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Her handwriting, on the inside of Orson Auclair’s arm.

His eyes lift to hers. He knows she’s spotted it. He seems on the verge of saying something. Something ruinous. Something horrible.

She doesn’t let him.

She flees.

***

As it turns out, Orson Auclair is a tough person to shake.

He’s waiting outside her apartment when she arrives home.

Worst of all, he looks infuriatingly casual about it, slouched against the old brick tenant house with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat.

It’s snowing heavily this morning, and somehow – irritatingly – it suits him.

He looks made for this weather, like some sort of wicked Jack Frost. Like he stepped out of a cold front and onto her stoop.

Angry, Georgina tugs her collar up around her throat and forces herself to approach. It rankles that she drove all the way here, skirting traffic, slipping on ice, and all he had to do was picture her building, and there he was. Effortless. Innate.

It begs the question: how did he know what her apartment looked like? She didn’t even think he knew where she lived.

“I’m going to call the police,” she states, as she lets herself in.

“Go ahead.” He slips in after her, just before the door can shut. The sight of him standing in the narrow foyer, dusting snow from his shoulders, turns her stomach. Or maybe flips it.

“I mean it, Auclair.”

“So do I. Call them, I don’t care. It won’t make a difference.”

There’s something ominous in the way he says it.

Something inevitable. She doesn’t trust it.

She darts toward the stairs in a desperate but futile bid to lose him.

He falls into easy steps alongside her, taking one long stride for every two of hers.

Tailing her to the converted attic she calls home.

Light pours in through the windows at each landing, snow gathering in fluffy drifts against the glass.

Beneath her chest, her heart beats at a clip.

Orson Auclair is in her complex. Orson Auclair has followed her home.

It feels like a fever dream.

He doesn’t even live anywhere near here.

Last she heard, he’d moved out of his parents’ chalet in Courchevel and into Boston’s glittering Seaport, into a studio he bought – bought, not rented – with his mother’s money and his father’s influence.

If the roles were reversed – if she’d followed him home – she would have been denied entry by a doorman.

At least her cat is waiting for her upstairs in her apartment. Morgana hates everyone, even Georgina. She wouldn’t put it past the vicious old alley cat to chase him out.

When she steps into her kitchen, so does Orson.

He slides through the narrowing gap, entering the space – her space – as if he owns it.

She’s never been more conscious of her things.

How small they are. How secondhand. Her tiny vintage fridge, the dated green backsplash, and the slim black cat with murder-yellow eyes perched atop the tile.

She braces herself for criticism – for him to sneer and mock and deride.

He doesn’t. To her great and unimaginable horror, he squats down and scratches Morgana between the ears.

Morgana, who detests being touched. Morgana, who only lives here because she followed Georgina home one day – fat with kittens and days away from giving birth – and then never left, even after the rest of her litter had been rehomed.

Morgana, who won’t even let Georgina pet her without drawing blood.

“Did I hit my head?” she demands, dropping her bag onto the counter. “What is happening here?”

Sensing tension, Morgana slinks into the bedroom. Slowly, Auclair rises to his feet.

“You don’t remember,” he says. “I’m too early.”

Unease bleeds through her. “Is this a riddle?”

“What? No.”

“A game? Have you developed a new and inspired way of screwing with me?”

Annoyance flickers across his features. “No.”

“Okay.” She pulls the apartment door wide. “Then get out.”

He hesitates, his focus drifting to the window. To the snow, gathered thickly on the sill. It’s begun to slow. The first needles of sunlight poke through the glass.

“It’s all the same,” he whispers, and for an instant, he looks as afraid as she’s ever seen him. As helpless. “We never had any control at all.”

Her unease deepens. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you think it hurts?” His cold eyes flick to hers. “Dying?”

“Okay, seriously, Auclair. You’ve always freaked me out, but you’re taking this to a whole new level.”

His head cants to the side. He looks tired in this light. Tired, and forbearing. “Be gentle,” he says. “Okay?”

Before she can ask him what the hell he means, he’s gone. Not through the door, the asshole, but in a blink. A shifting of the ether. An effortless drift.

“Showoff,” she snaps, and shuts the door with a slam.

That night she dreams of snow.

***

It blizzards in the night. The following morning, the world is crisp and white and glittering. It takes Georgina an hour to dig out her car. By the time she makes it to campus, she is soaked through and shivering, her mood sour.

Her first class of the day is Transference, which is by far her weakest subject.

It isn’t the testing portion that eludes her – it’s the practical application.

Drifting physically is one thing – conceptually simple, even if she’s only ever managed to do it once.

Drifting mentally is another thing entirely.

Six years of study, and she’s never mastered the art of slipping behind someone else’s eyes.

Orson Auclair, of course, is exceptional at it.

He picked up on transference from his father, who utilized the talent often behind enemy lines, hopping in and out of the heads of soldiers and politicians alike.

She doesn’t know if he inherited his natural aptitude, or if his prowess comes from a lifetime of practice.

Either way, it’s yet another skill he possesses and she doesn’t.

The total disparity of it rankles her beyond measure.

Auclair is already in class when Georgina arrives. It took her so long to dig herself out, there’s only one open seat remaining. And just her luck, it’s next to him.

He sighs when she sinks into the chair beside him. “The one day you’re late, Wells, and it’s the only time I’d prefer to sit with anyone but you.”

Her eyes jolt to his. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says, and kicks his feet up onto the table. “Never mind.”

Professor Souza arrives a few short minutes later, muttering about the weather and shedding her outer layers. She breaks the students off into pairs, setting a hunk of blue chalcedony onto each table. A conduit of communication. An organic amplifier.

To Georgina, it might as well be a piece of coal.

“Start small,” says Professor Souza. “Open yourselves up to one another. Think of a shape. Something simple. Visualize it. Its edges. Its corners. Its color.”

Auclair settles deeper into his chair, hands laced behind his head.

Deceptively casual. He’s dressed to the nines again this morning, not a hair out of place, as if yesterday was just a momentary lapse.

He looks unfairly handsome in a pair of pressed slacks and tooled brogues, his cable-knit vest the exact shade of blue she’d imagine him wearing… if she thought of him at all.

Next to her, he smirks. It’s halfhearted, lacking its usual cruelty. “You think about me all the time,” he says. “Don’t lie.”

Her heart plummets into her stomach. “That’s not fair.”

“It’s quite literally the assignment.”

“We’re supposed to be thinking of shapes.”

“Think of a shape, then, and stop fantasizing about me in blue.”

Anger builds inside of Georgina like a blister.

She wants to pop it – to let her temper ooze out – but instead it feels like a modicum of normalcy.

A return to their usual rapport. This version of Auclair – persistent as a pest – is far more ‘palatable’ than the Auclair she’d encountered in her kitchen, blinking over at her like a man coming out of a trance.

Petting her cat like he knew her. Speaking in riddles.

“Why was my name on your forearm?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

His smile flickers. He takes far too long to answer. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Are you obsessed with me or something?”

“Come on, Wells,” he says. “You don’t need to be a mind-reader to know that.”

His answer sinks into her. She doesn’t need a mirror to know her cheeks have gone pink. Just as she doesn’t need to meet Auclair’s eyes to know he’s watching her squirm. She thinks she’d rather be bleeding internally than sitting here beside him, weathering his scrutiny.

The sound of his feet dropping from the table in twin plunks draws her eyes to his. He leans in conspiratorially, fingers closing over the chalcedony. This close, Georgina can smell the toothpaste on his breath. Can hear the scrape of stone over laminate as he pushes the rock toward her.

“Why don’t I think of the shape, and you try to work it out? You clearly need the practice.”

She wants to argue, but he’s right. “Fine.”

“Fine.” He sits back, kicking out his feet. “Go ahead.”

She meets his gaze and holds it, wishing she’d arrived early enough to work with her usual partner, Constance Abernathy. As it is, Constance is engaged in a fruitful session with Eustace Papadopoulos just two tables away, and she’s stuck here. Staring down a viper.

“A viper,” says Auclair dryly. “Really?”

“Stop that.”

“Stop shouting all your thoughts at me, and I will.”

“It’s not me, it’s the chalcedony.”

“Of course it is. God forbid you ever take responsibility for something, Wells.”

“Just shut up and think of the shape.”

His brows lift. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else.”