST dream?

          Because he dreams, that night. What does a ghost dream of?

          A world made of living things. A world in which it does not belong. A world which is its home.

          This whole world feels strange. Familiar. The floor is made of bone.

          His body is not his. He walks, walks, walks, walks, walks, until he comes to a clearing. The floor here is made of skin. There's a cold wind, and it raises goosebumps along the floor. He waits. Looks up at the sky and he sees that it is not the sky, it's the ocean. A great and giant unfathomable nothingness stretching out to infinity.

          He is not waiting. He is watching.

          And it arrives—no warning, no threat. It simply exists. It shouldn't be here. This world wasn't meant for it. But this isn't this world, it is his. This eldritch horror has no bones, no limbs, no teeth, no eyes and he has never seen—and he hopes he will never see—anything like it, but, but, but it is familiar, i have seen you before i have been here before

          and he takes a step towards it and it say something back in a language that isn't a language and it is the most beautiful thing he's ever heard, and this horror isn't a horror at all. It understands him. Understands his fear, and his longing, and his wrongness, and it is singing to him. It's the size of the sky. It's the size of the universe. It's the size of a boy too empty to do anything but watch. Its skin shifts—the color of its flesh is infinite. It is everything, all at once. If he were a lesser thing he would have gone blind at the sight. He wants to go with it. How badly he wants to go with it. How badly he wishes he could leave for someplace for once in his miserable fucking existence, he would finally belong, somewhere he could call a home, take me where i will be whole take me where i will be more take me where i will be real

          and something starts burning a hole into the slight hollow where his throat ends and the rest of him begins. The thing before him—the nothing and the everything—lurches back. It isn't afraid of whatever is burning away in his neck. Too dignified for fear. But it recognizes a threat. It grumbles and moans and rickets itself into nothing.

          He watches it disappear. His neck has not stopped burning. Now, he remembers that he was shackled, once. A necklace so loose he never once thought of it as a collar.

          When he tries to tug at the chain around his neck, all that slips into his hand is a brilliant blue eyeball.

          He blinks.

          Something starts ringing.

          He doesn't wake up so much as he is wrenched into consciousness, his body lagging behind him. Facts come back to him in pieces. His name, where he is, what he's doing here.

          I am James Bishop Hadley and I am in my room and I am awake.

          His phone rings buzzes under his pillow, and he doesn't move. Or rather, he can't move. His body feels sluggish, two steps behind him. The phone stops buzzing.

          Finally, his hand does what he wants it to do, and grabs the phone. The glow of the screen makes him squint, but he can make out that someone's called him, and then left a text message. If he squints harder, he see that— 

          David. Suddenly, Hadley is much more awake.

          A missed call and a text message. That's all. That's all it is. Doesn't matter if it came in the dead of the night. Doesn't matter if Hadley's heart feels too big for his chest. Doesn't matter if it takes all of two seconds to read the one fucking line of text David sent him.

          Don't look for me.

***

a/n: wow this one's a dooooozy!

Okay real talk serious time uhh Hadley is bi and looking back on past chapters I realize ive written him more straight boy in denial of feelings XD instead of bi boy who is struggling with his attraction to men (who isn't lol) and that was really not my intention!

I wanted to make it like, implicitly implied that Hadley was and is attracted to men but just not too keen on acting on any of that attraction. David isn't the first boy hadley's attracted to, david hasn't turned him bi. But that didn't really work so you know what the hell ever.