Quinn was at the lake again. They couldn't remember making the conscious decision to get up and leave their room; they'd just gone, following the call of the water, and found their feet carrying them into the woods.

Somehow, they could never stay away for too long. Rhia was always close to the earth and the trees and Valerie could conjure a fire within seconds, but Quinn's source of magick was different. They couldn't produce it themself, and the water that ran from faucets or rained from the sky didn't seem to be enough. No matter how much they tried to resist it, some part of them needed this: an expanse of water untouched by men, a sparkling mirror that, moments before dawn, belonged to no one but them.

Upon their arrival, it rippled gently in greeting; when they sat down near the water, it whispered Come closer.

Quinn hated it. The way it calmed them. The way it frightened them. The way it dragged their magick to the surface and made them ache.

The water loved them all the same.

It was six in the morning by now. Earlier, they'd managed to doze for all of eighty—ninety?—minutes before the sound of footsteps and bickering voices in the corridor had woken them.

They were children's voices.

There were no children in the dorms.

Quinn had pulled on a heavy woolen sweater and their shoes and left the campus behind without looking up from their feet even once.

Now they were sitting where they always sat, their knees drawn to their chest, their breath forming clouds in the crisp night air. They felt chilled from the inside out, probably more from the lack of sleep than the temperature. Their eyes itched. Their head felt so heavy.

Maybe, Quinn dimly thought, they could fall asleep here. No one ever came to the lake at this time—the morning joggers and people walking their dogs didn't stray this far off the path. Another voice in their head (it sounded a little bit like Valerie, or maybe their mom) argued that it was stupid. It was cold. They were vulnerable, alone in the woods with absolutely no one near. They should just wait until Valerie was back and take a nap between classes. With her in the room and in the daylight, they might even get two hours in. It would be a record in terms of uninterrupted sleep—real sleep, not just dozing fitfully and startling wide awake at every little noise. Quinn couldn't remember the last time they'd dreamed.

They were ripped out of their thoughts by a loud snapping in the underbrush. They turned to squint into the dark woodwork, jumping when it sounded again: a loud rustling, faint at first but quickly getting louder.

With their heart beating in their throat, they sat paralyzed, eyes fixed on the dark tree line—until a wheezing sound made their shoulders sag in relief.

Quinn wasn't sure what abilities ghosts had, but breathing didn't seem like one of them.

Sure enough, the trees soon gave way to a cursing, puffing Deloris Greenbrook. Rhia's grandmother wore a long green dress and a heavy brown jacket that blended in with the trees. Unlike Quinn, who hadn't stopped to grab anything other than their sweater, she was bundled up in a knit scarf and thick mittens; her natural hair was hidden beneath a woolen cap that she had pulled down over her ears.

In Quinn's sleep-deprived state, there was something incredibly surreal about seeing the old woman stomping towards them with a basket in her hand and a look of exasperation etched into her wrinkly features, as if Quinn had personally called her to tell her to get out of bed and come here.

"Tea?" was the first thing she asked, sitting down heavily next to Quinn in the damp grass. She didn't pretend to be surprised to see them; in fact, she had probably known she'd find them here before they'd even decided to go.

Quinn decided not to think too hard about it and nodded, watching silently as Deloris procured a thermos bottle and two cups from her basket. One, she poured for herself. The other, she handed to Quinn.

"What is this?" they asked, breathing in the steam that rose from the cup in wispy tendrils. It smelled like the Greenbrook's house: herbs and spices and magick, secrets and comfort and the lingering promise of shelter.

"What, do you want me to give you a list of ingredients?" the old woman huffed. "It's an herbal blend to relieve anxiety. Drink up."

Quinn obediently took a sip. They knew Deloris well enough by now to not feel stung by her tone. Before December—before the ghosts and the panic attacks and the sleepless nights—Quinn had come over to the Greenbrook's house at least once a week. While Deloris and Rhia had taught Valerie their rules and traditions and rituals, Quinn had sat quietly and listened. They had shaken their head every time one of them attempted to get them to try one of the spells, but they had remembered everything and tucked it away for later.

Later: when their abilities didn't terrify them anymore. Later: when they could accept the fact that someone in their mother's side of the family was a witch and hadn't tried to contact them even once, that they had instead learned through coincidence and near-death experiences that they were a water witch.

Except later had never arrived. None of it had gone away: not the fear, not the bitter taste of disappointment, not the burning sting of being utterly abandoned. Instead, they had quickly understood that their magick was of a different kind. They couldn't talk to the trees or coax seeds into bloom like Rhiannon. They didn't have the fire for a friend like Valerie.

All they had was ice-cold water and the ever-present chill of death. Their magick didn't help anyone; it was something strange and sinister, something so dark it filled Quinn up like black tar. The only thing they dreaded more than keeping it inside was setting it free.

"Rhiannon told me you're having trouble sleeping," Deloris said after a long moment of silence. There wasn't pity in her voice, nor really any warmth. She was simply stating a well-known fact.

Quinn could vividly imagine it: Rhia and Valerie sitting at the dinner table in the cluttered kitchen, the concerned downward curl of their lips as they talked about all the ways Quinn had been acting strange lately.

"Yeah," was all they said.

"Any particular reason?"

"Shouldn't you know all about it already?" Quinn asked. They knew they sounded annoying, like a petulant child. They also knew that they were too exhausted to care.

Deloris frowned a little, but it wasn't in response to Quinn's tone. "I should. But whenever I try to see you, there's this... fog. Trying to get a grasp on your future is like trying to hold onto water."

"Poetic," Quinn mumbled.

"The only other time this happens is when I try to see a dead person's future," Deloris continued, as if they hadn't said anything.

Quinn curled their fingers tighter around their mug. "I'm not dead," they said. Their voice didn't sound very certain.

"Of course you aren't. But your future seems to be intertwined with someone who is." Deloris calmly poured herself another cup of tea. "Did you happen to talk to someone from the other side?"

The other side. Quinn almost had to laugh. They wished it were still that easy; an us versus them situation, a clear distinction between this world and the one that was supposed to be firmly locked behind a door, or at the very least not come knocking on its own accord. At some point over the last few weeks the lines had gotten all blurry, and they were once again the only one to feel it.

It wasn't anything new; where two roads met, Quinn tended to stand either on the intersection or somewhere off the path altogether. Neither fully white nor fully Chinese. Neither straight nor gay. Neither male nor female. And now here: straddling the line between the spirit world and the realm of the living.

"No," they lied.

Deloris gave a low hum that clearly spoke of disbelief, but didn't press on. Instead, she asked, "How's the water magick coming along?"

"It isn't."

"Not even a little?"

"No."

"You know... It's quite difficult to push something down when it's such an inherent element of you," Deloris said, her gaze fixed on the mist creeping across the water. "I tried when I married my husband. I managed for all of seven years. It was the goddamn stupidest thing I have ever done."

Quinn didn't say anything.

"There's no crueler thing you can do to yourself than deny yourself your true identity. I lost years of my life to it. And in the end, it was no use. Do you want to know what happened?"

Quinn really wasn't sure they did, but Deloris already continued.

"Whenever I let my guard down, whenever I went to sleep, it came to the surface. It reached for the trees and made them grow. It seeped into the ivy outside and made it cover every inch of the façade. It whispered to the rosebushes and made them grow high as walls. Within months, our garden turned into a jungle, and there was no hiding that something was off." She turned to face Quinn, one of her warm hands cupping their freezing one. "I wasted years of my life trying to bottle it up. When I finally left my husband, when I took off the lid, it was the kindest thing I could have ever done for myself. I set the magick free, and it me. Let it do the same for you."

They pulled their hand back. "It's not the same."

"Maybe not," Deloris agreed. "But unfamiliar as it may feel, it knows you. It is you. You are made of magick, Quinn. Once you understand that, there will be no limit to the things you can do."

Quinn didn't tell her that what they wanted wasn't any of this. They didn't want to command rivers or rule over lakes. They wanted to sleep. They wanted to study. They wanted to trust their eyes and feel real when they were awake.

Their throat felt too tight to express any of this, but Deloris didn't expect them to. She only said, "It's your choice, Quinn. Stay in the prison you've built for yourself or accept the key and get the hell out."

Then, she stood with a soft creak, took her basket and the empty mugs, and disappeared as suddenly and as noisily as she had appeared.

In her absence, Quinn drew in a trembling breath. Dawn was beginning to reach through the trees, turning the sky a light gray. The lake was right in front of them; all they had to do was lean ever so slightly forward and reach a hand out to touch the water.

Their fingertips skimmed the surface. The water rippled, an anticipatory hush falling over it as it rose to meet their touch in a way that water simply shouldn't react. It loved them. It missed them. It wanted to swallow them whole and never spit them out.

Quinn retracted their hand and left without looking back.

***

The rest of the day passed like all the days before. Quinn dragged themself to class. Valerie dragged them to the cafeteria where they managed to eat about a quarter of their plate. Sleep dragged them under for about two hours between classes while Valerie sat cross-legged on the floor next to their bed, breaking in the new tarot deck the Greenbrooks had gifted her for Yule, the sound of her soft murmurs and the shuffling of the cards grounding enough to lull Quinn to sleep.

Eventually, night draped itself over the town, ushering in the next part of their daily routine. Valerie packed a bag. Valerie asked Quinn if they wanted to come with and have dinner with the Greenbrooks together. Quinn declined. Valerie looked worried. Quinn looked at the floor. The door fell shut and Quinn was alone again, left for another sleepless night.

It was a nightmarish merry-go-round, and they couldn't find a way to get off. They just went round after round, feeling sick to their stomach as they watched their life pass by in a meaningless blur of colors and noise.

The next round: Quinn changed into sweatpants and a sweater.

They went to the bathroom to shower and brush their teeth.

They didn't look in the mirror.

They walked back to their room and didn't raise their gaze once.

They locked the door behind them.

They watched Gravity Falls until their eyes stung.

They turned off the light.

They dozed off. They started awake. They dozed off. They started awake. They—

They got to their feet.

Deloris's words echoed in their ears: Stay in the prison you've built for yourself or accept the key and get the hell out. Quinn had no idea what the key was, but they knew that it wasn't this.

With their sketchbook clutched to their chest, they slipped into the corridor. Leaving the dorms and entering the art building felt a little bit like sleepwalking. Then again, everything felt like sleepwalking lately—the world lost some of its sharpness when you barely slept. Quinn could sense the chill of the night air, smell the scent of old stone and paint in the corridor, hear the sound of their own footsteps echoing from the walls, but it all seemed very far away...

Until they stepped through the door of the first classroom to the left and it suddenly didn't.

The boy was there again.

He was sitting on one of the desks, his scuffed-up shoes propped up on the chair in front of him. There was something in his hands, the moonlight catching on a metallic glint as he turned it between his fingers, light blond hair falling into his eyes as he studied the object.

When Quinn entered, his head immediately snapped up.

Quinn was suddenly reminded of the way they'd locked eyes with Luis from across the room only one day earlier. It wasn't because the boy looked at them with a similar intensity; it was because Quinn knew with startling clarity that the look on his face, caught somewhere between surprise and tentative hope, was the exact expression that they had worn then.

The boy's words rang in their ears again. You can see me?

I can.

I can.

I can.

Quinn took a step into the room, then another. The boy didn't move. Quinn slowly sat down at a desk a few feet away from him. The boy didn't speak. Quinn opened their sketchbook to a blank page. The boy didn't look away.

From where they were sitting, Quinn could see that the object he was cradling in his palms was a pocket watch. They could also see the faint splatter of freckles across his almost-translucent skin. The slight unevenness of his haircut, as if he'd done it himself with a dull pair of scissors. The small, faded scar on his chin.

There was the same eerie stillness about him that Quinn had noticed in the girl at the party and his form faded into the night depending on how the moonlight hit him, but other than that he looked... real. Human. Pretty, Quinn silently noted as they studied the gentle curve of his lips, the delicate angles of his face, the long blond lashes framing his eyes.

His eyes. They were the most striking thing about him. They were a spring-water blue, a summer-sky blue, a blue that Quinn would have spent hours trying to mix if they were to paint him in color.

They were the saddest eyes that Quinn had ever seen.

Shakily picking up their ballpen, they glanced between their sketchbook and the boy. He sat perfectly still as he watched Quinn watch him; the only movement was a nervous twitching of his fingers around the pocket watch in his hand.

Quinn tried to feel any fear in themself and, for the first time in weeks, couldn't find it.

They put the pen to the paper and began to sketch.