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“And he needs to sleep at night,” Mercury added. “Will you make certain that he does?”

“He says, ‘This is not the first time I have been tasked with looking out for someone who was vulnerable.’”

The Reluctant Recluse wasn’t usually very talkative. There were things he was literally unable to say, prevented from doing so.

Mercury looked once more to where Baby Blue was said to be standing. “Now that I know where you are and what has happened, I will stop at nothing to get you back.”

“He is trying to hug you,” the Violet Giant said.

“The Scholar says Aventine has brought me here to heal broken things,” Mercury said. “I will fight with everything I have to heal this. I swear to you.”

8

Mercury moved with excited steps into the Scholar’s tower room. “Tacey, I know where—”

He stopped abruptly when his gaze fell on her. She was sitting up on her cot, but she actually looked weaker and frailer than when he’d left her there, lying down.

“She’s getting worse,” Zizzy said in nearly weepy tones. “I don’t know why. The Transferal is complete. It shouldn’t be debilitating her still.”

“It shouldn’t have been debilitating her at all.” Mercury sat on the cot beside Tacey, eyeing her with confusion and concern. “What can I do?” He took her hand in his.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “The Scholar said that the rooms are moving.”

“Aventine is a strange place, Tacey. Passages and rooms even ghosts can’t sense. The known rooms and corridors moving and rearranging themselves. A fracture in a possibly literal rock that somehow breaks and fractures the people and things that come near it.”

“I am feeling a little fractured at the moment,” Tacey said quietly.

“The legend said it was a ghost trade that first broke this place. Perhaps undertaking a swap here has made you a target of that rending power.”

“But you’ve done hundreds of them here,” Tacey said. “And it hasn’t done this to you.”

It was actually further argument that he’d been drawn here because something about him made it possible he could heal it.

“What was it you were going to tell me when you first came inside?” Tacey asked.

Mercury sat up and turned to face her. “Tacey, I know what happened to Baby Blue.”

Even in her weakened state, she grew more alert. There was both hope and worry in her eyes. Mercury saw the same in Zizzy’s.

“He hasn’t been taken away or disconnected from me. He’s still here. We just can’t see him or hear him. But the Violet Giant can.”

“He’s been made an Invisible?” Tacey watched him raptly.

“Invisibles can be seen by the person they’re attached to,” Zizzy countered. “It can’t be that.”

“I only know of one other Invisible that breaks that rule,” Mercury said. “But I’m certain now that there are others. It is what the Forever Flame does to them. And we know he has done it before.”

Zizzy looked frantically around the room. “Is Baby Blue in here now?”

“He is,” the Violet Giant said from near the closed door. He had followed Mercury in. “He’s standing beside you, Zizzy.”

“How do we make him visible again?” Tacey said. “There must be a way.”

“What if it’s impossible?” Zizzy sniffled through the question.

“I’ve been told more times than I can count these past weeks that everything about me is impossible.”

“So, if anyone can do it,” Tacey said, “you can.”