"Dunno," I shrug, and I have to hang onto him for a moment with both hands before I get my feet back. When I'm steady again, I say, "Between seventeen and nineteen, I just say eighteen. No one is really sure. My mate Penny told me to pick a day once, but it felt too strange."

I don't think it's terrible of me, either, to want a happy ending. It's just that, as I get older, expecting one seems more and more childish. I don't think that of Bitty, though. I'm just glad that life had been kinder to him, at least in matters of life and death. "Back home was - " I say, faltering around the explanation. "The magickal world was in danger of going extinct. The Humdrum, our greatest threat - he kept stealing magic. I was the most powerful, so I was the one meant to fight him. But I never figured out quite how I was meant to beat him."