I wake Felix up in the middle of the night, rolling over in bed and shaking him by the shoulder until he opens one bleary eye.

“What? What is it? Is the apartment on fire or something?” he slurs at me.

“No, nothing's on fire.”

He closes his eye and rolls over. “Then I'm going back to sleep.”

“No, Felix, I had an idea!”

He doesn't groan out loud, but I can see from the change in the set of his shoulders that it's something he has to reign in. A flash of anger fills me for a moment; he still doesn't really understand what this means to me—but my excitement at the sudden rush of inspiration I'd just gotten while hovering halfway between sleeping and waking is the stronger of the two emotions.

“What kind of idea?” he mumbles into his pillow.

I sit up and reach over him to turn on the bedside lamp on his side of the bed.

Felix really does groan this time, and buries his face deeper into the pillow to shield his eyes from the sudden light. “Dammit, Adam, that's bright! What time even is it?”

“I don't know, late,” I reply, frustrated that that’s all he cares about

One of his hands reaches out and feels around blindly on the bedside table for his phone. Cracking one eye open the tiniest sliver, he peers at the screen. “Solomon's beard, it's three in the morning! Can't we talk about this tomorrow? When the sun is actually up, I mean?”

“No—I have to tell you now,” I insist.

He's clearly not happy about it, but Felix is nothing if not doting. He pushes himself up so he's sitting next to me, rubbing his eyes and yawning in what I suspect is a slightly exaggerated manner. His hair is sticking up all over the place, and for a fraction of a second, I'm distracted from my purpose by his appearance. Tousled and half asleep, he looks good—even glaring at me the way he is now. I'm reminded, not the for the first time, that I got the better end of the deal in our relationships. I get to enjoy his model-good looks all day, while he gets...

Well, I look better now than I ever did in high school, but he's still in another league completely.

I realize my thoughts are wandering, and I shake my head to clear it. I'm tired too, but I have to focus—this is important.

“I can't believe we didn't think of this. We did a DNA test, but we didn't even think—we didn't consider—and Christ, we've already done it once!”

“What are you on about?” Felix asks, though I can see in his face that he already suspects.

“We did a DNA test with science; but what about a DNA test with magic?” I say, a little breathlessly. “Felix—we could do a tracking spell on me! The same way I did a tracking spell on you to find Merlin's bones in senior year. I can't believe we didn't think of it. I do a tracking spell on myself to find anyone out there who shares some of my DNA!”

I'm expecting Felix's face to light up, for him to jump out of bed and insist we try it right now; but instead his expression becomes guarded, and the corner of his mouth quirks down in a way that I'm all too familiar with.

“What?” I demand. My heart, soaring in my chest just a moment ago, falling down into the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”

Felix reaches up and rubs the back of his neck. “Well... actually, I had considered that as a possible option. Eleanor and I discussed it a while back.”

“You did? Why didn't you tell me?” I demand.

“Because,” says Felix, “we decided that it probably wouldn't work. And we didn't want to get your hopes up only to have it lead nowhere.”

“But what if it did work?” I say, and the flash of anger reappears. El, and Felix, talking about without including me, deciding against it without even telling me? “I'd rather try it and have it fail, than not try it at all and risk never knowing that it would have worked! And why the hell wouldn't it work anyway? We literally already did this, with someone who had been dead for a thousand years and was barely related to you at all!”

“Adam, calm down, you're shouting—”

“Don't tell me to calm down!”

Felix winces, and both of his hands go up to his hair. “It's not the same, Adam. You should know that. I figured you knew that.”

“So now I'm stupid?” I snarl, and I regret the words the minute they come out of my mouth, but it's too late to take them back.

Felix gets up out of bed and starts pacing back and forth in the small room. It's not cold this close to summer, even at this time of night; but he's in only his boxers and I can see the goosebumps on his arms and legs now that he's left the warmth of the bed.

“Don't be like that, Adam, you know that's not what I meant,” he snaps back at me.

I do know that, but I'm pissed, and I want to stay pissed.

“With Merlin, we already knew who we were tracking. We had a specific individual in mind, and you know as well as I do how important that is when you're performing a tracking spell. Since we don't know a thing about any family you might have, we'd just be sending the spell flying blindly into space, with no direction, with nothing for it to latch on to!”

I get out of bed too, standing by its edge while Felix continues to pace. “But I have more than enough magic! If I pour enough power into the spell, I could send it out in every direction, as far as I need to! It would be bound to hit someone eventually!”

“Even you don't have the magic for that,” he argues.

“Ms. Cross tracked us halfway across the damn world!”

“But she knew the person she was tracking! And she knew you well! If we hadn't been in the damn graveyard where Merlin was buried, the tracking spell probably never would have worked. You had the magic, you had an idea of who it was you wanted to track, and you had the genetic material. But we didn't know Merlin personally, and the less you know someone, the harder it is to tracker them. Over long distances, you can't track someone you hardly know at all. If it had been my hair Ms. Cross was using when she first used a tracking spell to find out where we had gone, she'd never have been able to follow the trail all the way to France. Do you understand? You could track me even if I was on a spaceship orbiting Jupiter; but you wouldn't be able to track my great-uncle Albert if he was in the next room, even if you were holding his false teeth in your hand!”

“But the MRF—”

“Ms. Perry had been watching you for years! She got to know you in class! Adam, it won't work.”

“I don't care if you think it won't work, I want to try!”

“I don't think it won't work, I know it won't!”

“I'm doing it!” I shout, and as the wave of frustration and hurt that I've been trying to keep submerged finally breaks over me, the bulb in the lamp suddenly gives a flash of blinding brightness, and then explodes with a pop that sends both me and Felix diving for cover.

The lamp wobbles and tips over, rolling onto the floor and littering the carpet with shards of broken glass from the shattered bulb.

We both stare at it for a long moment, our eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden darkness. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I can feel my body tingling in a way it hasn't done in years. The taste of raw magic fills the air.

I stagger backwards and let myself sink onto the bed, still staring at the broken lamp. My mouth has gone suddenly dry.

Felix straightens from his semi-crouched position and tears his eyes away from the lamp to look at me. “Adam—are you okay?” he asks, his voice low. Frightened.

I don't reply.

“Physically, I mean. Did any of the glass hit you?”

“No,” I say, hollowly.

“When was the last time you used your magic?”

“Right now, clearly.”

“Adam.”

“I don't know. I haven't thought about it. A while, I guess? I've had other things on my mind.”

“For Circe's sake—you know you can't afford to let yourself just forget about stuff like that! You don't have that luxury!”

“I know.”

Felix continues to stand there for a long moment, just staring at me in the darkness. Then he makes a funny sound in the back of his throat—a sigh? A cough? A stifled sob? I can't tell—and he crosses the room to come sit next to me on the bed.

“Okay,” he says, as he wraps his arms around me. “Okay. We'll try it. We'll try the tracking spell. You're right; Eleanor and I shouldn't have dismissed it without talking to you about it. If you want to try it... you have every right to. Just, please; please don't let this thing become an obsession that gets in the way of the rest of your life.”

For a moment I think Felix is shaking—but then I realize it's me.

I haven't heard from the Council in two years. I haven't lost control in almost three.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, my voice hoarse. I hadn't even thought to ask until right now. Christ; what was wrong with me?

“I'm fine. I'm fine, Adam.” He starts stroking my hair. I think he thinks I'm in a worse state than I really am. I tense up, trying to stop myself from trembling, to pull myself together.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper. “I've been ruining everything.”

Felix's hold on me tightens. “That's not true.”

“It is.” It is.

“Come on.” Felix stands up, and pulls me up with him.

“Where?” I ask numbly. He pulls me by the hand out of the bedroom and across the living room, heading for the kitchenette.

“You're going to make the both of us come coffee, and you're going to do it with magic. Then, once you've burned some of the excess magic off, we'll try the tracking spell.”

“Really?” I ask, almost stumbling over my own feet in surprise.

“I said we would, didn't I?”

“Right now?”

“Might as well. I'm sure as hell not going to be able to get back to sleep now, and I don't know what else we're going to do at three in the morning.”

I almost make a purely reactionary quip about something I knew we could do at three in the morning, but it doesn't seem appropriate after what just happened. I'm almost afraid he would take me up on it. I don't want to touch him, not that way, not right now. Not while I can feel my magic burning away, just beneath the surface of my skin. I don't want to hurt him.