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until her lungs burned, reaching desperately for him as the Sea Goddess claimed Nate along with the glowing paper-fish that was his page from The Book. “Why?”
    “She couldn’t take me t’ th’ underworld, unless my physical body was dead.” The words had more substance and power than he did. “That’s all she has now: that empty shell.” The sounds of spectral expectoration. “May she curse it till she’s blue instead o’ green.”
    “But you’re fading .”
    He fell to his knees alongside her, half drifting through the floorboards. “I’d rather fade t’ nothin’ here wi’ ye than be trapped there wi’ her.”
    Bertie’s stomach clenched painfully and, along with it, her fists. “I’ll kill her.”
    Nate rested the suggestion of his shaggy head on her knee. “Leave it be, lass. I’ll not have ye risk yer life fer th’ sake o’ revenge.”
    “If you think you can order me about, you’ve forgotten much in your time away.” She tried to touch him then, but all she could feel was the cold.
    “I’ve forgotten nothin’.” Then, before Bertie could say anything, he mumbled into her skirts, “Ye need t’ change. Ye’ve got dirt on yer face, an’ this gown’s fer th’ rag bag.”
    “Tsk.” It took every bit of Bertie’s restraint to stay the threat of tears. “Mrs. Edith would have a fit, should she learn I changed clothes in your company again.”
    “Yes, if by ‘fit’ ye mean she’d have my head on a pike.” Nate’s shade was now as thin as a bit of tissue paper held up to the light. He reached for her again, and this time his hand drifted through hers. “Lass—”
    The whisper trailed off, a bit of rope slithering across a wooden deck and falling overboard without a splash to mark it. Surging up from the mattress, Bertie scrambled to open the journal.
    “Not again.” Two fierce words, strong enough to cause the lamplight to flicker as she wrote,
They were transported to
the place where her powers would
be strongest, the place where she could
hold on to him with both hands.
    A gust— of wind? of water? —snuffed out the lamp. Underfoot, the caravan’s floor was suddenly slick, a midwinter pond etched with ice-skating patterns, furrows raised and sharp like scars against the bare soles of her feet. Setting the pen down atop the journal, Bertie didn’t expect the table to immediately glide away from her like a sleigh. She reached for it, stretching her arms out in front of her, fingertips expecting to meet something, anything, but the bed was gone now as well, as though the Stage Manager had called a scene change, summoning a Great and Icy Nothingness to replace her bedroom. Trapped in the memory of black velvet curtains, Bertie took a tentative step, shoving against fabric that wasn’t there.
    “Nate?”
    Her piercing whisper prompted no response, and Bertie’s teeth started to chatter. The cold crept up her bare legs in icy ribbons, and the hem of her ruined evening gown crackled with frost. About the time she would have started screaming for help, a pinpoint of light appeared in the distance. Squinting, hoping it wouldn’t disappear, Bertie sidled forward. The fleck of gold dilated until she realized it was a single brilliant spotlight focused on a kneeling figure.
    Then she began to half run, half skate across the treacherous black ice. “Nate!”
    His head came up, and she was thankful to see that, though scruffy and wild-eyed, he was no longer transparent. “Don’t—”
    Too late; she’d passed through a thin sheet of amber gel, the sort used to color the theater lights. Nate was on his feet just in time to catch her, and never before had Bertie been so thankful to painfully collide with someone in her life. Grasping his face in her hands, she wished for better words than the ones that tumbled out of her. “Are you all right?”
    Nate nodded until hair came loose from his plait. “I think so.”
    Bertie counted fingers and toes and eyes in a frantic