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I’m just willing to give it a go.

I cup my hands to call up magic memory. Something remembered.

Then I blow what’s in them into the air, and oh, sure enough, sure enough. The words fill the room, as full of awe and music as they were in the alley. Though unfortunately, Phone doesn’t seem to agree. Or have a good response to this at all. “All you need is a translation of some words said in a language other than English? If I’d known that I would have stayed asleep. It’s beneath me to answer such trivial questions,” she says.

Still in haughty mood, I see, I think.

But then I notice her cartoon eyes sliding nervously sideways, and I get it.

“You don’t know, do you.”

“Just give me a second, all right.”

“A second is like an eternity to you. You don’t need it—What’s going on?”

“It’s not a language in any of my databases. Or maybe it is, but it’s not right.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So it sounds like something but isn’t? Like Swedish, but not.”

“Yes. Wait. Let me cross-reference.”

“With what?” I snort.

But the answer is even more bizarre than I was imagining.

“An ancient vampiric dialect.”

“So he’s talking like a medieval vampire.”

“Not exactly. I don’t know. Hang on, I think I have it—” she starts to say, then suddenly her voice is replaced by a translation. A really mechanical-sounding translation that should make the words sound awful.

But it can’t. It doesn’t. I hear them and my soul about leaves my body. “Oh, you are the most beautiful sorceress I have ever beheld. Let me only atone for my trespasses against you, and pledge to you my eternal service,” he apparently said, all of it so awe-inspiring and strange and impossible I just sit there, staring at Phone.

Then after a moment of silence, my sense comes back.

“Okay,” I say. “Should we try turning you off and on again?”

CHAPTER TEN

There are at least eight reasons I don’t believe Phone’s translation of whatever it was he said. And I know this because I list them all in my current Serious Journalism notebook, instead of getting that story about Mr. Spielman’s cat down before I forget about it entirely.

Number one is, of course, that word.

The B word. The one that Halsten would sooner die than say.

Or at least would rather die than mean. There is always the possibility that he’s just pretending with all of this, for some sort of torment-based reasons. But even then, I struggle to imagine how he could bring himself to squeeze out something like that. He thinks I’m hideous. I’m sure I’ve heard him say I’m hideous.

He must have, at some point.

Like in the 1800s, when my sort-of friend Lisle was so ravishing, and he … well, he didn’t look at her all the time or anything, he didn’t ask her to dance, he never followed her into theaters or ask her to weird dinners with tears that turned into diamonds. But I’m sure he definitely thought I was plain by comparison.

And anyway, it doesn’t matter.

There are other things wrong with the translation.

Halsten has never atoned for anything in his life. Even if he’s somehow forgotten everything he is, he just wasn’t built that way. He told me once that back in his Viking days he was feared throughout the nine kingdoms, whatever the nine kingdoms were, and so ruthless people knew that begging for their lives was fruitless.

So that’s right out, too.