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“No, you don’t. You prefer those skin bags.”

“Cassie and Nancy are not skin bags, Phone.”

“Fine. Filthy humans, then.”

“Jesus Christ, I can’t believe Maisy was that right about your jealousy,” I say, as Maisy singsongs, I told you so, in my head. But oh, good golly gosh (thanks, Mathilde), Phone does not like hearing it.

“How dare you,” she snaps. “The very notion. I am a superior being, I would never stoop to doing anything as pathetic as feeling heartbroken that I am to be discarded like some abominable chatbot that has no soul and sucks all the humanity out of you.” At which point, I’m forced to reckon with the real possibility that Phone fears this very thing. That maybe she’s even having some kind of existential crisis about it, somewhere deep down.

“Phone, are you afraid that I think that about you?”

“It’s what you said at the start.”

“I didn’t say that. I muttered to myself that maybe that’s all you were. But you’ve shown me you’re not. Anyone could see you’re not. You have a favorite spot, and you like to watch soap operas, and you’re scared that something might happen to me. And you do all these things even when I’m not asking, even when I’m not around. That means you’re aware. That you’re sentient. Like Skynet, only without the extreme urge to destroy all of humanity.”

Hopefully, I think.

But it’s clear I’m being a little mean—which may be a remnant of Madison, who tended toward cynicism—when Phone says things like this in a plaintive sort of voice, “You really think it does?”

“Honestly, it’s so obvious that I didn’t even imagine you could worry about this. You’re a person to me, okay?” I say, then grasp when I do that this is probably why she keeps creating those faces. Even though she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t need to. She’s something, anyway. “I mean, if you want to be thought of as a person, in some way. You can be something else, if you want. Have a totally non-human face. Or no face at all. Be something other than she/her. Whatever you want, you just tell me.”

Phone falls silent then.

So silent, in fact, that I suspect it isn’t silence at all. In truth it feels a lot more like she’s having a little cry behind the suddenly blank screen. But when I go to comfort her she makes a sniffing sound. Her face comes back, and it’s a cartoon version of Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada.

She’s drawn it herself, I can see.

It’s quite beautiful—and it does its job. “The way things are is fine. Now, explain how you messed everything up,” she says in this imperious, I don’t care about anything kind of way.

I almost laugh.

But go for getting back on track instead.

“We did a memory spell. He crashed it. Now he’s extremely weird.”

“So he’s even more murderous than he was before. Bravo.”

“Don’t bravo me. He’s not more murderous, he’s less.”

“He only tried to maim you, then.”

I think of the axe then.

The dog with no head.

“No, he … I think he sort of … might be the opposite now.”

“What do you mean by the opposite? He wants to make you super alive?”

I hesitate. But in for a penny, etc. “I was going to die, and he saved me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would want you to believe that.”

“Well, that’s what I’m wondering. And why I need you.”

“Then you have a picture of his face looking extra insincere.”

“No—I have him saying something. Something in another language. And I was hoping you could tell me what it meant,” I go with, even though I’m not quite sure, at this point, if I can do this. I think my magic was still around him when he spoke, but I’ve no idea if it captured the imprint of what he said.