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Her voice was small as she added, “Is that true?”

“No.” Blair’s tone was adamant. His mind raced over all of the small moments that might have allowed this fear to take root in Iris’ heart. It seemed impossible that he could exist in a constant state of dread, waiting for the inevitable moment when Iris would finally decide he was too much and ask him to leave, and all the while she was frightened that he was going to abandon her.

He had a sudden image of two brightly painted wood horses bolted down to the polished floor of a carousel, each stuck in a state of perpetual uncertainty, neither knowing whether the other was running from them or desperate to reach them.

He didn’t want them to end up that way: affixed, inert, in a permanent state of trepidation.

“It’s just, I can feel you pulling away, and I know you keep things from me…”

Blair frowned, genuinely confused. “What have I kept from you?”

“Audrey said you came to visit her a while ago to see her art,” said Iris, setting her book on the coffee table and twisting around to face him. “Not that it’s a big deal obviously, but it is a little weird you never mentioned it.”

“I’m sorry.” Blair glanced away as he tried to find the words to explain himself. “I didn’t know how to tell you before, when you still didn’t know what I was. I told you how when I touched that page of my mother’s journal, I could see the vision she had for our—” He gave a small cough, his eyes flicking up to hers. “For my life.”

Iris nodded, her attention unwavering. It was difficult to feel the full weight of her focus, to believe he was deserving of it.

“Something similar happens when I touch a work of art,” Blair admitted. “I can see where the artist was when they created it, and I can feel what they felt. At Thanksgiving, I touched one of Audrey’s paintings, and it felt…familiar, somehow. I wanted to spend some more time with it.”

Iris frowned. “What do you mean, it felt familiar?”

Blair met her steady gaze. “This might come as a bit of a shock.”

“I can take it.”

“I think Audrey might be a seer, like my mother.” He trailed an anxious hand through his hair. “Actually, I’m certain of it.”

The grandfather clock chimed five times, followed by the Westminster bells. Iris looked just as stunned as Blair expected, though there was a flicker of doubt there too.

Blair hurried to expound on his theory. “You know that large painting right inside the front door of their apartment? I brushed up against it by accident on my way up to the bathroom, and…” He paused, remembering the overwhelming rush that had flowed through him. “When I touched the bird, the emotions were so strong. They came in waves. Isolation. Freedom. Fear, hope, awe. But mostly, inertia. The sense that something big was approaching, a storm that couldn’t be stopped.”

Iris frowned. “Maybe it had something to do with Audrey’s wedding. That’s a huge change in her life.”

But Blair was already shaking his head. “The emotions didn’t feel personal to her, though. They felt personal…to me. It was like she sensed I was coming. Like I was the storm she saw.” He raised his hands in an imperceptible gesture, before letting them fall back to his lap. It was hopeless. He was too inarticulate to convey this properly. “It happened upstairs, too,” Blair admitted, staring out at the darkening sky through the frosty window behind the TV. “On New Year’s Eve, I touched the paper tucked under your ukulele. I shouldn’t have been so intrusive; I’m sorry. Were you writing a song?”

Iris sat up straighter, looking taken aback. “I was trying to. But I didn’t write anything down.”

Blair shrugged. “You were still creating something, even if it was only in your mind.”

“That’s really embarrassing,” Iris groaned, leaning her head back against the cushion. “That song was supposed to be about you.”

But Blair only smiled. “I hoped it was.”

“Don’t tell me what emotions you felt from that,” she added, hiding her face. “Please don’t make me cringe any harder than I already am.”

“I only mentioned it because it was different from Audrey’s art. I could feel your spirit in it. But I could feel my spirit in Audrey’s, though she hadn’t even met me yet. Does that make sense?”

Iris nodded slowly. “I think so. But if Audrey does have some kind of power of foresight, I don’t think she’s aware of it. Do you?”

Blair shrugged. Usually, someone with supernatural abilities had at least a slight inkling. But it was possible Audrey had never stopped to acknowledge it.

“So, is that finally all?” Iris asked, fixing him with an obstinate stare.

“What do you mean?”

“The last secret,” she clarified.

Blair nodded, thinking over all of the inhuman aspects of himself that Iris knew about now. Each divulgence about his nature had made him feel more and more gruesome, as if with every revelation he'd grown an extra limb until he was unfathomably grotesque. He supposed the only detail he’d never told her was what kind of a creature he became in his darkest moments, but he imagined Gabriel had probably done that for him. How Iris could sit quietly by his side when she should have run screaming for the hills, he couldn’t begin to imagine.