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Her metal legs scraped against the floor as she slammed her fist down against the wall; more in anger than in being aggressive, eyes blazing. "What the ******** are you even talking about," she said. "What the ******** do you even think you're talking about. I don't have a 'lesbian lover', okay, if you're referring to Rel I don't know what the ******** you're talking about or playing at and actually, you know what? I bet you'd be willing to make up any retarded lie at this point to make yourself look better. That's your schtick, Antony, you always want everyone to ******** love you."

Jace slammed her palm down flat against the wall again. "Jesus," she said bitterly.

"What the s**t?"

She flung herself down to sit on the stool that Ms. Lindy had vacated, though she forced her legs a little too hard on the iron bars and they warped with a tiny skree sound. "What the hell -- god, come on, why are you taking everything so literally?" (This was slightly unfair considering Jace was taking things pretty literally, but.) "Do I look like I'm engaged to Rel? Do I even look like I'm sleeping with Rel because the answer is holy s**t no I am not, is that your excuse for treating me like crap."

She flung a piece of chalk from the blackboard down; not at him, but it landed somewhere near his feet. "Who the hell cares that you go invisible? Everyone here's crazy. Who cares about the stupid Rudolfo incident -- that was someone searching for your dad, it didn't have anything to do with you. Holy ********! What's that got to do with anything?"

"Uh, how about it's because you don't tell me s**t," she said. "Irelia found out? Okay. Obviously she told you about it. A friend would tell me, I don't care how bad you've trusted me about everything else. This isn't about you loathing whatever, you self-hating little invisibean, this is about you being ******** avoidant. You're such a chick."

She was playing with one of the whiteboard markers; doodling, looking away from him, fine spikes of cherry-red hair falling into her face. It was Jace, so she was doodling a stick figure being hanged and filling up with spikes, spears and arrowheads. "Depends," she said. "Fire. Go ahead. Lay it on me. Before you say anything, though: all I want is the truth, not you trying to be all hey I'm Antony and I can get out of any situation by being articulate and charming, ho ho ho, I should be a ******** lawyer. I just want -- what's real, god damn it."

"Let me guess," said Jace, "you're actually a ghost."

By the way that she'd said it -- skeptical, dry -- it was obvious she had no idea that she had pretty much hit on the meat of the matter. One of her eyebrows was raised, though despite herself her gaze was crawling back to him and she was obviously listening to what he was saying. No surprise on the spirit blade; she'd seen it before. Had wished it had been present more than once, when she was in a pickle. "Sup, Casper."

Part grim reaper sounded to Jacoba a little like partly pregnant or partly epileptic, but instead of turning a completely skeptical brow she tapped her fingers on the whiteboard. Her brown shoulders were hunched. "So," she said, "if you're getting trained for that, why are you even bothering to ******** off to college, there's a question for you. Unless you're going to Death, Darque and Decay U to make out with goths, whatever, you know?"

Anthony did not fit with her vision of what death looked like. He combed his hair too completely.

Jace was picking at her fingernails off, chipping off a coat of red that Wisp must have guerilla-applied to her hands. Jace didn't go in for manicures. "Psychopomp," she said. "Jesus. Whatever. Bottom line is, that's you and that's your future, fine, okay; nobody says you have to turn into this, right? You can choose to do something else, around here nobody gives half a s**t about whether your d**k turns invisible and that still doesn't answer the question of why didn't you tell me this before and why have you been avoiding me."