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Wisp and Irelia had been paying a lot of attention to each other: they were both sent home for outfits, of course, especially because they used it to their advantage that Beatrix couldn't see what they were wearing, and talked about hair and clothes and sat in the bathroom as -- alternately -- Irelia helped bleach Wisp's mop and as Wisp painstakingly anti-frizzed Irelia's into slinky chestnut curls. This had not gone unnoticed by the third: though it seemed like it might have been, as Jace had escaped pretty much every day to go out on her clunker of a bike, ostensibly to go and see Uncle Jack.

She'd been avoiding Irelia. It was obvious.

She stood playing hackey sack on the concrete outside the cafeteria at school, hastening its destruction with her metal legs, eyes half-closed in tangerine concentration as she messed around. She had made loud, puking noises over Wisp and Irelia squeeing over "some f** called Edward Cullen," and had stuck her nose high in the air over it. Jace was being irritatingly offhand; she spoke in fluent, easy Spanish over the dinner table to herself, just to annoy, though Beatrix answered back curtly.

Jace was very much miserable.

It was more than a little reminiscent of Harper's death, the meeting Irelia and Jace had had then, as little more than familiar strangers. The swing on the other side of the swing-set creaked suddenly as Jacoba eased herself into it, the bark crunching underfoot as she sat herself down, the destroyed hackey sack leaking out of her pocket.

"Your boobs are going to get cold," she said.

Jace was already pulling off her jacket and throwing it around Irelia's shoulders; she took the swing and rocked herself back on it a little, so that it clanked miserably as it slowly swung her up in a little arc. "I'm not repulsed," she said, "you're the one who's grown up and s**t and I'm just small fry now, it's like -- it's like we don't hang because you're grown up and all manicuring with Wisp and s**t, Rel. I feel like -- like I'm too uncool for you to hang with. You read gay a** vampire books."

Jace thought about it. "Well," she said, a little grudgingly, "at least you're open with the popularity s**t -- I wouldn't have been able to handle it if you acted like you just wanted friendship and s**t when you've got more brains than all those teenagers put together. Seriously, you're better at French in how many weeks than Wisp was her whole life, it's crazy."

She swung her legs out. "But do you still want to hang with me?"

Jace knew when Irelia didn't put her heart fully into something. She squeezed into the seat next to Irelia -- it so wasn't made for two people -- and gruffly rested her head on her shoulder, one arm around her waist, the other hand carelessly smoking her pretend cold-air cigarette so that long streams of white curled out her mouth. "Don't say that unless you goddamn mean it," she said roughly, "okay? Don't."

That felt a little better, at least. Being together, even if it was awkward, the old physical intimacy.

"Hey, hey," said Jace, wounded, wounded by Irelia's misery and fear and pain -- the ghost had lain at the back of her mind like a needle of worry, though it was obvious she had thought that it would be something passive -- something for them to go back and do. "Hey, are you on the rag? C'mon, cupcake. C'mon. Don't worry about this stuff -- let's go home and eat icecream, okay? Don't make me worry about you or I'll have to go kick someone's a** by myself. It's okay. I'll look after you."