Way too little. And way too late.

  He let the phone, and the hand holding it, fall to his side. Somehow he’d arrived at the window, and through the sheer curtain he could see a Spanish-style courtyard jungly with potted palms, a small, kidney-shaped pool at the center. A dark shape swam lazy circles beneath the surface, in no apparent hurry to come up for air.

  He decided to believe Richter cared, or evinced caring, only because Leopold’s disappearance could make trouble for him in the form of police inquiries and hospital stays and, if worse came to worst, funeral plans—and he was an important man with a reputation to manage.

  Leopold could untangle the rest later.

  A siren wailed outside. Leopold tensed as it sped by, then had a realization that sent his heart racing. He was a wanted man in both Sunder and slack LA.

  To be safe, he knew he should turn his phone off altogether, but he wanted to look through the notifications from Emmet and Emmet’s mom first. They’d come through earlier that morning, not the previous night, which meant Richter had probably recruited them in his quest to find Leopold. He considered calling Emmet’s mom just so she wouldn’t worry, but he’d seen enough police procedural shows to know he couldn’t reach out without running the risk of giving away his location. If the police were looking for him, they might be able to trace his call. And what would he do if cops suddenly descended on the El Royale apartments? Where would he go then?

  “Hey, is everything okay?”

  Isabel had ventured out of the kitchen. She stood beside a boxy TV propped on a cocktail cart, frowning at him.

  Leopold shifted to look at her, struck again by her beauty. She was outlined in sun, dust motes suspended in a slash of golden light that cut across her green eyes, which were wide with something like concern—but he didn’t trust it.

  “Everything’s fine,” he said, turning away.

  He felt her approach, the weight of her presence tangible as she drew near. Norm was puttering in the kitchen, pretending not to listen. The two of them stood side by side, staring silently out the window. A murder of crows circled a nearby telephone pole.

  “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she said quietly.

  He shook his head, feeling suddenly restless. He glanced at the phone still clutched in his hand. “I thought slack tech didn’t work in Sunder.”

  “Phones never work in Sunder Hill,” she explained. “They occasionally work in other sunderhoods because their veils and boundaries are more porous.”

  “Right.” He took a breath. “Well. I need to go.”

  “Where?”

  Leopold closed his eyes. He wanted to laugh.

  Nowhere.

  He didn’t even have Bessie anymore. He tried to imagine calling his dad, then crawling back home, back into the revolting skin of Larry Berry and the suffocating limits of that world. The iron fist of Richter that had reined him in. The fantasies that had always ruled him. He couldn’t return to that. He wouldn’t.

  An escape from Norm’s apartment would achieve nothing. Running from this wouldn’t save or spare him, wouldn’t remove this thing from his chest. Wouldn’t reveal a path forward.

  Clearly, his mom wasn’t finished with him yet.

  For a moment there was a lull in the clamor outside, horns and the screech of a garbage truck fading to a hush, as if some cosmic sound mixer had dipped the city’s master volume to zero; as if Los Angeles itself was holding its breath.

  “Leopold,” Isabel tried again. “Do you think—”

  Leopold, who’d been fidgeting with his phone in his hands, suddenly dropped it. Isabel moved quickly to catch it, and in the process one of her sleeves slid partway up her forearm, revealing a tracery of knotted pink lines. The scars twisted around her slender wrist until they disappeared beneath the fabric of her cloak.

  She straightened slowly, the alarm in her eyes belying her outward calm. She handed him his phone without a word, then tugged down her sleeve.

  “What happened?” he asked, nodding at her arm as he pocketed the phone.

  “What’s going on with you?” she deflected.

  Leopold exhaled, returning his eyes to the window. He had no one to count on. No one to trust. Nothing, really, to lose. “My dad thinks I might be lying in a ditch somewhere,” he said softly. “And now he’s got the police looking for me.”

  She was quiet a moment. “I’m guessing that means he doesn’t know about Sunder.”

  Leopold shook his head.

  “What about your mom?” Isabel asked. “Does she know?”

  “My mom is dead.”

  He said it like he always did, bluntly, as if the words meant nothing, cost him nothing to say aloud, required nothing of the hearer. He waited for Isabel to look away, the way most people did. Most people were intimidated by death, freaked out by the intensity of mom-loss and semi-orphanhood. But Isabel didn’t flinch.

  “When?” she asked.

  He turned and met her eyes. She didn’t look afraid or devastated. In fact, she was smiling a little.

  “When I was twelve.”

  “Hey, mine too,” she said, her smile growing.

  Against his every instinct, Leopold found himself unclenching. “What do you mean?”

  “Both my parents died when I was twelve.”

  “Both of them. Damn.” Leopold shook his head. “At the same time?”

  Now she looked away, nodding at the window. “In a fire. Lab accident.”

  “That’s why you live with Norm.”

  Again, she nodded. Leopold was still, studying her as she watched the distant hills.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. The death of one parent had nearly broken him forever, and despite having a father who was essentially a stranger, he couldn’t imagine losing both. “That’s a shitty way to lose your parents.”

  She laughed a little when she said, “It really is. Efficient, though.”

  Their eyes met fleetingly then, long enough for some fragile, unsayable thing to pass between them. A bright spark of shared understanding, of agonies so large they refused expression, of pain untranslatable to language.

  Then a truck blasted its horn outside, and Los Angeles resumed.

  The phone in Leopold’s pocket buzzed, and Isabel’s smile returned. “So popular this morning.”

  The incoming call was from Emmet’s mom, and it was her third of the day. Leopold’s finger hovered over the button. He wasn’t sure whether to answer. He wanted to answer. If Dr. Laura Worthington was calling him this much, something was definitely wrong—but he worried, again, that the police might trace his location.

  The ringing stopped; now came the double buzz of a voicemail.

  Leopold felt Isabel’s eyes on him as he stepped away to listen. Hearing Emmet’s mom speak always made Leopold feel like he was a kid having a sleepover in Emmet’s basement. Dr. W would pop down around midnight, instruct them sternly to go to sleep, and leave a tray of snacks behind. Her voice had that same firm go-to-bed timbre now, but she sounded frayed and anxious, too.

  “Hi, Larry, it’s Dr. Worthington again. I need you to call me back right away. Something’s wrong with Emmet. He hasn’t been himself since yesterday—the morning after you two were out so late. He’s been really spacey, and he’s saying things that don’t make sense. I just need to know what you did, where you went. Is it possible Emmet hit his head somehow? Did you…take something? I’m beyond anger at this point, Larry. I just need to know how to help him. Call me. We’re worried. Thanks.”

  Leopold was reeling.

  Something’s wrong with Emmet.

  It wasn’t like Emmet’s parents to call him like this. They trusted their son and almost never freaked out, so whatever was going on had to be serious. But Leopold had talked to Emmet on the phone only yesterday, and he’d sounded like himself—a little out of it, maybe, but that was to be expected from someone who’d just had his memory revised.

  He played Emmet’s last voicemail, time-stamped sixty-seven minutes ago.

  “Mister Berry, it’s Mister Worthington. Again. Are we shooting today, or what? You’re not answering, so I’m gonna assume you’re on your way to the location.” Shooting today. A sick feeling gripped Leopold. “You’d better be, because I spent half the night packing fake blood into these new squibs I got. They’re real ones from an actual movie set and completely illegal to use without a permit, which means they’re gonna be frigging awesome. It was supposed to be a surprise, but whatever. I can’t find the extra paladin costumes anywhere, though, so I hope, uh…” He mumbled something unintelligible, and there was a dull crash in the background like he’d knocked something over. “What the hell, who rearranged my room? Where are my nunchucks? Anyway, I hope you called Tom and Erica, because I don’t have their numbers on my phone for some reason, and I don’t want to recruit any more randos to be extras. And remember, we’re shooting at Hollywood Forever this time, not Pan Pacific Park. I’m leaving in five. See you soon—”

  After another dull crash and a muttered curse, the voicemail ended.

  Leopold listened to the message one more time to make sure he’d heard it correctly, then played Emmet’s other two messages. The first was about collaborating on homework for a class they’d had together—freshman year of high school. The second was somehow even more worrying, and consisted mostly of Emmet laughing strangely, trying and failing to remember why he’d called, then finally whispering, “Larry, what’s happening,” before hanging up.

  Leopold stood gripping the silent phone, horrified.

  Emmet thought they were still in Mr. Bostich’s Intro to Chemistry class. He thought they were still making Sunderworld videos.

  Holy shit. Emmet thought they were fourteen.

  Leopold jammed his phone into his pocket and turned to find his boots.

  Fifty-Three

  “What’s wrong?” Isabel’s fear was palpable, her rigid frame an exclamation point as she followed Leopold toward the couch. “Something’s wrong. Uncle Norm,” she called out. “Something’s wrong with Leopold!”

  Norm came shuffling over in his bathrobe, half a chocolate-chip cookie melting in one hand. “What’s going on? Hey, now,” he growled, “what did I say about skipping out on us—”

  Leopold was hopping around, his foot stuffed into one boot while he scoured the floor for its mate. “I have to go. Emmet needs me. They messed up his brain.”

  “Who’s Emmet?” Norm asked.

  “Is that the guy who was with you at the Brite Spot?”

  Leopold nodded. “Where the hell is my other boot?”

  “Here, it’s wedged under—”

  He and Isabel both bent to retrieve it and clonked their shoulders together. Leopold attempted to put the boot on while standing, lost his balance, and did a controlled fall onto the couch.

  “Wait a second. Slow down.” She dropped onto the cushion beside him. “What do you mean they messed up his brain?”

  Leopold laced as he spoke. “Emmet’s memory is all screwed up. His parents are flipping out.” He spared her a brief, worried glance. “He thinks we’re fourteen and still making Sunderworld videos. He’s headed to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery right now to meet me for a shoot.”

  “Sunderworld videos?” Norm brightened. “You know about Sunderworld? I haven’t heard anyone mention Sunderworld in years—”

  “Uncle Norm,” said Isabel, frowning.

  “Right,” he said, popping the rest of the cookie into his mouth. He spoke while he chewed: “Bad time.”

  Leopold finished lacing his boots, stood up, and looked Norm in the eye. He’d ask Sunderworld follow-up questions later. “If I bring Emmet back here, can you fix him?”

  “Whoa, I don’t know about that, little dude.” Norm took a step back. “Depends on the memory enchantment they used, the revisionist…Rewiring the brain is serious magic. Plus, you need a license for that kind of work. If I go digging around in his head, I might mess things up even more—”

  “What about Jamal?” Isabel suggested.

  “The hypnotist?” Norm wiped a chocolatey hand on his robe, considering. “It’s a good thought, Iz. A real good thought. I’d say it’s a definite maybe.”

  Leopold crossed to the window in a few long strides. “I’ll take a maybe,” he said, his mind reeling. Emmet was out there somewhere, thinking he was fourteen.

  And it was all Leopold’s fault.

  He twitched the curtain, checking for cops. The courtyard was empty. He glanced back at Norm and Isabel. “I’ll try to be back in a couple of hours.”

  “No way.” Norm was shaking his head, his salt-and-pepper curls bouncing. “We can’t just let you go running around, Lunchtray. If it weren’t for the seven protective enchantments I put on this place, Sunder PD would’ve come to arrest you an hour ago. You’d be getting Clockwork Oranged at Department HQ right now, your head in a vise while some flunky puts veritas drops in your eyes. You think they messed up your friend? Just wait till they get ahold of you”—he nodded at Leopold’s chest—“now that you’ve got something that interests them.”

  Leopold stilled. “Something that interests them? You mean this object might have something to do with the Sunder government?”

  “Were you not listening when I said heavy individuals?” said Norm, flinging out an arm that almost knocked an old camera off a shelf. “Who did you think I meant? There are only three kinds of people who could source enough Aether to create something that powerful.” He counted on his ringed fingers. “Shady, shady, and a channeler.”

  A flicker of emotion went through Leopold at the word channeler.

  He snuffed it out.

  Isabel stood up from the couch, her studied cool eroding, and positioned herself between Leopold and the door. “We’re in this together now,” she said, watching him. “Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”

  “Together?” Leopold echoed. “I don’t even know you two.”

  Norm crossed his arms. “The object may have attached itself to you, my dude, but it appeared on our doorstep. Mine and Isabel’s. We’re just as much a part of this as you are.”

  “Oh yeah? What happened to good cop, bad cop?”

  “We’ll finish the interrogation later,” Isabel said. “I promise I’ll be really annoying.”

  “And I’ll order pizza,” said Norm, who was, somehow, biting into another cookie. “I’ve got a coupon for deep dish.”

  “You know I hate deep dish,” said Isabel, making a face. “I want to try that new place, the one on Ivar—”

  “Guys?”

  Norm and Isabel turned to look at him.

  “I’m leaving.”

  Again, Isabel blocked the door. “If you leave, you might not make it back. There are two different police departments out there looking for you now, and thanks to the explosion you set off at Goldie’s, you’re a higher priority for the Sunder PD than when you were just, you know, a guy whose worst day ever was caught on camera.” She inched closer. The power of her full attention was hypnotic. She tapped the metal ring on his chest, and he could’ve sworn he felt that small touch reverberate through his rib cage. “Mysterious, powerful devices of unknown origin don’t just show up on doorsteps and bind themselves to barely magical people—”

  “The Executive called me ‘remarkably unremarkable’,” Leopold said dryly. “ ‘Average absolutely to the decimal point. Unspecial by every magical metric.’ If we’re going to insult my abilities, let’s quote an expert.”

  Isabel laughed. Leopold cracked a smile.

  “I’m serious,” she said finally, softly. “This could mean something.”

  “Listen, I want to figure out what’s going on as much as you do,” he replied, eyes returning to the door. “But first I have to help my friend. Emmet’s a danger to himself, and I can’t trust that he’ll make it all the way here on his own, even if I give him turn-by-turn directions.”

  “Fine,” said Isabel with a sigh. “If you’re dead set on this, I won’t stop you. But I’m coming, too.”

  “Isabel!” Norm cried. “No way you’re going anywhere after what happened to you last night— You still need to rest—”

  “And I don’t need a babysitter,” Leopold added.

  “No,” said Norm, turning on him. “She’s right, you can’t go alone. You need someone who knows their ass from a portable hole in the ground. I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t,” said Isabel. “You’ve got that thing, today, remember?”

  Norm wavered, then raked a hand through his curls. “Shit.”

  “What thing?” asked Leopold.

  “I’ve got to meet with my old parole officer,” Norm muttered. “In fucking Redondo Beach. I hate Redondo Beach.”

  Leopold’s eyes widened, but Norm waved it off. “I did a stint in Salton State a few years back for possession of ‘unauthorized magical devices.’ ” He added air quotes and a scowl. “Bureaucratic overreach at its finest. Long story short, I owe my parole officer a huge favor, and he happened to pick today to call it in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Isabel said, “my uncle’s not a criminal.”

  “Not unless absolutely necessary,” Norm added with a wink.

  “Right.”

  “So.” Isabel fixed her eyes on Leopold. “We’ve got a deal?”

  “No.”

  Isabel frowned. “You won’t last ten minutes without me.”

  “Listen,” Leopold said, his impatience rising. “I might be Lunchtray Larry, but I killed a Noxum with that tray, okay? I’m going to be fine.”

  Norm’s rich laughter filled the room. He clapped Leopold on the shoulder and gave him a little shake. “I think I like this guy.”