"Yep." He sticks his spoon in his mouth again, pulls it out nearly free of caramel, drops it in the dishwasher, waves to Hilary, and leads the way out of the kitchen.

Bella follows him up to his room, trying to lope like she hasn't spent her life fearing falling.

Bella plucks the book out of his hand and opens it up. "What's it about?" she asks.

There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know "where it's at," this:

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it."

Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

Bella giggles. "Can I borrow this?"

"Go for it! If there's a book that is my brain, it's that book," says Alice.

"I don't know what I'd say if I had to pick a book to represent my brain," Bella says. "I like old literary fiction, but it doesn't mirror me, it's just fun to read."

"You have, like, a hundred books that represent your brain," Alice points out, perching on a corner of his bed. "Literally."

"Oh. I guess that's perfectly true," laughs Bella. "For some reason that didn't occur to me. They're in the background."

She sits on his bed, safely away from the bricks. "I don't think putting another barrier in front of it would even help. It's magicked to let me in."

"Yeah, let you in and then let you fall straight to the basement," he says. "Were there any skeletons of previous descendants down there?"

"The only thing in the room was a weird sourceless probably-magic glow, and the book and the hex."

"Great, now I'm imagining that the floor down there eats skeletons," he says. "...Stop me if I'm creeping you out."

Bella laughed. "I don't think so. I think Elias Frobisher just didn't have a lot of descendants who happened to wander into the house. It's a two-story fall - it could kill me if I dove headfirst, but it wouldn't be too likely." She shrugged. "For practical reasons he wasn't really concerned about being injured, himself - maybe the point of the fall is specifically so what happened to me was possible."

"Well, it's definitely one way to make sure whoever finds the book would use it," he says, rubbing the back of his head and looking half-suspiciously, half-admiringly at the chimney.

"It does seem like it could backfire, though. Anyone can use the coin and there was only the one in there. I could have wasted it fixing my leg if I'd been a slightly different person." She glances at her backpack, currently on the floor. "I guess that's what the stash is for."

"You're totally gonna take over the world," Alice predicts.

"Maybe," sings Bella.

"You are. I'm falling in love with you again," he declares.

Bella laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and bites her own hand to keep from laughing, and a triangle appears between her first and middle fingers.

Alice actually hugs himself with glee.