I stopped in the doorway. Aubrey bumped into my back, and was in the middle of some acerbic remark when she spotted Darren.

"Cereal for lunch?" I said at last.

"It was quick. I skipped breakfast," he replied, not taking his eyes off me.

"We had sandwiches," I said inanely. I looked to Aubrey for support, but she was already halfway up the stairs. Coward.

"In town?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

Neither of us moved. Darren had forgotten his spoon halfway to his mouth. A blast of winter air blew in behind me, and it spurred me into action. I closed the door. "Okay, I think I'll—"

"Wait," he said. Darren put down the spoon and stood. "I just wanted to say—"

"—you don't have to say anything—"

"—I'm sorry if you felt that I—"

"—shouldn't have lied to you—"

"—just needed some time to think, and—"

"—not even sure who I am, so—"

"—needed to say that I love you—"

"—totally understand if you... wait, what?" I blinked in confusion.

"I love you." He walked around the table and took me by the hands. I looked up at him, my eyes probing his, wondering if this was really happening. "I love you, Cayley."

"I love you too," I said. He lower his head, and I stood on tiptoe. We kissed, and for a moment, everything was perfect.

And then I pulled away. I clutched my necklace with both hands and turned to the side. "But I don't think you can really love me. You don't know me, not who I really am."

"I don't care."

"Well you should!" I whirled back to him. "I lied to you. I lied to everybody. This woman you say you love, Darren? It's not me! It's just a glamour. You saw what I really am the other day."

"I saw an appearance you have no control over." He took a step forward, just as I took a step back. "But you were still the woman I fell in love with."

He took another step forward, and this time I didn't retreat. "You wouldn't be so quick to kiss me if I weren't wearing this," I said, holding the pendant in my right hand.

Darren brought up his hands to mine. Slowly, he traced his hands up the cord. I was wearing the long one today. My neck tingled under his hands. He looked a question at me, and I did not object.

He lifted the cord over my neck. I felt a hideous tearing sensation, as if I were trying desperately to cling onto it. After a moment to deal with the psychic rope burn, I opened my eyes.

Darren was still standing in front of me. He was only a little bit taller than me now, and inch or two. His eyes did not move from mine until our lips met.

The room seemed to swirl. If I kept my eyes closed, I could almost pretend that my body hadn't changed, that I was still a woman on the outside just like I was on the inside. A long, breathless time later, we broke apart.

"You shouldn't have to kiss me like this," I said miserably. "You're straight, aren't you?"

"I am," he confirmed. "I'm in love with a woman. It works out nicely."

"Let me put this back on," I said, reaching to take the necklace from his hand.

He held on. "If this is how you want to look, do it. But do it for you, not for me."

"How about for us?"

The left side of his mouth twitched up. "It'll do for a start."

I restored the necklace to its usual place. The waves of change came over me like cool water on a summer day. I felt a sense of wholeness return. "You have no idea how much better this feels."

He looked at me solemnly. "Before we say anything else, there's something I need to show you."

I caught his mood. "Okay. What is it?"

"We need to go to my room."

I arched an eyebrow. "Is that what you tell all the girls? Boys? Whatever?"

His expression remained grave. "Not that. While we're being honest, there's something you need to know about me as well."

I followed him up to the second floor. I had never been in his apartment before. It was similar to mine, but mirrored, which disoriented me at first. He also lacked a fireplace; in his rooms, the space was filled with a wide bookshelf.

Darren closed the door behind us. "When I was eight, there was an accident. I was in the kitchen, and I pulled a deep fat fryer off the counter. The oil missed my face, but it burned my chest and arms, down to my stomach and legs. Third degree burns on about forty percent of my body."

My hand went to my mouth. "Oh god, I'm so sorry."

"It healed. Eventually. But it didn't look good." He began to take off his sweater.

I steeled myself. He had just treated my own deformities as unimportant; the least I could do was to extend the same courtesy. But as he pulled the sweater over his head, I caught sight of something silver and glittery.

I gasped. There was a line just below his nipples. Below that line, his skin was a mass of scars, skin stretched and knobby, purpled in places. Burn scars, as he had said. But above that line was beauty.

The lines of scarring faded into intricate silver knotwork. Without meaning to, I took a step closer. My eyes were at his chest level anyway, and without strain I could see a sort of filigree etched into his skin.

"Can I—?" He nodded. I extended a finger to touch one of the lines. It felt like skin, but it glimmered like pure silver. I traced along one of the patterns. It looked familiar... oh. It was the same knot pattern that was on my necklace.

I realized that I was feeling up his bare chest, and pulled away. "Is it a glamour?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No, it's real. It's a hard spell, and I only got started on it a few months ago."

"It's beautiful."

"I wanted to heal it. To make it normal again," he said, pulling his sweater back down. "But I couldn't. The magic we do... I don't think it works like that. It doesn't let us go back. It only lets us move forward."

He stepped closer to me. "I've never had a real relationship before. High school crushes, but nothing that went beyond holding hands. Whenever that threatened to happen, I would push her away. Because I didn't want her to see me, to see what I was really like."

Darren smiled. "Then I met you. And suddenly, I'd met someone I didn't want to push away. But I didn't want you to see me like this either. And then, one day, the house spoke to me."

"The house?"

"Belmont House. That's what it felt like, at least. It had a voice like all of the Fellows speaking together, ones I knew and ones I had never met. It told me I could move forward, and it showed me how."

Sudden hope flooded into me. My lips parted. "Do you think it could fix me too?"

"I don't know. But it wouldn't hurt to ask."