We have to leave as soon as possible, but Adam insists on talking to Eleanor before doing anything.

He leaves me alone in her room as he goes to track her down, and I take the opportunity to buy two plane tickets on my phone to Brittany, France. They are insanely expensive this last minute, but I hadn't wanted to go through the trouble of purchasing them before knowing whether or not Adam would agree to go.

I also book rooms at a couple of hotels, sticking to ones that had refund policies that wouldn't completely screw me over in case of sudden change of plans.

I spend the next fifteen minutes tooling around in Eleanor's room, feeling awkwardly out of place but unwilling to leave and put myself in the middle of their lover's spat, or whatever it was.

I don't actually think that Eleanor and Adam are dating or anything. They spend so much time together that I feel like it would be more obvious if they were. As far as I can tell, they're just good friends.

Eleanor has dated a few of the boys in school, my friend Martin included back in eighth grade. None of the relationships last very long. She seems to get bored of boys pretty quickly, dumping them as soon as they can't hold her interest anymore, and she seems happier in general when she's single. At least, I'm happier when she's single, because then I don't have to listen to Martin moping over how she broke his heart while he watches her and her boyfriend du jour with moony eyes from a distance.

“You dated for like two weeks in eighth grade,” I remind him every time, to no avail.

I don't think Adam has ever dated anyone, on the other hand. He has friends, but I get the sense that everyone is too wary of what he's capable of to even consider getting that close to him.

Magic's Might, can you imagine what might happen if you were making out and he got too worked up? You're so hot, he says, and poof, you burst into flames.

I'm wandering around the room, looking at the posters of musicals hung up on the walls, and the strings of photos Eleanor has clipped to lengths of colored yarn with clothespins. Most of them are of her and her family, or of her and Adam. Quite a few are of her, Adam, and her family in places like a themepark, or at the edge of a lake.

A handful are of just Adam alone, old polaroids all blurry and out of focus. The darks are too dark and the whites too white, and he's almost never looking right at the camera. He's really young in all of them, no older than four, and they all appear to be taken in the same back yard. There are other children in most of the photos, children of a variety of ages and races. I can spot Adam at once despite the lousy quality of the pictures, because even back then he's too tall and too thin, his skin an unhealthy pallor beneath a shock of dark hair.

But he's smiling in the pictures, a big, happy little kid smile. Adam usually has a generally cheerful disposition, despite his life circumstances and as long as he and I aren't having what passes for a conversation, but I've never seen him smile like that in all the time he's been at St. Bosco's.

Maybe he smiles like that for Eleanor, or his other friends. He certainly doesn't in Thaumaturgy class.

The door opens abruptly and I jump guiltily even though I'm not doing anything wrong. I spin to see Adam standing in the doorway, still looking troubled, but he's nodding at me.

“She's still pissed, but she understands why it's best if she stays behind. She wants to stay in contact with us though while we're gone, and I figure she can do research and stuff for us if we get stuck on anything while we're gone. Do you have a phone?”

“Of course I have a phone,” I reply. “Everyone has a phone.”

“I don't,” he replies shrugging. He notices what I'm standing in front of, and he crosses the room to look at the photographs. He reaches out, and I have to step to the side to avoid his arm brushing against me. His finger gently touch one of the old polaroids, and for a moment it looks like he's going to pull it off the string. But then he pulls back, letting his arm fall to his side.

“That's from the foster home. One of the foster homes. They took a lot of pictures there. I don't have any other pictures of me as a kid, but my foster parents there took a ton of photos of everyone, so we'd all have some when we left.”

“They sound nice.” I don't really know what else to say.

Adam shrugs. “I don't really remember them very well.” He turns away and goes over to the closet, where he pulls out a big duffle bag. “Well... this is all my stuff. I'm already pretty much packed and ready to go, if you are.”

“I am, actually,” I reply. Packing and throwing the backpack into the trunk of my car was one of the only concrete steps to prepare for the trip that I had taken, on the off chance that Adam agreed to go with me.

“What are you going to do about your parents?” he asks.

“I told them I'll be staying at Martin's until school starts back up, and that we're going to go snowboarding in Tahoe.” My dad is so busy freaking out about Adam and the Council, and my mom's freaking out about how much my dad is freaking out, so I think they're both secretly glad that I won't be in the house for a couple of weeks.

Adam snorts. “Snowboarding in Tahoe? Jesus. I've never even seen snow before.”

“Really?”

“I've only been to the mountains over summer break.”

“You obviously haven't been very far up, there's still snow in August in some places.”

We both fall into an awkward silence. I don't know about Adam, but I'm very aware that this is the longest proper conversation we've ever had. Usually our exchanges are short and filled with criticism.

It's not that I don't like Adam, just as I told him. I just don't think that he has any business endangering the rest of the magical world by attending St. Bosco's as if he's not the magical equivalent of an atomic bomb. If we can really get our hands on Merlin's staff, though...

But there's no point in putting the cart before the horse. We still have to get to France before we can even entertain the idea of possessing one of the most powerfully magical items in history.

“Well,” I say squaring my shoulders, “if there's nothing else you need, we'd better get going then. Our plane leaves in two hours, and it'll take us twenty or thirty minutes to get to the airport. We should have left ten minutes ago.”

Adam starts to haul his bag along, but I roll my eyes and pull out my wand. He shies away as if he thinks I'm going to hex him or something, but I just say, “Resurgemus,” and the duffle bag rises about a foot into the air where I can guide it along with my wand.

Using magic to lift a heavy object takes as much energy as actually lifting the object, and the duffle is definitely over packed. I can get it out to the car a lot faster this way though, so over all less energy is expended.

Since Adam can tap into all of his power at once, he's like an olympic athlete compared to the rest of us, and he wouldn't even break a sweat if he did this spell. But if he tried it, it would be pretty much the same as when you lift up a gallon of milk expecting it to be full, but it's nearly empty instead. It's safer if I just do the spell myself, and faster than carrying it out by hand.

I go back inside after throwing his bag into the trunk next to mine, but Eleanor almost immediately pushes me back out into the front yard, Adam on her heels.

“Quick, get out, go!” she hisses. “My dad just went into the kitchen for lunch. If he sees you here, Felix, he'll know something is up.”

“Well, let's go then,” I say, gesturing for Adam to get into the passenger seat of my car.

“Wait, give me your number first,” says Eleanor, pulling out her phone.

I recite it for her and she types it with flying thumbs. A moment later my own phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out. The notification reads “this is El”, and I save her number into my contact list. I save it as Eleanor Fuentes, not El, because I really hardly know her despite having gone to school with her since I was five.

“I expect daily texts, and I want them from Adam, not you,” she demands, poking me hard in the chest with a finger. “I want to know where you guys are at all times, so if anything goes screwy I'll know the last place you were. Don't you dare let anything happen to him.” She looks as if she's about to curse me on the spot just thinking about it.

“I can take care of myself, El, I don't need him to babysit me,” Adam protests, irritated.

I want to make a nasty quip about him blowing up the plane while we're on it, but then I think twice about putting the thought in his head. That's how the school ended up in flames, after all.

“If he's willing to actually listen to my words of wisdom every once in a while,” I reply instead, “maybe I'll be able to get him back in one piece. We'll see.”

Adam gives El a hug, and though it's obvious she's still pissed that she's being left behind, she squeezes him back tightly.

“Be safe,” she whispers in his ear. I start to walk towards my car so I don't overhear any more of their parting words.

I get into the driver's seat and wait for half a minute until Adam slides into the seat next to me.

“About time,” I mutter, starting the car. “Buckle up.”

“Are these heated seats?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Christ, how rich are you?”

“Heated seats aren't that expensive, Adam.”

“They're built into the car! I didn't even know that was possible.”

“It's like one of the cheapest upgrades you can get. Give it another five years and they won't even make cars without heated seats. Like push button starts and back up cameras.”

I speed the whole way to the airport, partly because I want to be sure we make it to the gate in time, and partly because sitting in close quarters alone with Adam Wolfe is far more awkward than I expected it to be. I can actually smell him, the smell of his magic leaking out through his pores because he doesn't know how to keep in it, filling up my car.

I have to crack a window despite being on the freeway now; not because it smells bad or anything—it's actually sort of nice--but because it's making me a little dizzy.

I make Adam unpack half of his stuff in the parking lot, leaving it behind in my trunk. He's packed for what looks like the next six months, and we'll hopefully only be gone a week or less. He ditches the warmer weather stuff, the shorts and t-shirts, and the duffle bag is considerably easier to carry after that. I text Martin and Terry to come pick up my car from the airport parking lot when they get the chance—they think I'm going to France to meetup with a girl I met online, and are under strict instructions to lie to my parents about my whereabouts—and leave the key hidden under the seat.

Adam and I run all the way to the check in counter, which is stupid of us because the line is ridiculously long anyways and we end up having to wait in it for another twenty minutes.

Somehow we make it through security and to our gate with fifteen minutes to spare. People have already started to line up according to their rows, chatting happily with the people around them about where they are going, or complaining about being felt up by the TSA and having their shampoo confiscated.

Airport employees call first class passengers through the gates first. I start to move ahead with the others, but stop when I notice that Adam isn't following.

“Come on, don't hold us up now,” I tell him.

He looks at me in confusion. “Are we first class?”

“Hell yes we are. It's like a seventeen hour flight, there's no way I'm putting up with that in coach.”

Adam just shakes his head in amazement and follows me.