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after, with Danny. How much closer I felt to him, how many more secrets we shared, this new private language we had together.
    But now, with Gabriel, there’s so much I still don’t know. So much he still doesn’t say out loud. We have to speak one language together before we can learn another one.
    Gabriel clears his throat, and for a second I want more than anything to reach and brush away the pale sheaf of hair falling over his forehead as he studies his feet. But he’s leaning against the fridge, all harsh angles, like he’s about to fold himself away. Just because he knows what I can do doesn’t mean it doesn’t freak him out sometimes. “So, nothing like that ever . . . ?”
    “No,” I rush to say, because we don’t talk about Danny, not anymore. “I mean, not like that. Once in a while it felt sort of . . . floaty, but that was all.”
    When he lifts his head, the brief flash of heat in his eyes looks a lot like victory. It’s one more reminder of the dozens of things I still don’t know about him, like whether or not he’s ever had a girlfriend, and who she was, what she was like. But now is not the time to ask. Not with Gabriel looking at me like that, and not with that warm, liquid-gold sensation still echoing faintly in my pulse.
    “Do you . . . want to stop?” Gabriel says, and he sounds so unsure and so hopeful at the same time, I want to scream.
    But I’m not four, so I take a deep breath. “I don’t know. I mean, I . . . no, not really. It’s just that I thought I had it under control, but it’s all tied into my emotions and I . . .”
    Another sentence I don’t know how to end. Except that I actually do, I just can’t say it out loud, not yet. I love you .
    He folds his arms over his chest, holding in things he doesn’t want me to see, or maybe things he wants to believe. But his voice is as low and gentle as ever, and I wish I could hold on to that, wrap the sound around me, and snuggle in. “Can’t your mom help?”
    “It’s not Hogwarts, Gabriel.” And there, I’ve ruined the moment already. He scowls at me, and I reconsider the futility of wishing the floor would open up and swallow me.
    “I’m sorry.” I take a step closer and pick at a stray thread on the cuff of his shirt. “It’s just that it doesn’t seem fair. Not right now. Robin needs Mom, too, and she’s already so busy. The salon is crazy this time of year.”
    “I know,” Gabriel says, and moves away, taking his shirt with him. The stray thread flutters along with it, as helpless and unsteady as I feel, and I watch as he shudders out a breath. “I’m just talking about asking her a simple question.”
    “But it’s not simple!” I sink back against the counter, and then slide to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. “It’s finally out in the open, yeah, but it’s not like our house suddenly turned into Magic Central. It was never like that, really. Mom and Aunt Mari and Gram didn’t hide it when they used their power, but it wasn’t an everyday thing, either. It was . . . something special.” I close my eyes, letting the memories swim up, pale and faded before they resolve into sharper pictures.
    The glimmering, dancing lights on my bedroom ceiling. Mom and Gram making a birthday cake, swirling frosting up and down the sides with the flick of a finger. Mom and Dad curled in the swing on the front porch in the dark, each swoop forward trailing soft jet streams of color behind it.
    Gabriel sinks down beside me, winding an arm around my shoulders and resting his chin on my head. “But isn’t that a good reason to ask your mom how to control it? Or what it means if you can’t?”
    It sounds logical enough, but the whole thing is still more complicated than he understands.
    I’m pretty sure I can do things that Mom can’t. Not just things that she wouldn’t do, but stuff that her power couldn’t accomplish on its own, not without some serious spell work behind it.
    I