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heart.
    Instead, I throw myself at him.
    Our bodies collide as I slam him against the wall, knocking the breath out of Conley in a surprised huff. We both topple to the side, but I’m able to catch myself. He lands flat on the stone, red robes a puddle around him. I wish they were blood.
    A terrible calm comes over me. Maybe this is what people feel like before they commit murder. “You killed Paul .”
    â€œNot kill,” Conley pants. He’s still fighting to breathe normally. “I splintered him. Not the same thing at all.”
    â€œYou tore his soul into pieces! You broke him apart!”
    Conley’s grin isn’t as cocky when he’s sprawled on the floor. “But you can put him back together again.”
    What does he mean? Then I look down again at the Firebird, at that reading I’ve never seen before.
    â€œReminders can serve another function, it turns out,” Conley says. “They can reawaken someone’s soul or capture an individual splinter. You thought you’d lost Paul, but you’ve already rescued him—part of him, that is.”
    A splinter of my Paul’s soul hangs on this chain, in a locket I hold in my hand.
    I lean over Conley to grip his robes in one fist. “Tell me where you hid the other splinters of Paul’s soul.”
    â€œIf you want that information,” Conley says, “You’ll have to earn it.”
    Five nights ago, at the hospital, my parents were able to stay with Theo, while Paul and I were stuck in the ER waiting area. If I ran a hospital, I would try to make a space like that feel comforting. Instead, the room seemed like it was designed to punish us: stark fluorescent light, uncomfortable chairs, a pile of dog-eared magazines at least a year old, and a television blaring in the corner with some obnoxious TV judge yelling at people stupid enough to go on the show.
    Paul and I held hands, but we were too freaked out to comfort each other. We just hung on.
    I whispered, “Theo never said anything about still feeling bad. He admitted he still craved Nightthief, but nothing like this.”
    â€œHe hasn’t confided in me much lately.” Paul stared down at his beat-up gray tennis shoes; he even has to buy his footwear secondhand. “I believed his silence was about you. About us. It never occurred to me to think he might be more worried about something else.”
    All the awkwardness of the past three months—all the odd silences, the times Theo didn’t come around when we expected him—why did I assume that was all about my relationship with Paul? Because I thought Theo was jealous, or at least hurt, I never looked deeper. I didn’t ask the questions I should’ve asked. All the while, Theo suffered alone.
    Paul murmured, “I should have known.”
    â€œHe hasn’t been around enough for us to see it.” True. But it was amazing how little that helped.
    â€œThe signs were there. I failed to put them together.” Heslumped forward in his chair, shoulders hunched, like he’d just picked up something heavy. “I noticed that he hasn’t been driving as much. That he went out less. I thought—after what happened, I thought Theo simply wanted time to pull himself together. But I should’ve known he’d never skip spring break.”
    With that, Paul buried his head in his hands, and I leaned against his shoulder. I don’t know whether I was trying to give him strength, or take some from him. Either way, it didn’t work.
    My parents didn’t emerge until nearly one in the morning. The light washed them out, highlighting every wrinkle and gray hair, but that’s not why they seemed to have aged ten years in three hours. Fear had hollowed them out.
    My voice cracked as I said, “How is he?”
    â€œNot good.” Dad sank into a chair across from us. “Theo’s in no immediate danger, but his vital signs, his blood