Page 67 of Demon of Dreams

I turned to Felix. “Can you do stuff like that?”

He shook his head. “Nothing so impressive.”

Ash snorted derisively. “Don’t be modest. Your powers are plenty impressive. You just don’t want to use them.”

Felix squirmed in his seat. “I did take a vow not to.”

“You took a vow not to hurt Vesperwood or any of its denizens,” Ash said. “But showing Cory what you can do isn’t hurting anyone. Come on, show off a little.”

Felix gave me a dry look. “He’s making it sound like a bigger deal than it is.”

“Um, you have utter control over light and darkness,” Ash said. “You can walk through walls. I think that’s a little cooler than fucking glamor.”

“You canwhat?” I said, staring at Felix.

He sighed. “It’s nothing. I relinquished some of my abilities when I left my home to come here. But yes, I do have some control over darkness—”

He waved his hand negligently, and the room plunged into pitch black. I might as well have been blindfolded. I couldn’t see a thing, not even the hand I waved in front of my face.

“—And light,” he finished, and I blinked as the room suddenly filled with the light of a midday July sun.

My eyes hurt at the sudden transition. Felix waved a hand again, and the light in the room returned to normal—which was to say, somewhat dim. Every room I’d seen at Vesperwood so far had been lit by glowing balls of light that brightened or dimmed themselves according to the time of day. There was a ball of light hovering above my door right now, and another one over my nightstand, both casting a soft, orangey glow.

“Okay, you definitely need to stop pretending that’s not impressive,” I told him. “Because that’s amazing. Can you do it anywhere? Even outside? How big an area can you cover?”

“It depends on a lot of factors,” he said, looking down again.

I still wanted to ask about the whole walking-through-walls thing, and what exactly it meant to give up one’s wings, but I got the feeling he was uncomfortable being the center of attention.

“It’s fine,” I said. “We don’t have to keep talking about it.”

“Thanks.” Felix looked relieved. “It’s nice to have a friend who respects boundaries for once.”

“Boundary?” Ash asked. “What’s a boundary? Sounds fake.”

Felix raised his gaze to the ceiling. “I do wish I could have seen those blog posts you mentioned, Cory. You said they were written in Latin?”

“I probably shouldn’t have sounded so sure about that,” I corrected myself. “I don’t know any Latin, I was just going off what my English teacher taught us in SAT prep.”

“Now I’m even more interested,” Felix said.

“Do you read Latin?”

“Yeah. Well, no, actually, but…kind of yes. You know.”

I didnotknow, but Felix seemed to feel his explanation was crystal clear.

“I’d show them to you,” I offered, “but I lost my phone on the way here.”

Felix waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Cell phones don’t work at Vesperwood.”

“What? Why?”

“Reception isn’t great anywhere in the region, but all the magic gathered at Vesperwood means that technology tends to work strangely around here. Or not work at all.”

“Or create a big-ass explosion,” Ash said with a grin. “Don’t forget that.”

“Seriously?” I looked at Felix for confirmation, in case Ash was exaggerating again.

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